You can argue specific strengths and weaknesses, but Stellaris is, by any financial or sales metric, an A-list hit.
"Less than 24 hours after release [...] Stellaris had sold over 200,000 units On 21 June 2016, it was announced that the game had sold over 500,000 units"
Compare this to, say, Divinity 2, a popular-but-not-A-list-hit game which sold a million copies in a similar time period.
XCOM-2 sold half a million copies on Steam alone in its first week.
https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/en/stellaris-celebrates-o...