Distant Worlds 2 isn't a bad game, but it's so similar to Stellaris while being more expensive and not better than Stellaris that it's super hard to really recommend.
Kind of weirdly one of the absolute best parts of Distant Worlds 2 is also what kneecaps it. The expansive automation and civilian economy in the game makes the game fascinatingly accessible and interesting. I really feel like I'm managing a space empire instead of micromanaging every teeny task. Your empire feels alive watching civilian ships zip about and little cities pop up on populated planets. It's very engaging and it does a decent job lowering the barrier to entry and reducing some of the micromanagement tedium.
However, that automated management is a little too far in one direction and makes the game far more opaque than needs be. Distant Worlds has a learning curve as much as any 4x game, but it's by far not the hardest. Much of the difficulty comes by way of poor UI, over-automation and lack of navigable and informative tooltips. With so much automation, and a very poor tutorial, from the start you have a hard time figuring out what levers you actually can or should pull let alone when to do so. Once you start to get the hang of it there's a very awkward bit of fleet management that rotates between automatic and manual explorations. Which is a major pain in the ass.
Trying to select your fleets from broader portions of the map can be hard and the lack of a dock or outliner makes rifling through all the clickable aspects of your empire a bit arduous. And when you click these things you don't always get the information you may expect and many functions that are crucial or should be obvious are hidden in tiny buttons or menus (I have no idea why the planet view is so small and hides constructions behind that button). So much of the game just isn't really obvious or intelligible at first or second glance and it really raises the friction of trying to embrace the game's deep mechanics.
I'm just highly unsure of the game's interrelated mechanics and the game makes it harder than it needs to be to uncover them. Simple navigation of the UI is a chore at times, not to mention that it's pretty ugly compared to games like Endless Space or Stellaris. And the highly hands on and somewhat janky automation processes also add to the game's opacity.
There are things to like but very little of it is really any better than Stellaris. I liked warfare a decent bit more and I have to give tons of credit to the general intelligence of the AI to take control of significant aspects of your economy, something Stellaris is embarrassingly bad at. But overall there's really just not much to recommend here for a game that even on sale is usually more expensive than Stellaris of Endless Space (both of which you can routinely find for <$10 during Steam or developer sales).
Kind of weirdly one of the absolute best parts of Distant Worlds 2 is also what kneecaps it. The expansive automation and civilian economy in the game makes the game fascinatingly accessible and interesting. I really feel like I'm managing a space empire instead of micromanaging every teeny task. Your empire feels alive watching civilian ships zip about and little cities pop up on populated planets. It's very engaging and it does a decent job lowering the barrier to entry and reducing some of the micromanagement tedium.
However, that automated management is a little too far in one direction and makes the game far more opaque than needs be. Distant Worlds has a learning curve as much as any 4x game, but it's by far not the hardest. Much of the difficulty comes by way of poor UI, over-automation and lack of navigable and informative tooltips. With so much automation, and a very poor tutorial, from the start you have a hard time figuring out what levers you actually can or should pull let alone when to do so. Once you start to get the hang of it there's a very awkward bit of fleet management that rotates between automatic and manual explorations. Which is a major pain in the ass.
Trying to select your fleets from broader portions of the map can be hard and the lack of a dock or outliner makes rifling through all the clickable aspects of your empire a bit arduous. And when you click these things you don't always get the information you may expect and many functions that are crucial or should be obvious are hidden in tiny buttons or menus (I have no idea why the planet view is so small and hides constructions behind that button). So much of the game just isn't really obvious or intelligible at first or second glance and it really raises the friction of trying to embrace the game's deep mechanics.
I'm just highly unsure of the game's interrelated mechanics and the game makes it harder than it needs to be to uncover them. Simple navigation of the UI is a chore at times, not to mention that it's pretty ugly compared to games like Endless Space or Stellaris. And the highly hands on and somewhat janky automation processes also add to the game's opacity.
There are things to like but very little of it is really any better than Stellaris. I liked warfare a decent bit more and I have to give tons of credit to the general intelligence of the AI to take control of significant aspects of your economy, something Stellaris is embarrassingly bad at. But overall there's really just not much to recommend here for a game that even on sale is usually more expensive than Stellaris of Endless Space (both of which you can routinely find for <$10 during Steam or developer sales).