Stellaris: Necroids (PC) Review

Stellaris is like one of those relationships you never seem to get away from. Finally finding the door, it promises to change and shows off some new moves. Maybe giving it another chance, things seem good for a while, but eventually the truth starts to re-emerge that the core experience has not really changed at all. Then it is natural to wonder why things ever were going to change.

Back in the day, Stellaris had quite a bit of different things going on, most notable being that each player and empire used a vastly different FTL-engine drive which had a huge effect on gameplay. Patches and changes later, the experience started to become more narrow (despite the constant addition of 'new' things), which is where this DLC falls in. Like the whole experience, there was a lot to look at, but not a lot to actually do.

Necroids gives players a new selection of portraits, some new ship designs and a few new beginning options. Unfortunately, Paradox has a reputation that is not unearned about hoards of DLC that do not really do that much. The frame of the game has led to a point where, short of a complete overhaul, these things do very little to the overall game. This DLC lets players take the role of a type of zombie empire, but it doesn't really do that much. Maybe some population can be sacrificed, but against the whole huge backdrop of the structure of the game it doesn't really matter.

Sure, players get huge empires of zombies they can send against the enemy, but like many parts of the game, they are going against the framework of the game. In this case, a heavy limit to how many armies can be landed at one time. So unfortunately, as cool as the idea of having waves of zombie soldiers is, when invasions are battles limited to usually around 10-20 units, it doesn't seem so cool anymore. On one hand, the addition of new DLC is always cool to see in a game, but having to pay for it, and not really doing anything to the game, makes it hard to recommend.