Distant Worlds 2

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.

The game is terribly raw :( A lot of basic "must-have" features are missing, and didn't added even with the latest update (for example - you can't queue a ship orders, so, you must manually control each explorer to explore asteroids, which are ignored by automatization scripts). The UI is reworked into terrible manner, comparing to DW1, the pseudo-3D now is a good idea, but the graphics level remembered to me a games from the beginning of 2000 y. There also some good ideas implemented, like the limited slots in hull, for different components, and other ballance tweaks, but the worst changes prevail :( Got back to DW1, with Expansion + DWUR mods - this gives much more pleasure from the game. I regret about the purchase of DW2.

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！

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!

- Legitimately one of the worst games I've ever seen at teaching the player what it expects the player to do. Seriously. For a game with so many complex interactive systems and built-in commands, the player is almost required to watch hours worth of youtube videos to even get an idea of how to begin. And even if the player does, the command structure is so unintuitive in comparison to other similar games that even if the player has watched videos by helpful community members like DasTatic, the player is still constantly having to leave the game to go look up how to accomplish very basic tasks that no player in a 4X game in 2026 should have to be looking up. - The entry point in the game is severe and, more importantly, just not fun. Within seven years of the game's starting year and having only barely had time to do anything other than build several exploration vessels and establish mining stations in my starting system, I've encountered 2 hostile groups of pirates, one of which is attacking my system with 1303 military strength worth of military ships. This is with me not altering the strength or aggression of pirates at all, meaning I have not increased their strength or prevalence. This is pretty terrible, not because it can't be overcome - obviously it can be overcome since there are streamers who do display playthroughs of this game. However, the problem is that the game doesn't really provide any compelling reason for most new players to want to overcome it. I imagine the experience for most potential 'new' players like me is basically the same - buy the game, try to play it, experience this, see no reason to continue, and uninstall the game. - I am not going to ask for a refund because the game does work. I don't see anything mechanically wrong with it, which apparently was a problem at launch. However, it's got a much worse problem. I am a long time player of grand strategy games. I have thousands of hours in some grand strategy games, hundreds of hours in others, and for the most part, if a game engages me, I am willing to take the time to learn it. I am not willing to take the time to learn this game, because in seven hours, nothing has happened to make me want to learn it, while the game itself has resisted my efforts to learn how to play it, while actively presenting itself as offering such little fun that I have no desire to proceed. So no, there is no reason to request a refund here. The developers did not promise me anything they didn't deliver. However, it really was a waste of about $100 and I will probably never buy another game from this particular game developer again.