Pax Autocratica Review - A Totalitarian Trainwreck

Pax Autocratica

Steam Early Access

8/10/26

Multiverse

Pax, can I call you Pax? It is a marriage of two halves, one being a space expedition where you trawl the galaxy, getting involved in different skirmishes to take down the enemy and gather resources, and a management sim where you build your base up from scratch, putting your crew to work in the fields and ensuring they are well looked after, while improving your equipment and forces. Depending on your interests, you’ll probably find yourself playing one half of the game more than the other, but ultimately, after playing this game, I found both sides of the coin became extremely repetitive and uninteresting. The game boasts it will take a long time to hit those end credits, but I felt like I had seen everything the game had to offer by the end of the first galaxy—there are 3 of them in Early Access, by the way, with 1 more planned.

So, let’s kick off with space. Ah, space, such a great setting where you can't really go wrong with how vast and open-ended it is. Look at Mass Effect, Citizen Sleeper, and Dead Space—very different iterations of space, from horror to shagging your alien companions. Great! You traverse through space on your carrier, and every time you embark on an expedition, you will be able to go to different points of interest like mining nodes, shops, and space stations/planets where you’ll go up against your enemy, the Scourgeborn, in swift bloody battles. I didn't find these expeditions all that interesting, as I found the rinse and repeat of gathering resources and fighting to be the only things you can do. Sure, there are a variety of resources to buy to bring back to base, but I'll talk more later about how the battles especially felt copied and pasted.

To make expeditions feel meatier and not something you can blast through, the game implements an enemy-leveling system. The further you travel, the higher the standard enemy level gets. This means you’ll need to weigh up doing another skirmish to get a bit more loot or returning home lest you die and lose a portion of your gear. The end goal of your space expeditions is to reach 100% on your expedition survey (which is done through engaging with points of interest) and to win decisive battles, which act like giant spectacles that feel like Avengers’ Endgame, testing the might of your gear and forces.

Fights in Pax Autocratica are fine. This may be my inexperience talking, but it honestly played out how I think an FPS should play. You aim your gun and shoot. Pax gives you a range of options in weaponry, from machine guns to pistols, bows, and knives, so there’s probably something here for everyone. You also have access to grenades and a melee weapon. The only unique part of your equipment is that you have special ammo that you can target enemy foes with, and on impact, you will try to capture them so you can take them back to your base. However, you will be shown a percentage of how likely it is they will bend the knee, and many a time they would say, "Fuck you, no." Fair. 

What makes Pax unique in its combat are these upgrades and modifiers you can pick up for every mini-boss you defeat. If you’re familiar with the roguelite genre, you’ll probably feel right at home here. They tend to give your weaponry added effects, like an increased amount of homing missiles, or if an enemy is at half health, they’ll deal less damage, etc. There was an added level of strategy because of these, and they did stack until you ended an expedition, but I never felt like a combo of them changed the course of battle, and I never found myself caring too much about which ones I picked. I have seen these mechanics done before, and Pax definitely doesn't do anything new with them. 

I think what was the nail in the coffin was how boring these fights became. At the start, each skirmish would have the simple goal of defeating all the enemies, but with the amount you need to engage with in the game, I would hope these missions and goals would vary. And they do to some degree. I found some would be escort missions, which would have the player protect 15 allies, and another which required me to draw out an enemy leader. But they all played out the same. There was no strategy apart from killing all enemies on sight. The only instance where I felt a slight change was in the grand-scale ‘decisive battles,' but that was more to do with unique enemy types rather than a goal. Most enemy types can be gunned down, but mech equipment like turrets or tanks can only be harmed by targeting glowing red weak points. I guess it's a change, but I'm still gunning them down just in a specific area.

Now onto my expertise, colonization… I mean, life sim management! Now if you’re looking for cozy, maybe find something else because even though this shit is my bread and butter, I found Pax’s base management to be extremely convoluted and tiring. For story reasons, we are sent to an abandoned planet to raise a base that will conquer the galaxy. So it's your job to recruit soldiers and keep them happy and healthy. How do you keep them happy? Fear and propaganda, of course! Pax’s base management is pretty simple to begin with. You can set soldiers tasks to do, like gather resources, and in response, you have to make sure they have a place to sleep and food to eat. They will have stats you’ll need to keep an eye on, so make sure you don't overwork them, or they may die. Everything they gather will be put back into your mini society, like the food they eat and the resources they gather will be put into building facilities and decorating to make your barren landscape a bit more pretty. Different blueprints for these facilities are learned through research points in your command center, so you’ll soon find yourself with plenty to do and organize. There’s nothing really unique here that I haven't seen before, except for a rather eyebrow-raising prison, which allowed me to abuse my prisoners. 

