Distant Worlds: Universe

Amazing. I haven't been this immersed in a game since I landed on the Mun for the 1st time in KSP. It's nothing short of a masterpiece and is prophetic in ways... keep in mind the game was made in 2014. Let me tell you about my first game... I played through the tutorials which were fairly boring, but interesting none-the-less. I watched a couple youtube videos also just to see people start a game. Feeling ready after all the hype in the reviews and doing my due diligence on learning, I hit 'introductory game'. It starts me as a random race of crab people... I decide to roll with it even if it's weird. I normally like playing human to discover the other weirdo races, but whatever. I move out of my home system, colonizing water worlds and living in submerged caves. Sometimes deep sea creatures attack my new colonies and set them back. Space pirates also abound, so I pay a band of pirates to protect me and deliver resources I haven't found yet. Ironically, I discover humans nearby building their own empire... they don't much like me since I'm so close and different. Eventually war ensues. I enslave them after a protracted war and taking most of their territory. As a gesture of good-will, knowing they are no longer a threat, I free them from servitude. I am now the largest empire and have no hope of managing everything myself. I automate all but the biggest decisions like trade, war, and espionage. An insectoid race is quickly progressing near me and is funding pirate raids against us, so my advisers tell me we should go to war. I form an alliance among the other aquatic beings and after a long, intense battle they submit a deal. Victory at last! I met the race specific victory conditions and click ok. But the game continues... a new empire emerges on the outskirts of the galaxy... then I remember all the desolate ruins and even ships I salvaged from ancient battles. I remember the cryptic messages and warnings... The game I thought I won was just beginning. Get it.

The game has an additional EULA with some pretty crazy terms I've never seen before, including that the EULA itself is to be kept confidential, that you are not to hire to attempt to hire anyone related to the publisher to at least 5 years, that you're required to maintain logs of who has access to the game, and other things that I've never seen in the context of a license agreement for a game. There's no notice that is any license agreement beyond the standard gog.com license agreement on the game's page, so I had no way of knowing this was in there. As such, I hit 'decline' and have asked for a refund. These are crazy license terms for a game. It's a shame, because it looked like it would be a very nice game.

This game does not work with Windows 10. It requires Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, June 2010 DirectX 9 SDK, and Microsoft XNA 4.0. Windows Media Player is not compatible and will not install on Windows 10, so there is no way to update your system to play this game. Even 75% off is dishonest since this game is not able to be played at all.

First off, I own this game for Steam, and I don't regret buying it, I regret paying the full $60 after reading reviews from people suffering from choice-supportive bias saying that this is THE GREATEST SPACE 4x EVER!!! This is not the greatest space 4x ever; the greatest space 4x ever is still to this day Master of Orion 2; 24 years later game developers can't make a true spiritual successor to MoO2. This game tried to supplant MoO2, and in some ways it very much succeeded; but in failed in two important aspects: First, this game is poorly made; it's buggy, incomplete in vital areas, and the UI is atrocious. Secondly, and more importantly, the makers of this game made the mistake of thinking more complex and in-depth *always* means more fun; more complex and in-dpeth does not *always* mean more fun, only *sometimes*. An example of this game being complex and fun? Ship customization; one of the best aspects of MoO2 was the depth and complexity of building ships and figuring out how they would work in combat; even more awesome was the options for weapons and ship systems, it was far better than some stupid rock, papers, scissors offense/defense *cough* GalCivStellaris *cough*. In this aspect DW is *even better* An example of more complex actually being LESS FUN? Fuel and ship range. Fuel and ship range in MoO2 was simple, unrealistic, and stupid. Fuel and ship range in DW? Realistic and complex, and when you're sending out a few tiny explorer ships actually fun, but when you're dealing with massive fleets during wartime? A logistical nightmare. When you're at war you will literally, not figuratively, spend 10 times more time and effort dealing with the tedium of keeping your fleets fueled than the fun of directing them to blow stuff up. I guess some people enjoy the banality of logistics; most people however do not. Hitting the char limit here, you want a game that's complex, convuluted, amazing in some aspects yet flawed in others? This is it.

While I really enjoy the ideas behind this game, of managing a huge empire and only focusing on the elements you enjoy, whether that's combat or the economy, you get to choose. However so far, in my experience, the game does a fairly bad job of managing things, especially in advisory mode. In nearly every game the colonization advisory would wind up losing my new colony to other factions due to rebellion. I feel like, with some work, these aspects could be really cool. The game world feels alive thanks to the civilian sector, but I can't really see any reason to play this over Stellaris. The combat has potential but the freedom of it all actually causes it to be way more chaotic and require far more micromanagement then I think is necessary. The UI, Graphics, and Sounds could all also use a significant upgrade, as the game just feels very, very old. The sounds, actually, are one of my biggest gripes, as they don't really fit into the sci-fi atmosphere that well. I wind up playing this game on mute because of that. The graphics are tolerable, but again, there's so much going on that it tends to just look like a huge clusterf*** of sprites. In my opinion, the things this game does are potentially interesting, but its held back by not working as well as I'd like, with the other aspects failing to challenge other games in the same genre.