There seems to be some confusion about this, but this game IS fully working on GOG *with* mod support, and there is nothing missing/unavailable compared to the Steam/Epic versions. While the core gameplay loop is above-average for this genre—and it's certainly a relaxing builder (think along the lines of Life is Feudal: Forest Village, but in space) whenever you just want to build a big, sprawling civilization and micromanage it—it doesn't really do anything that hasn't been done before, so I wouldn't consider it a "must play." That said, even though I own MANY games similar to this, I don't regret buying it nor sinking several hundred hours into it since its release. This game's real strengths lie in Achievement-hunting; some of those weird niche-scenarios often require a lot of creative problem-solving to survive (without exploits), and usually end up being a lot of fun. The only real downside is Paradox's now-typical DLC money grubbing. Most of the important qualify of life changes, new/revised gameplay mechanics and interesting core features are paywalled behind pricey, greedy DLC - so you really need them to play the "actual" game. Buying all of the DLC would be absolutely absurd, though... so don't do it. Instead, I'd recommend buying JUST the base game when it's on a decent sale here on GOG, then downloading the DLC installers from a "trusted source" for free so you aren't missing 70% of the content. Don't pay Paradox to be greedy. One of the critically important functions fulfilled by DRM-free games is that of putting SOME power back in the hands of BUYERS - so be sure to exercise yours by circumventing Paradox's unethical business model where and whenever you can.
In recent years, the once technically-proficient devs have majorly misstepped by overloading the engine with (literally) useless performance-consuming gimmicks that actually REDUCE overall image fidelity, and it has generally ruined the Ux. Only a few years ago, this game ran flawlessly at maxed graphical fidelity on correctly/expertly-configured mid-to-high-end systems; now, it runs like garbage AND looks objectively worse, even on current-gen systems. (I wouldn't be upset about performance if there had actually been any quality improvement... and I do mean ANY, AT ALL, ANYWHERE - but there hasn't). When the devs hopped on the attention-deficit-latest-model-Apple-ideology bandwagon and started regularly downgrading the game by "adding" these "features" to "improve" the "graphical fidelity and performance," the entire game became unplayable soon after (well, for those accustomed to PROPER performance; if you're used to consoles, maybe you won't be able to tell the difference). Compared to how the game looked and played in 2019 or 2020, right now everything *looks* WORSE, *runs* WORSE, and just generally PLAYS WORSE. But hey, now they can tell everyone that they have [insert literally useless backwards FOTM feature here]! Admittedly, a bigger problem is the host of brainwashed ignoramuses who don't understand any aspect of computer and/or gaming technology yet simply must have "the latest model" of everything, even—especially?—when objectively worse than what came before it in literally every way... but the devs have apparently decided to appease them at the expense of those of us who know better - and the game is now worse across the board because of it. Shame, too, because along with the absurdly stupid mistakes, they've also been adding a lot of potentially-interesting content - but not enough to justify the pain of dealing with the former. Sadly, when a game both runs AND looks this bad on correctly/expertly-configured modern hardware, it's time to move on.
This long after day 0, the critical bugs and crashes should be a fading memory. Instead? 4 of my 7 gamer friends that bought it still haven't even been able to START it - ONCE. They all have well-put together, healthy, modern custom systems with no issues, and are even more competent than average at troubleshooting crappy game launches - but none of that is doing them any good. The bugs are truly THAT bad. On launch day, I luckily managed to reverse engineer a tedious, roundabout solution to my own crash woes after discovering that the game—for some truly inexplicable reason—is built upon a singularly-dysfunctional tangled-spaghetti framework of hacked-apart, hacked-together, console-inspired dependency libraries in what is without a doubt the biggest total failure of technical design that I have ever witnessed in a AAA title - and I've been making, breaking and playing PC games for almost 30 years. But I got to at least play through the story once, as a Nomad... ... until their 1.04 hotfix broke the game even worse. Now I am stuck among the ranks of those many, many, many who cannot even LAUNCH the game successfully - and believe me when I say I have tried *literally* every possibility short of changing my (very, very good) hardware. And it's now been like that for 4 days. Without a word from CDPR. Worse than that? What I HAVE been able to experience of the game didn't redeem it. - The voice acting is bad, occasionally dipping to indie levels. The protagonists are the worst offenders, sounding like something between college-aged sports announcers and movie trailers. - Characters are shallow, predictable tropes; I wouldn't normally complain IF they felt like they contributed meaningfully to any story somehow, but they all fell flat. - TAA, typical console-port mouse fuckery, bad menus... the list goes on, but I'm out of review space. I had a weird sense throughout that the game was actively fighting my best efforts to enjoy it. GG, game. You win.
