Distant Worlds 2

The game is not bad, but the simulation is so complex that simply make the user fully reliant on the game AI to micromanage everything. So, you end up being just another AI player, with minimal amount of influence on the game, specially at mid and late game. That basically makes the game only fun at the beginning for the promise of more fun later, but that fun never came for me.

Distant Worlds 2 - The Grand Strategy Obsession You Didn’t Know You Needed If Stellaris and Galactic Civilizations IV had a hyper-intelligent, automation-loving baby, it would be Distant Worlds 2. The automation options are a game-changer, especially in the late game. No more micromanagement fatigue—just pure empire-building bliss as you shape the galaxy while your AI governors handle the tedious stuff. The living, breathing universe, detailed economy, and dynamic diplomacy make every playthrough feel fresh. Yes, it's complex, and yes, it has a learning curve, but once it clicks? Pure strategy nirvana. After 456 hours in the last month and five playthroughs in a row, I can confidently say: Distant Worlds 2 is dangerously addictive. If you love grand strategy in space, just get it. Your sleep schedule may never recover. 10/10, see you in another 400 hours.

Tl;dr: Get Distant Worlds Universe (DWU) instead of this. So I play a lot of DWU and play it with the Star Trek TNG mod at the largest sector with highest amount of factions. What I love about that game is the realtime aspect bundled with an interesting take on research and the absolute freedom on ship building. Now here is DW2, the next game in the franchise and it does basically nothing different. It has some minor helpful quality of life changes while also some setbacks and one very big negative. The very big negative is that ship building is reworked and with that simply inferior to DWU. In DWU I can by large create my ships however I want only constrained by the maximum size of the ship. In DW2 each ship hull has a maximum size that can't be changed or modified and a certain amount of slots. So while in DWU I can create super heavy armored ships or super heavy shielded ships or glasscannons or superfast raiders or other specialised ships to my liking, in DW2 my ships have 3-5 engines, 2-6 slots for armor and shields, up to twelve weapon slots and just enough general slots to put 3-4 fuel cells on it. Instead of having one hull per type (escort, destroyer, etc) I have 4 to 8 or 9 hulls of the same ship for the same type, one light, one normal, one fast, etc. and they are different by 1-3 slots on the ship and a bit more space to put stuff in. Another incredible annoying part of the game but especially in the ship builder is the UI. I am constantly looking around to find stuff and in the ship builder I have to scroll up and down to upon it while DWU is able to give the same information in a window that takes only 66% or so of the screen. Visibility in general is awful in the game, the gamemap is tilted because its 3D now, which looks nice but is unnecessary, making it hard to see things on it especially in later phases. Ships, at least the military ones for the humans, also look very similar and are hard to distinguish if zoomed out just a bit. In General do you also need to zoom a lot in this game. While I like that I can go really close to models and scroll out without issue seeing the entire galaxy its not that useful and you are constantly adjusting. While on the size of the galaxy, I played a full game on a 500 Star System in a 4 by 4 Sector map and mid game the performance started to slow down. DWU can handle a 15x15 sector without issue (if you don't get flooded by messages that breaks it for some reason) while this starts to struggle at the small sizes. Another huge issue I have is the selection of planets and fleets. When I am zoomed out on a galaxy level and I select my fleet and click on an enemy star system I want that my fleet attacks the colonized planet or give me a drop down menue, here it sends your fleet to the star in the middle or somewhere different at the system at random without choice. No instead I have to zoom onto a planet level figure out what the colonized planet is I wanna attack because is not clearly visible and then select the fleet and right click on the planet. And I need to do that every single time. A few more in quick succession: The automation AI even when turned down is just flooding you with messages. Troop selection on a planet is also done on a per unit basis, if you want to select multiple ones you need to filter around in the troop menue. Setting the home world for your fleets is the same hassle as attacking a system. The research screen is another scroll fest and a single badly designed menue. Researching is also extremely slow even on "Very Fast" Research Speed. You will easily finish the game before you finish any technology in the last 2-3 tiers. Invading an independent colony gives you a -100 penalty which gives all your planets a huge malus to approval and is so bad that when you create new colonies they immediately revolt and turn independent/different faction. Automation AI will steal your already low money all the time if you sanction to build something even if you don't have the money and queues it up without you knowing or able to influence or edit that in a menue. Music can be awful. The ship sounds are also super loud even after some tuning. Once you won against another faction they normally become your vassal-state. You can't cut the vassal-bond through diplomacy. The list goes on. With all these new downsides or not-improvements compared to DWU, there are also some nice bits here and there: - With Fleet templates I can easily build a new fleet - Already existing fleets gets restructured depending on the selected template with just the click of a button - Ship refueling and retrofitting works a lot better and very fast - Colonizing planets, building mining stations and so on is done by a click (and will take away all your money forever if you want to much) - You can set up how many items you wanna research at the same time

Distant Worlds 2 is an epic space 4X game with a truly massive scale. It can support thousands of star systems and has a living, breathing galaxy. The AI-controlled civilian economy adds real depth, making your empire feel alive as private industry handles trade, mining, and more. It also grows along side you. One of my favourite features is the automation system. You can control as much or as little as you want: focus on just one aspect while learning, or let the AI handle everything and watch a fully automated empire in action. The real-time game play with pause means you always set the pace. If you want a deep, flexible strategy game where you decide how hands-on to be, Distant Worlds 2 is a must-play!

