I thought this game was a very lineal game, but actually is open world, ton of exploration and great story. Now, I'm giving 4/5 because I play at Linux and the game doesn't perform quite well, even owning a mid-high specs computer. Lowering some options makes it better, but makes me think the game isn't optimized properly.
I owned the DRM Free version since Beta release, and still playing now after stable and later releases. Great game! Always something different happens, great dev. support, you start to hate the game when gets unfair, but surviving is the reason of the game. I definitively recommend this game for people who like strategy resource survival games!
Maybe the game started at bad shape, but right now is quite good. I bought the game late as received bad reviews, but I really liked it. This is the only game I play from Paradox at GOG. Hope they can bring more of their games to this platform like HOI4 or EU4.
This game is very great, no doubt about it, specially if you like Space-Sim games. There is a entire comunity around Stellaris. Said that, be aware Paradox been introducing several intrusive metrics with the years (bait&switch) and their support is usually... bad. Also be aware if you want to buy a Paradox Game, be aware you need to pay huge amount of money for each expansion. Stellaris currently have 6 big expansions, 4 story packs and 5 species packs.