Distant Worlds 2

The UI isn't just awkward, it's atrocious to navigate and once you get used to it... very awkward at best. Unless you want to torture yourself with a constant feeling of not having a grasp on the situation, this is not the space strategy you're looking for. I almost bought the Return of the Shakturi DLC, glad I didn't. Just spent 10+ hours to give the game another try and while I enjoy the depth of it the UI takes away the fun in managing it. Yes the game has improved a lot since release, but it still falls short of enjoyable. Mostly because of the poorly designed UI. There are other issues but if you're unable to be in control of your fleets and colonies those issues are less important.

How could I recommend a game by a company that does not even reply to emails?

Endless replayability! I've logged more than a few hours now on the game and am always coming up with alternate ways to win! Plenty of freedom to customize ones approach. The game has it's minor flaws but the design team is always working to improve and expand it, and the biggest biggest gripe I have is the 60 fleet limit where if you get more than 60 fleets the older fleets start dropping off the list and you can no longer transfer reinforcements into those fleets manually and when playing a maxed out Galaxy there are just not enough fleets to cover all sectors. But if that's my worst gripe I can't complain! I loved the original Distant worlds and Love this Game more! ... Roll on MultiPlayer!!.. oh and Beef up the shaktari!! lol!

policy:ask me before doing things like attack i have declined right before about suggestion to attack pirates base. and a moment later the fleet already gone there and fighting, which i have declined before. had same symptom multiple times, i didn't checked automatically do if i not declined option but ask me before doing. when pirate attacking my ships my fleet immediately go to attack pirate base without my accept. and lost half or all fleet meaninglessly. over and over. it's ridiculous when ask me about something to do and then whatever it done already even if i chose decline while i was chosen suggest mode. and even with do fight when 3x stronger seems doesn't works on such bases. maybe its because base? only used XL and graphical mods but it suddenly made super rage and having checking my policy sets multiple times. it was on 'suggest' not suggest and execute. actually i've ever didn't changed to that yet but checked and i was correct. maybe some kind of bugs or am i missing some? it was such horrible experience though.. holy.. how can i got coup by human race? when i have 8000M native arachne race(start race) and 2000M independant race(not human) which i conquered and no anywhere i have humans on my planets, in entire empire i don't have even one human on my empire. and then suddenly i got coup and my empire's leader is human now? i just can't understand what happened, if it was assasinate then it should be changed to other my native race leader by population portion but how the hell human got leader? they're even located at opposite world! headaches me.. ah only one human, who i recruited from captured spy been my leader lol.

If you, like me, wanted a space empire simulator that lets you build an empire and conduct diplomacy and maybe handle a few wars with aggressive empires, this probably isn't the game for you. The diplomacy system is highly frustrating. As soon as you start succeeding any at all, every empire - even potential allies - start to hate you due to envying your power. And it's really easy to get a bit ahead of them due to poor AI mismanagement. Maybe I need to up the difficulty even more, but on a Very Hard game I got out of my home system faster and outpaced them on population to the point that none of my neighbors would treaty with me even with the biggest gift. I don't even know how to play the game that well yet since I'm just starting, but just by intelligently selecting techs to get out of my home system fast and adjusting tax rate on my home world to keep happiness at 20 to keep growth high let me significantly outpace all my neighbors even with their crazy difficulty bonuses. The dumbest thing is, they probably rival me in actual production due to all the bonuses and would actually be a challenge if I fought them due to the difficulty and them focusing on combat techs - but I'm trying to play a space opera simulator, not an endless war game. They don't even declare war on me - they just silently hate me and refuse to do any diplomacy (even the ones who are supposed to like me) just because my home world has more population than theirs. My favorite neighbor even broke his trade agreement with me after I forgot to send him his annual tribute (gifts to keep them from hating me, despite their economy probably being just as strong as mine due to the difficulty bonuses). The gifts don't even build relation over time - as soon as you can send more gifts all the bonus from the last one is gone, and the malus for outgrowing their population will only have gotten higher. Maybe there's a way to tweak the game settings just right and play a game like I want, but this stupid diplomacy system just sucks the fun out of the game.

有中文了，在MOD里面，官方更新了可以用！

Got nothing much to add which was not already said in other Reviews. Only thing i would advise, is to treat this game more like a 'Space Empire Simulator'(like a Aurora 4X light) than a Game where you min/max to beat the AI on Hardest Difficulty or something like that. Set your own Goal and Starting Conditions before starting a new Game and kinda RP through it with your Empire(once you got the hang of things). Use Automation for things that you find tedious/unfun and don't worry if its not doing a Perfect Job, it usually doesn't matter much. That way you get the most out of the Game in my opinion.