Some genres and platforms don't mix well. For example, simulation and strategy games have never had a firm place on consoles, mostly due to a lack of input options. The sometimes convoluted nature of the interfaces and navigation grids often required precise mouse movements and keyboard shortcuts to navigate successfully.

That alone makes ports of strategy or simulation titles to consoles an almost impossible task that only gets more strenuous as the game's complexity rises. Stellaris is such a game. It belongs to the 4X genre (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate) and combines the joys of deeply strategic gameplay systems with science fiction and space exploration. The game features planet and fleet management, space exploration and combat, full diplomacy systems, and other traits that make every playthrough unique. If you have played Stellaris on the PC, that may not come as a surprise. Stellaris: Console Edition is a fully featured release, with some exceptions. What's surprising is that it plays surprisingly well on a console with a controller in hand.

Before diving deeper into the actual port and how a strategy game on console can work without making too many sacrifices, let's break down what Stellaris is and how it plays. There is no linear campaign or tutorial, and every game starts the same way: choosing or creating your faction. You can even create your own race and nation by mixing an extensive preset of assets until everything — from your banner to your leader — is to your liking. On top of that, we also have to set philosophies, tendencies and traits that define our strengths and weaknesses. Our race may be highly adaptable or not, reproduce faster or slower, and so on. The best part of the creation process is that everything you create is saved. When starting a new game, you may face off against your own creations from previous games.

If that's too much, you can choose from existing creations or opt for a randomized pick to make things interesting. The galaxy we play in is equally randomized (there is the option to play in our known solar system), creating a new playing field every single time we play. We will be placed in a random spot with a random home planet and get to work on our plan of galaxy domination, annihilation or peaceful expansion.

We start every game with a basic fleet, a science ship, a construction ship and a space station orbiting our home planet. Our people have just discovered Faster-Than-Light travel, so we have no idea what lies beyond our home planet or the boundaries of our local star system. The first step is to explore our surroundings within our own system and then slowly move to neighboring systems in search of resources and habitable planets. Once that's completed, we'll want to gather resources by building mining stations and expanding our reach in far-away systems or colonizing habitable planets.

Back in space, combat and exploration revolves around ships, which need to be led by scientists or officers, who we have to recruit and appoint. Their expertise and traits decide how successful their ships are in what they do. They level up with every successful action, and they all inevitably die, either due to old age or in combat. This can create gaps that are hard to fill with new and inexperienced personnel. Higher-ranking scientists are better equipped to research anomalies, which grant resources and background information about an ancient alien race that vanished a long time ago. Higher-ranking officers make battles go your way more often, even when your fleet is slightly outnumbered.

No matter your play style, you'll want to explore as much as possible and ensure a steady stream of resources, both from your own planet and other sources. At the same time, regardless of your war efforts (or lack thereof) with rival species, you'll want to have a standing army that can defend your territory when necessary. As we expand across the galaxy, Stellaris will inevitably change in scope. Soon, we are looking at the map per system rather than per planet to manage our expansion. We may start to form independent sectors as we go from micromanaging everything to managing a space empire. We'll transition from expansion to interacting with rivals and either go to war, try to coexist, or join a federation. Bear in mind that the long-lost alien species might still be around and eager to attack.

Win conditions reflect the three main routes that we can take: dominate the galaxy (own 40%), annihilate our opponents, or peacefully expand (being part of a federation that collectively owns 70% of the galaxy). We can adopt special skill trees (traditions) that help us go in the direction we want, and creating a species with the correct perks can make the game easier to achieve a certain win condition. The wealth of options and traits creates an incredible amount of possibilities, and it can take a while to see a fraction of it in action. That is the essential beauty of the game: It creates random scenarios that can go in a multitude of ways, and it tells a unique story based on factors that are both within and beyond the control of the player.

It is certainly overwhelming, and it demands a lot of attention to get things right. The first few games won't go your way if you're a newcomer. When starting a new game, we have the option to play with full, minimal, or without hints, which works well depending on your skill level. Full hints guide you through the whole experience by creating little tasks to complete like building a fleet, mining stations, or surveying a certain number of systems. Coupled with your own experimentation (and reading up on the game online), you are up to speed within a few matches, and that's when the actual fun begins as you try out new combinations of species.

This probably sounded like a raving recommendation of the game, and it sort of was. The scope is incredible, and if you're into grand strategy games, science fiction, or both, there might not be a better title around. The crux of it all is the game platform. Stellaris is a title made for PC, both in controls and in the processing power necessary to simulate the vast space empire across hundreds of planets and star systems. Stellaris Console Edition does its best to adapt for the power and control restrictions on consoles, but it isn't the best experience one can have in direct comparison.

The UI has been tweaked, and all menus are easy to navigate with a controller. From the main screen, we have a cursor that we can control with one stick to select units and planets, as well as open up context-sensitive menus or options. We can find our resource overview at the top of the screen, important menus to the left (situation log, personnel management, diplomacy and war), a shortcut menu to the right for planets and ships, and notifications are on the bottom. The d-pad locks us into one of those menus, where we can then pick where to go, which opens the corresponding item so we can make our selections or read its contents.

Given the input method, we can only control what's currently selected and in focus, which makes it a bit cumbersome to switch between units or menus. We always have to close everything to switch to something else. In the beginning, that will create situations where we select the wrong thing or wonder why we cannot select something without realizing we're still stuck in the notification bar or another UI element. The screen can also get too crowded, given that you usually do not sit as close to your TV as you would to a PC monitor. At that distance, reading on-screen text may also be difficult. This is not scolding the controls or the UI because they work remarkably well for a highly complex strategy game on a console. Remember that they won't come close to the comfort and multitasking abilities of a mouse and keyboard on a PC monitor.

That also means the speed of the game is impacted, as we can only do so many commands at once or in quick succession. This isn't a big deal at the beginning of the game, but once we go further along and time becomes a factor in our decision-making, we need to pause the game more frequently, and that can slow down the pace. Speaking of slowing down, while the current-gen consoles are capable machines, Stellaris Console Edition doesn't offer the same time options to fast-forward as it does on the PC, which also makes the early stages of the game drag on since we can't fast-forward quickly enough to skip over the necessary first steps. This is probably due to a lack of processing power that is present even on the more powerful PS4 Pro that we reviewed the game on. This is equally evident in the later stages of the game, where the occasional stutter is present depending on the action on-screen.

This isn't the only difference to the PC version of the game. The console edition did not release on par with the PC version, and it's is still several updates behind. If you're not familiar with Stellaris on the PC, this is unlikely to be a deal-breaker, but it's something we wanted to point out. The game has been well supported through regular free updates and DLC since its release, most recently adding multiplayer to the experience.

Stellaris: Console Edition is a mighty impressive game in and of itself. It also did the impossible: make a fairly complex and grand strategy title enjoyable on a console. That should stand as its own achievement. If you have access to Stellaris on a powerful PC, the console edition isn't for you. Even though it is a great title, the console version still feels somewhat restrained and pared down, but that may change with future updates. Regardless, if you're a fan of the genre and only game on a console at home, this is as close as you can get to a great strategy title running in its full glory on a TV.

Score: 8.5/10