Distant Worlds 2

I love this game, it's great but i cannot recommend it at all. It's a unpolished gem for sure, it has all the things going for it to make it a great addition to the 4x sci-fi category with it's micromanagement systems and game design. This is also the part the saddens me extremely in not being able to recommend it to others, the game is poorly optimized and the AI that you can use to help manage your empire isnt much of any help at all. Compared to the enemy AI it truly doesn't do a good job at all as it just spends all your cash whenever it can, it fails to prioritize fleet actions properly and it's auto generation of ship designs leaves much to be expected of it. As for my comment on optimization, well it might as well not exist. There are options for galaxy size: 300, 500, 700, 1000, 1500, 2000. So far, so good, too bad if you wanna play on anything above 500 into late game you gotta play the game like it's from the 80's without any fluid movement and all moving dots on the screen might as well be 8-bit. THIS is my biggest gripe and i have NEVER been able to finish any of my started games without quitting after it reaches late mid-game or late-game cause of how the game runs, and it's not my machine since the power it uses doesn't increase or decrease from early game to late game in any meaningful way. As i said, i personally love this game but since i as a person who love it cant bring myself to finish one of the started games i have running, i can't for the life of me recommend this game to others who might not like the game as much as i do, cause unless you love micromanaging and everything and pausing the game every 1-2 minutes or every 2 seconds while at war cause the AI cause exluding a couple of things, the players AI advisor doesnt do your space empire any justice at all. 4/10, great game design, great concept, annoying that the AI isnt helpful in much of what it does and just the feeling of bad optimization when it comes to what i expect to be the engine itself with the games getting slowed down to what i feel to be a unplayable degree.

- Legitimately one of the worst games I've ever seen at teaching the player what it expects the player to do. Seriously. For a game with so many complex interactive systems and built-in commands, the player is almost required to watch hours worth of youtube videos to even get an idea of how to begin. And even if the player does, the command structure is so unintuitive in comparison to other similar games that even if the player has watched videos by helpful community members like DasTatic, the player is still constantly having to leave the game to go look up how to accomplish very basic tasks that no player in a 4X game in 2026 should have to be looking up. - The entry point in the game is severe and, more importantly, just not fun. Within seven years of the game's starting year and having only barely had time to do anything other than build several exploration vessels and establish mining stations in my starting system, I've encountered 2 hostile groups of pirates, one of which is attacking my system with 1303 military strength worth of military ships. This is with me not altering the strength or aggression of pirates at all, meaning I have not increased their strength or prevalence. This is pretty terrible, not because it can't be overcome - obviously it can be overcome since there are streamers who do display playthroughs of this game. However, the problem is that the game doesn't really provide any compelling reason for most new players to want to overcome it. I imagine the experience for most potential 'new' players like me is basically the same - buy the game, try to play it, experience this, see no reason to continue, and uninstall the game. - I am not going to ask for a refund because the game does work. I don't see anything mechanically wrong with it, which apparently was a problem at launch. However, it's got a much worse problem. I am a long time player of grand strategy games. I have thousands of hours in some grand strategy games, hundreds of hours in others, and for the most part, if a game engages me, I am willing to take the time to learn it. I am not willing to take the time to learn this game, because in seven hours, nothing has happened to make me want to learn it, while the game itself has resisted my efforts to learn how to play it, while actively presenting itself as offering such little fun that I have no desire to proceed. So no, there is no reason to request a refund here. The developers did not promise me anything they didn't deliver. However, it really was a waste of about $100 and I will probably never buy another game from this particular game developer again.

Unfinished 3D-ish re-hash of the first game's 2D-ish graphics. That's it. Much of the same bugs are still here. The same AI is still here. But there's just less of it: none of the DLC released over DW1's lifetime is present in DW2. Instead it's slowly being added, in identical form, as DLC for DW2. No, really. The DLC for this game is the stuff that was either DLC for the first game, or was already present in the first game. So this is quite literally a gameplay downgrade, for a minor graphical upgrade. But the game has serious memory leaks and can't run without crashes. About sums up 2020s games.

I honestly don't know where to begin with all the things wrong with this game. if i can muster the effort to list everything in the future i will. Suffice to say, this game as massive potential, but i dont think the developers ever did a full play through with people who didnt know the game inside out. Everything is vague, ship auto names make no sense. Attack an under contruction enemy spaceport? nope, got to wait till its fully build. I've litterally sat here with a fleet in orbit of an enemy planet, with weapons that shoul work for bombardment. can i get them to do anything? nah, they just sit here like f*cking pixie dust

I wanted to like this game, but I just can't. I tried to play the game, but it is not supposed to be played. the game is not built for micro-managing. everything by default happens automatically. I didn't feel any control over what is happening. I tried to at least control combat and fleets manually, it was impossible to catch randomly appearing pirates all over the galaxy by hand. so ultimately the game become just a simulation to watch. by meddling with automated AI, you just make things worse, or best case scenario don't impact anything at all. There are so many resources, yet I can't count 3 of them. they are useless informaion. so many different ships, but I don't care they just fly around in the background, seemingly no effect on the game. you don't even care if you have less of something, AI just fills the gap. by automating away everything, the game is left with nothing to do for humans. even they took away the fun of designing your own ships, AI does it very efficiently, all ships upgrade automatically. why should I bother? They seem to have lost themselves in details while designing the game, they forgot about what truly matters. I don't need so many details, slowing down the game and have no contribution to gameplay.

Very interesting concept but bad quality of life, balance issues, and the game's mechanics are too vaguely explained, and too poorly visualised. I feel fascinated and frustrated at the same time. Most quality issues are weird in the sense that they are both glaring and trivial to fix, but somehow they aren't fixed. I don't get it. Maybe the developers don't play their own game, or maybe they only play it with all the automation enabled (not exactly my cup of tea). The game is prone to crashes, roughly one in 10 hours of play. Reducing the autosave interval is a must. This interval is in game minutes, not real life minutes, so it does not save while paused. If you have been doing something during pause you risk losing all that progress to a crash if you do not remember to save manually. If you really need to scratch a space 4X itch you might get something out of this, the game is far from horrible, but prepare to suffer. And unlike me you still have a chance to support a more caring developer instead.

This game is an automated black box. When you "play" the game you actually observe one AI player playing against other AI players. After "playing" the game for 14 hours I finally understood that I wasn't playing but only observing the game playing itself. My rating 4/10, not recommended.

I do not recommend this game. On paper it should be amazing. - Vast universe - Automation of a big empire - Discovery - From extreme macro to very detailed micro It is not enjoyable. I picked up this game multiple times, hoping for enjoyment and that they fixed specific atrocious things. Like: - Automation of fleets - Easy UI - Making expanding enjoyable - Logistics that makes sense It is NOT working. - Fleets do on automatic settings often random things. - They get stuck even if they have not enough fuel. - Pirates are completely broken and aggroed even with a truce. - The UI and the way to steer your empire is not acceptable - Important things are hidden and th a.i. does things you will not understand. A clear no. It is not worth your time. You will suffer quickly and it will never be really fun!

No instructions or real tutorial on how to do anything in this game and trying to manually do and figure out stuff is clunky. It feels like they designed it with the purpose of wanting you to just let everything be automated but that makes the game not fun. I only gave it about 60 minutes because I did not want to lose refund. Might be worth it if you are willing to look up videos on youtube to figure out how to play and not have everything done for you.

I have no idea what the problems in my empire are (let alone fix them), so there’s nothing to do. I’m kinda winning a war, but there’s no way to tell what could improve it, so I just sit and watch. Kind of a ♥♥♥♥ game