New vassal contracts are free for everyone, letting you micromanage everything from tithes to political freedom, but the DLC brings three specific flavours. Our power consolidated, it was time to try out Overlord’s headliner feature: specialised vassal types. We weren’t great psychics yet, but we were able to telekinetically lure smaller, lesser fish in our trawler nets, resulting in a massive food surplus we could trade to put us ahead in the space race. Whether the Shroudwalker Enclave had sensed this latent potential, or whether they just got a kick out of our illustrious purple face-fins was unclear, but the enigmatic coven had made contact back in the deep recesses of our prehistory, and nurtured us from the shadows. I started my first run of Overlord with the Pious Gudge Foundation, a species of egalitarian, aquatic fish boys in the nascent stages of a great psychic awakening. Stellaris as a whole, however, has never been in better shape.

In short, Overlord is excellent, but feels far from essential. Stellaris, for my money, trends toward good value, but the waters are slightly muddied by the huge free updates that release alongside the paid components. Rarely do these expansions fail to deliver meaningful content, but they can – in the case of CK3’s recent Royal Court expansion – be insultingly overpriced. Paradox is somewhat infamous for their sheer quantity of downloadable content (DLC), and even if much of it is just the natural result of supporting a single game over many years, it can seem overwhelming – or even egregious – to prospective buyers. READ MORE: Last Spartan Standing is the development ‘Halo Infinite’ desperately needs.

Throw in a bunch of bananas, and these primate scribes will fling back a beautiful barrage of sci-fi stories. Its real power to enchant lies in what lives under the hood: that what looks like haggard accountants fiddling with spreadsheets are actually ten billion monkeys armed with quantum typewriters. Much like Paradox’s own Crusader Kings 3, the beauty of Stellaris isn’t in its strategic number crunching or grognard map painting, although these are certainly well-tuned and many-statted. Vastly, hugely, and mind-bogglingly so, to paraphrase Douglas Adams. Stellaris, Paradox’s science fiction grand strategy game, is big.

Download stellaris overlord for free