If the game is poorly designed or just not fun to play it is very likely going to fail. Now I have not seen any signs for that being the case. Poor marketing may also lead to failure and if it is too similar to other paradox games it may fail because there would not be much reason to purchase it if you own other games.



Based on other paradox games I suspect it will score between high 70s to high 80s on metacritic, likely low 80s based on average paradox game performance with the critics. Sold copies will probably be somewhat more than a million.



Obviously metacritic score do not nessicarly mean much when it comes to sales given that Stellaris sold better even with its lower score than other paradox games, but if we see something like below 70s, there are probably some major issue with the game.