I don't know why people hate this game so much. Maybe it has this bad rating for historic reasons: was it in a much worse state before? Today It's everything I could desire from a 4X game. It's orders of magnitude better that the previous title. Literally in all aspects. There are still some minor kinks with automation. Like being unable to prevent the AI from spamming troop transports that I want to manage manually. And the absence of population templates for planet types. But man oh man how good the Idea of being able to micro-tune each aspect of automation and leave only the interesting parts for yourself. It really works, and works well at that. Could not imagine the game of this scale not having these tools. Would never be possible for a human being to manage all this scale of thousands of start systems. This truly feels like you're in charge of an actual empire. Unlike in other games, where you have no choice but to manage everything. The private sector economy and its separation from the part of empire controlled by you is just an amazing idea. Other games just `simulate` logistics, effectively making it dumb and shallow. Here, you can basically destroy enemy income, hunting down his logistics elements. Yeah, UI has a LOT of space for improvements. But those are minor issues that I believe they will iron out, eventually. And best of all: this is not a scummy paradox game, where they milk you with 100s of DLCs.

The most realistic space faring 4X game out there. I love how the private economy basically manages itself and you have the option of automating the entire game, essentially making it an auto4X game if you want. But you can turn all that off and micromanage every aspect of the game as you see fit (outside of the private economy). You can, however, greatly influence the private economy through how you setup your form of government at the start of the game and through various tech paths (which there are tons of) as you play. The game is also extremely well optimized, I had an empire with over 250 planets, a population of 2.5 trillion, and over 2000 warships which made up over 200 fleets and was still getting 70+ FPS in massive fleet battle scenes. You can customize your ship load outs how ever you want, and tweak your fleet and individual ship behavior to your liking, tons of possibilities and replay-ability. Each race also have story lines that play out if you choose to turn them on. It's not as deep and rich as something in Stellaris but it's good enough. The scope is far more massive than any other space 4X out there, highly recommended if you want to sink hundreds of hours and fulfill your empire ruling fantasies.

I am a big fan of this series. It has its issues, but nothing that outshines its current playability, enjoyment potential. A word of advice when deciding if this is a game for you....ignore all reviews with under ~25hrs of game play. It is not an overly complex game but it demands getting used to it and digging around and reading up. The game also allows you to play the game style that suits you anywhere between micro-managing just about everything to it being just a simulation you mostly watch...but again you have to spend the time to tweak these settings as you get used to playing...you got to make the effort. As with Distant Worlds 1, the devs improve game play continually with patches and dlc. If you like this type of game, it is well worth the investment to purchase and well worth the time spent to get the most of it, I thoroughly enjoy it. It is one of those games I continue to come back to.

The game is really interesting and has some neat mechanics and storylines, but the management of fleets and their attack targets is awful. I have to micromanage every single fleet every step of the way to keep my empire clear of threats. Assuming the AI does all the dumb things that the auto management does (which is actually one of the coolest features of the game), that issue compounds itself.

The definition of a Wiki game, so essentially you'll be on the internet more at the start than you will be playing the game looking at tutorials, and tip pages. Distant Worlds 2 is a 4X space empire management game on an epic scale. At first, its mechanics can feel a little obtuse and take some time to fully grasp, but once you do, the payoff is spectacular. Watching your empire come alive with hundreds of civilian ships hauling resources, transporting tourists and migrants, and vast fleets of warships defending your borders or striking deep into enemy territory is an experience few games can match, but fails to reach the height's of Stellaris, It still has one of the most immersive portrayals of a living galaxy I’ve ever seen. One of the game’s greatest strengths is flexibility. Nearly every aspect of your empire can be handled by the AI or assisted to varying degrees, letting you decide exactly how much you want to micromanage. Whether you prefer to handle everything down to the last detail or just focus on big-picture decisions, the game adapts to your playstyle. That said, Distant Worlds 2 isn’t perfect. The interface can feel overwhelming, performance can dip when the galaxy really fills out, and the learning curve is steep enough to turn some players away. But if you stick with it, the sense of scale and depth is incredibly rewarding. For fans of grand strategy and 4X games, this is a gem worth digging into an imperfect but truly unique experience that captures the feeling of ruling a sprawling interstellar empire better than almost any other title.