Should you Buy Stellaris Overlord (Review)

solaris overlord is the 14th expansion pack for the game and also the sixth major one to hit the shelves together with utopia apocalypse megacorp federations and nemesis the question remains does overlord bring enough new content to the table for you to pick it up now or in a sale later feature-wise overlord is incredibly content rich unlike nemesis which came out in 2021 overlord does not rely on gigantic monolithic systems that you're only going to play playing a couple of times no this expansion has a slew of new features from new vassal types the defensive wall block for example the science scolaria as well as the resource prospectorium the nearly two dozen new outposts holding structures that can be built on your vaselworld to improve your resources in a similar way to what megacorporations did in their expansion two new enclaves that fill the spaces between the stars to make the galaxy feel more alive and are themed after a scrapyard as well as a psionic church and a third enclave type that you can found yourself which is themed after private military contractors there are also five new origins imperial fiefdom where you start as a special vassal of a more advanced empire and it has multiple story outcomes slingshot to the stars where you get early access to one of the new megastructures and is perfect for a raiding and or marauding empire subterranean an underground empire with events and underlying mechanics teaches of the shroud and origin which is very focused on psionics and has a rather strong story and finally there is progenitor hive a brand new hive mind origin that introduces mechanically heavy features that are very much focused on leaders within the hive sadly you will need to own utopia to play around with this one then there is the three new megastructures the long range quantum catapult which allows you to shotgun your fleets across the stars and in a game's first two early to mid game structures the orbital ring which allows you to further specialize your planets and make them even more powerful and the amazing hyper relay network it's kind of like a railway in space that significantly increases your ship mobility if they are connected to one another finally there is also new music that really fits the overlord theme nicely as i said there is a lot of new content here now the good news is that a lot of these new tools are going to be useful for every single one of your solaris playthroughs the new enclaves bring a reasonable amount of entertaining events the pmcs in particular are very useful as both a way of temporarily getting new fleets and keeping your fleet cap down the new orbital rings and hyper relays are things you'll want to build in each game as well although i wish the first one would come a little bit sooner during gameplay the new origins will keep you busy as whilst you may not be playing as them the ai empires most certainly will which will keep you on your toes as they all have consequences that you may have to deal with the new vassal types may not be everybody's cup of tea wide all encompassing empires will not have a lot of use for them but it does feel like the developers are pushing for a more federated game experience which is fine if you're playing tall then these new vassals will be perfect for you the quantum catapult is another example of an interesting megastructure that fits firmly in the rule of cool category however it shows up quite late in the game to be truly useful especially when there is better options on the table in terms of late game alloy sinks and hyper relays carry a lot of weight when it comes to being able to deploy your fleets quickly that does of course not mean that you can't deploy your fleets behind enemy lines with this and whilst the things i've talked about earlier in the view seem to be great additions and i've been very glowing about them so far there is a major issue that i've noticed with this expansion namely the ui that is used in its features i will give a couple of examples the quantum catapult for instance is fairly confusing to use at first especially considering it works similarly to say a wormhole where you can right click on the thing in space to go to a destination however with the quantum catapult it works a little bit differently and is a little bit confusing in order to use it you need to select a fleet click on a button in the fleet ui whilst on the map screen and only then does the galactic shotgun scatter icon make itself known and you can select a destination it feels rather cumbersome it's not explained very well and it doesn't really fit with established mechanics in the overall game there is also the new agreement screen which is fairly hidden it's in the contacts window on the left side of the screen and it took me a little while to track down the lack of an option to disable orbital rings in the outliner has really ballooned the starbase section to rather ridiculous levels however the most egregious example of confusing ui is how the flow of turning a normal vasel into a specialist works on the vasel negotiation screen there is no real indicator on how to actively change it until you click on a relatively small arrow in the ui only then can you proposition the other empire to transition into a different type considering this is one of the main selling points for the expansion it feels very badly signal posted now i understand that stellaris is turning six years old and there is a ton of features and i understand that the ui may be ballooning making it difficult to fit everything in but some of this new stuff is just not consistent with previously set standards within the game so where does this leave overlord in the pantheon of stellar's expansions in terms of raw content it is extremely good there is a lot to do and a lot to see there's tons of new foundational features that have been added in the patch and the expansion builds on top of them i'm really looking forward to see how this is going to expand in the future because foundational systems really work well in that sense and whilst in my opinion the overall game ux really needs another pass solaris overlord is a great expansion that will blow a rather significant amount of new life into your playthroughs is it as good as say utopia no but it is close very close if the features that we talked about today are to your liking go ahead and pick up the expansion if not i would suggest getting in a little sale later down the line and always keep in mind that there is also a massive free patch as part of these updates in this particular case the 3.4 cepheus one solaris overlord is available for 1999 us and or local equivalent thank you so much for watching and if you like this type of content there are more reviews in the playlist below and of course if you'd like to subscribe that's always good as well until next time thank you to my patrons take good care of yourselves and as always each other

Channel: ASpec

Views: 170,637

Keywords: ASpec, A_Spec, Stellaris, Stellaris Overlord, Overlord, Overlord Review, Stellaris Overlord Review, Review, Features, Mechanics, paradox interactive, Megastructures, Quantum Catapult, Hyper Relay, Hyper Relay Network, Space Train, Orbital Ring, Vassals, Prospectorium, Scholaria, Bullwark, Scrappers, Teachers of the Shroud, Private Military Contractor, Origins, New Origins, Fiefdom

Id: yGYIyWaPVOY

Length: 6min 53sec (413 seconds)

Published: Thu May 12 2022