However, I found Pax’s way of explaining things to be overly convoluted, with menus that are reams of text and a pending impossibility to find anything. I struggled so much to find out how to make my soldiers rest instead of giving them the full 24 hours off, but talking to them or going into their menu wasn't good enough, apparently. I also got quite excited when I found out that I could execute laws to be implemented in my camp, but half the time I didn't understand what I was reading. I really think, for accessibility and comprehension's sake, they need to be made easier to understand, and their menus need to be refined and made simpler because Pax has way too much to explain to the player. It just felt like a slog and a bother when I had only been playing the game for a few hours.  

So, why are we even doing all of this? Well, we are a mere pawn of the almighty Father, the head of a rather questionable space org who controls their soldiers to do their bidding. You are one of them, and after being rescued from a mission that saw your entire fleet either killed or captured by the Ursulans, you are told that there is no way you could still be alive. After a rather brief interrogation, you are sent on a death mission to eliminate the Ursulans once and for all and take over the galaxy of Tyris by raising an army and taking down enemy forces. The story is as standard as it comes, with not much to talk about, really. You don't meet any characters that hang around, only your soldiers who spout out their usual NPC nothingness. This game is definitely supposed to be a game game, so a lack of story should be something you keep in mind.

Pax’s version of space is good, aesthetically anyway, as for every galaxy you explore, the more races you discover. These designs include the Scourgeborn, who look like something out of Mad Max. I liked the more stylized designs of the character portraits more than I did the actual 3D models; they just looked rather boring. The many planets you battle them on are also unique in design, but they act as lobbies that you blitz in and out of rather than immersive landscapes. The planet you inhabit is also delightfully alien, with bizarre-looking plants and writhing tentacles that erupt from the ground. It's barren, don't get me wrong, but it has a Dune-like quality that I can appreciate. Unfortunately, due to these skirmishes being brief escapades, I never felt immersed in the astronomical setting of Pax. It just felt like a skin with nothing interesting to say. 

If you’re a fan of dystopian apocalyptic decor, though, you may find enjoyment in the base you need to raise up. I can definitely appreciate its style, especially with the unique-looking food, crops, and even its animals. I guess it makes me feel less guilty for butchering these gross bugs, but I'm not here to talk about morals with you in Pax Autocratica. 

I will need to stop myself from giggling about this next section, but Pax Autocratica’s sound design is, erm, funny. That's the word. Everything felt rather standard, but I do need to point out the beautiful sounds the enemies make in battle when they are hurt. Because why do they sound like that? No judgment to those in the recording booth, but I kind of expect an argh or a sound like I'm being shot at? Instead, I get rather suggestive moans? Which took me completely out of battle. I swear to you I heard someone say ‘ouch’ one time, and it stuck in my brain for the rest of my playtime. The voice acting overall is more than fine, I never had many problems with it, but what I found to be rather annoying was when allies or enemies would talk in battle, I wouldn't be able to hear them clearly, so I would need to read the subtitles, but I'm also getting blasted by enemies. Therefore, I never knew what anyone was saying, which was a shame. The music was nothing really of note either. 

My experience, technically wise, with Pax was blippy, if that's even a word. I found my PC struggled a fair bit, especially when I would spawn back at base. I would often simply freeze in one spot and stop and start when trying to look around, which gave the game a rather unpolished feel, but that's to be expected in early access, so I’m not too bothered. I never found any game-breaking bugs, so I see that as a plus for the team so far. You can tweak your settings as much as you want, though, in terms of graphics, so it may be worth having a mess around with to see what works best for your specs. I also need to note the rather bad loading times. I probably sound rather privileged when I say this, but it irks me when a loading screen is long, as nowadays you don't really have this problem. Unfortunately, Pax’s are rather long when you’re leaving different areas and loading in and out of your game, which is a minor inconvenience when trying to get into a smooth gameplay flow. 

Pax, can I still call you Pax? Has absolutely nothing to say and feels like ground, so tread upon that; I'm going to hit the center of the Earth. It has the skeleton of a game, FPS, roguelite, and base management, but all of it feels so hopelessly boring and convoluted that I never found respite in any of its gameplay. For every genre it tries to present, I can point you in the direction of another that will be worth your time, so I can't see how I would ever find an instance to recommend Pax Autocratica. Yeah, it's still in Early Access, but we are going to need to do a whole lot of work if we want to polish what is a rather unremarkable turd. But Seren, the roadmap says we will be able to have sex with the soldiers, aha ha, funny. For that reason alone, it's getting my coveted first broken genie lamp.

Things to appreciate

Unique designs for animals, plants etc.

Base camp decor and planet were visually interesting and stylistic.

Things to not like

Menus are overcomplicated

Copy and paste map goals

Uninspired Roguelite elements

Long loading times

Combat is basic and boring

BELOW AVERAGE