I picked up Stellaris when I saw it was on a deal recently (75% off or something like that) and once I found out it was made by the same people who made Crusader Kings 2 (which I have played for.... 843 hours according to Steam). I'm pretty sure I'm going to be doing this exact same thing because I've been hoping to find a game like Crusader Kings 2 but space based. I really enjoy space-based games, but I find many of them are either ridiculously in depth or so basic I get bored in an hour. Stellaris seems to strike a good balance. My first time through I was able to play without getting too in depth but sort of figuring things out as I went. I did play on a relatively easy mode in order to learn the mechanics, but I like that I was able to do that without too much stress.
Graphics: I have to rate the graphics an 8 for this game. Definitely not the prettiest game I’ve ever played, but it was really nice to look at no matter what I was doing. There was enough variation in character designs, species, ships, and what not that the graphics never felt like they were getting stale. I do have one complain and it is probably my computer having the issue but the longer I played and the more ships I had involved in space battles the slower things ran. I am not surprised by this in any way because my laptop is getting kind of old and it was never very powerful to begin with. Still, I do wish it was able to handle all the space battle without slowing down like it does. My laptop is not a decade old so it should not struggle as much as it did at times. I did have the settings up fairly high the entire time so I bet I could adjust that and make things a bit smoother.

Sound: Again, the sound needs to be about an 8. It was consistently good music and audio work throughout the game, but nothing really blew me away. I did enjoy the voice for the tutorial. It was very robotic and fit with the overall esthetic of the game. The music did blend really well into the background of the game and never stole my attention away from the game. It did what I felt it should do and was not distracting or annoying or cliché. There were also all the obvious blippy and spacey noises when you clicked on menus and things like that.

Overall the sound did what I expected and added rather than took away from the experience. I can not think of anything that would have improved it.

Addictive: I find these kinds of games to be extremely addictive but I still felt like rating it a 7 was reasonable. I think you have to enjoy this specific style of game in order to enjoy it. I can sit for 3 or 4 hours and play while watching a movie or TV show and enjoy the game the entire time. I like the fact that sometimes you spend an hour in order to play a year or two of game time and then other times you can burn through a couple decades in the same period. These variations in gameplay and how hands-on you need to be depending on the situation keep things interesting.

Story: The story in games like Stellaris and Crusader Kings is less from the game writers telling you what to do next and more you deciding how you want the story to progress and the game reacting to you or throwing a wrench in your plans. There are definitely plenty of “stories” to tackle through the game. They act kind of like “quests” that play out and you have to complete a few tasks to gain research or extra ships and things like that. They are optional in many cases and do not seem to make or break the game.

The story seems to revolve more around how you choose to play the game and what your civilization is like. Are you despotic and conquer and enslave other species or do you have a democratic society that treats everyone the same and spend more time researching and trading than anything else? How things play out depends a lot on what kind of empire you run and what your species is like.

Depth: If you have ever played Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis or Hearts of Iron you know how much depth these games have. I must rate it 10. The thing I like about these games though is that you are not forced to make use of ALL the depth. You can automate a lot of things using sectors (kind of like vassals/lower level lords/kings etc.) so you don’t have to spend time building on each planet or worrying about having enough food. You get to spend more time focusing on researching and designing ships and waging war. I’ve probably spend 40-50 hours playing so far and I do not think I stopped finding new things to do or ways to play the game. There are things I wish were more fleshed out. I think the war mechanics and travel are a bit clunky compared to other games but I imagine those will get fixed as they released DLC (as they do with these games). Regardless there are not many games that can rival a game like Stellaris in how in depth it is.

Difficulty: While I chose to play the game on a fairly low difficulty level I can tell pretty easily that if I had played differently that the game would be nearly impossible to win easily. I imagine every game is winnable in some way but there are plenty of options relating to difficulty that would push even experienced players in games like these to their limits. The sheer size of the game is a difficultly setting on its own and then you can choose about 7 or 8 other settings that directly and obviously affect how hard the game will be. It is not Kaizo Mario difficult or anything because it takes hours in order to realize you have lost. However, I imagine I could set up the game in such a way that I would lose every time.

So, my overall impression of the game is that while it is a great game and ticks most of my boxes for a 4x game in space it is not perfect and so I can only give it an 8.2 (average of my scores). However, for a game of this style I consider an 8+ to be about as perfect as you can get without becoming so over the top complicated that no one would ever be able to or want to play it. So, if games like Crusader Kings or Civilization are things you enjoy I would highly recommend Stellaris. It is a slow burn of a game but it is worth every minute.