Stellaris is once again in beta and not a complete game. As I wrote, mostly as a joke, that I didn’t want to be a beta tester again. I’ve had some time with the Beta, and looking at the latest patch notes, I’m ready to jump back in for a few reasons.

Some of these reasons are good (I miss playing the jellyfish people), bad (I have an idea for youtube videos that need me to play jellyfish people, and ugly (I’m not feeling a game I reviewed for a fistful of dollars. I’m personally extremely proud that I got to review a new game for a website and money.

I Like The Aptitude Changes

I really like Aptitude as a choice for my Jellyfish Empire and think the changes will play nicely. Adding 10% specialist job efficiency when “Most Job efficiency modifiers have been reduced” is extremely tasty. Additionally, the reduced leader upkeep is very good early game before you have enough unity generating planets to zoom through the traditions.

I Don’t Like That the AI Doesn’t Play The Game.

What are we even talking about? The AI appears to not play the game at all. In fairness, this is intentional as the massive changes to ships and economy (see below) are gonna change just about everything in the game. I think it sucks to play but maybe we should be getting some achievements if you care about that.

To accept playing a paradox game is to accept that you are both beta tester and end user. It is important that you enjoy the experience of doing the thing that you’re doing as opposed to wanting to play some “finished” or “perfect” product. For a few short months the AI is just going to be a pushover and embarrassing to play against. Oh well.

I like the changes to ships and how fast the game runs

We did it team! The game runs super fast and ships are basically something that can be upgraded to a point and then needs to be replaced. The game runs really fast.

I don’t like the Infernals

Honestly we were never going to have peace.

So now my next steps are going to be to finish a game of Stellaris before March 2026. I need to work on a few other things before I do a big content push on youtube.