I actually started my game again because I hadn't been using that video on p2. The tutorial is utterly useless
I'm getting a bit more into my groove with this. I still don't really understand how to control the planetary balance (I have a load of unemployed pops and don't know how to give them jobs). The ship designer won't let me add shields to ships, which is irritating when you end up in a war with Cardassia! I'm muddling through just trying to hoover up minor powers, waiting for the midgame to begin.
I don't really think a 3D galactic map is that helpful. You don't navigate in 3D across the galaxy in this game so I just find the Z-axis effect a bit confusing.
I would like to feel a bit closer to the action in all honesty. You can only really see your ships in the planet view which you rarely need to go into to do anything, and even then you have to zoom in so far to see them that you can't do anything anyway! I've just built the Enterprise D and it's basically just a dot on the map. I could live with this if they'd LCARSed up the UI but they haven't really. Compare that to something like Civ 6, where you can seamlessly go around the world and the cities look distinctive with Wonders and districts etc and you may as well be playing a generic sci-fi game sometimes. It's disappointing.
There's fun to be had with this, but I'm not sure this (or even vanilla Stellaris for that matter) is actually better than the first Master of Orion.