There is nothing meaningful about this game and it doesn't feel like one is getting anywhere adventure-wise when playing it. The story is flat abstract dialogue choices that don't form an atmosphere that puts the player in the game. It's a lot of abstractions smushed together around the castoff theme. The combat is a sideshow. The leveling of characters seems inconsequential. And lots of dialog. I left the game unfinished when I reached the bloom because it felt like a dialog simulation and not a game. And if you don't like dialog too bad because there is death by dialog. The point of these games is fun and/or the feeling of accomplishing something. There is nothing to accomplish in this game besides to say you suffered through to the end. This game isn't fun because it integrates very poorly. Lore(or back story) is way abstract and doesn't form a meaningful whole. Combat is sparse. Choices change your 'tide color' which seems to have little impact on anything and thus diverges to nothing. Slogging through the dialog might award you a whopping 2xp lol(grinding dialog for small xp <.<). The locations are pretty closed so there isn't much adventuring to do. It's not like 'wow I cleared the fog of war and discovered this cave with stuff to kill and treasure to loot". Rather it is "wow I cleared the fog of war in a place with no potential hostiles and discovered yet another station with dialog choices yay". If you can imagine playing Final Fantasy 1 with 10x more dialog, 10x less fighting, and much better art, you would have something like this game. If that integrated together into a whole it might be good or even great but as is it's a dialog simulation.
The game at first glance is a galactic map screen, a bunch of star system screens, and many data screens. There is no manual or involved tutorial like Europa IV to figure this stuff out. The game so far(some hours in) is building science vessels; setting them to automate exploration; building construction vessels; setting them to automate building and transferring them between systems when they stop doing anything; building colony ships and having them colonize colonizable worlds, and maybe building some warships. The fog of war on stuff like currencies and how they are related, buildings and how they are related, upkeep and how it relates to buildings and currencies, policies and how it relates: the fog of war is deep. There is no simple to complex transition. In Europa IV there was a starting point: the tutorial + the importance of trade. From there other concepts integrate into gameplay as one explores different game functions. With Stellaris it is a morass of stuff. There is a wiki but it essentially tells you 'how to play the game' rather than 'how the game is played.' If the game had a mid-level zoom function i.e. one where both the galaxy and systems can be viewed at the same time; and if the game had lists beside systems of inactive construction ships and other critical information it might feel more involved like the Europa IV map. Going between galaxy and system to do stuff is tedium.
