Posted on: January 21, 2025

DomUK

Games: 326 Reviews: 2

An excellent 4X game

Distant Worlds 2 is a great game, and has gradually improved since launch to be a superb 4X game. A lot of the criticism I see of the game is very outdated - the game has had constant free updates that have brought QOL and gameplay improvements, in addition to the DLCs. DW2 is a fantastic 4X simulation game. It has incredible depth of simulation, and has a degree of realism that other games don't achieve due to abstraction of concepts. For example all resources exist, and they have to be mined and moved to the right places to be used. There is not an overall counter of resources and spend it anywhere - there is an actual economy, with a private sector, and they run all the freighters and mining ships, and mining stations. It adds a huge level of strategy to the game - you need to secure resources, and protect your private ships so they can bring resources in. And when it comes to war, it's not just about trying to directly smash the enemies fleets but also about trying to destroy their infrastructure. You can beat a far more powerful foe if you can limit their access to fuel for example. The game can seem overwhelming at first, and I've seen a lot of negative reviews where the complaints are actually due to not knowing how to do something. Everything can be automated - the game can literally be set to play itself. This is a great way to learn the game - let the AI handle everything except for the bits your want to play and learn. It'd be great if there was a more comprehensive wiki or galactopaedia for new players to learn the game. That is missing but I strongly watching DasTactics tutorials and game play on YouTube and Twitch - he constantly shows how to play and learn the game. It's a very rewarding and fun game - it does have a learning curve but it is worth it. The DLC, particularly Shakturi DLC, is well worth it too.

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Posted on: June 7, 2022

Uzghalaminos

Verified owner

Games: 162 Reviews: 4

Amazing Potential But...

The mecanical concept of this game is AMAZING.. just like it's predecessor... however, just like it's pedecesssor, the game is lacking in quality content in almost all the other areas... There was almost no improvement from DW:U besides graphics The events are shallow and pretty much irrelevant, being yes or no questions where you always pick yes The races and governments are extremly limited, even if well done and much of the art is recicled The game has a feeling of being incomple after the initial expantion, nothing relevant happens and makes you stay staring at the screen for hours doing nothing, with the same messages of resources being discovered or sugestions to build mines to extract them War works exactly the same way it did in DW:U and summs up to who has the largest fleet, not to metion that even on medium maps, the empires are distant with huge empity spaces between them, making the manegement of the fleet a chore and making combat almost terciary The lack of races and govs makes you choose to have a galaxy full of identical empires (race/gov) or having a galaxy with just 7 or 8 empires The ship building is ugly, clunky and buggy, with designs disapearing and making it impossible to update, after a while you end up just leaving on auto and never thinking about it again Comparing it to other games of the genere (Stellaris, Endless Universe) DW2 mechanics surpasses them by far, but the game as a whole has to improve a lot to get to the others levels

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Posted on: March 10, 2022

mnemotehnica

Verified owner

Games: 347 Reviews: 6

4x at its ABSOLUTE best

As far as 4x strategy games go, i have played literally everything i could get my hands on. now you my find my opinion a bit biased, but for me Stellaris is just empty eye candy. When it comes to simulation of a huge, living and restless galaxy Distant Worlds is the best you will ever get. The depth of this game is INSANE. Interface and graphics have made a huge jump and now everything is smooth, explicit and streamlined, just waiting to be discovered. Really, really the best game of the genre, by far.

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Posted on: October 29, 2023

SilverVeteran

Verified owner

Games: 212 Reviews: 1

It should have been better

I really wanted to post in two languages, but the limit won't let me ;) So here it comes: The game leaves very ambivalent feelings. Yes, it is now 3D in the representation of objects, but the game principle has remained 2D. Everything is on a single plane: all ships, celestial bodies and other objects. And "of course" all orbital courses of celestial bodies are complete circles, all nebulae, planets and moons are completely spherical (well, at least asteroids are not spherical, but they weren't before either). Overall, it's simply too simplified for a 3D game world. In DW:U you could still accept this because everything could be seen in 2D from a bird's eye view. Now it seems too simplistic for an otherwise appealing visual style. Even the animated little things can't make up for that. I also miss something that was already granted only to the ground troops in DW:U, but never to the spaceships, namely an improvement in combat abilities through experience gain. Furthermore, there are many things that you were used to in DW:U that are simply not possible in this game: Research stations in places that offer no bonus, or freely placed defence platforms, or the great freedom in designing shipbuilding plans. In addition, it is striking how extremely expensive colonisation ships have become. All together, this means that you have to use a completely different approach than in DW:U. Everything takes much longer, and an expansion rush is simply no longer possible. This is also because research takes much longer, the points are sparse and it has to be supported permanently with huge amounts of credits. Other points of criticism have already been described here by others, so just a few words: the monotonous music, the lack of cultural and political research, the simple space battles. Too bad, but as it is, I'd rather stick with DW:U, and if I want 3D, there's Homeworld, for example.

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Posted on: March 19, 2022

qmicic

Verified owner

Games: 90 Reviews: 5

Great Game, Poor optimization.

Game is very interesting and fun but it is so poorly coded that sometime i feel like i am being DDoSed by the game. Espacially in the mid to late game. Im playing on Ryzen 7 3800x and 32g of ram so it's not a weak machine. It would be nice if devs would put some time in technical side of things for a while.

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