An exceedingly complex, infinitely rewarding space strategy game. It’s made me more excited about the genre than any other game of its kind since Galactic Civilizations II.
Distant worlds is a complex and very deep game that probably is not for casual gameplay. But anyone who can step over the steep learning curve will easily find the best 4x game on the market to date. For a game that are over 10 years old it still hold up to any similar title out there.
Coming to this game as a **** time Civ4 player looking for the perfect strategy game experience, something I could play for years and never get tired of. Learning curve is steep, you will be frustrated at first, like most 4X games. But if you pound your head through this one, and you're a fan of the genre, you will be rewarded with an extremely exceptional experience. I signed up to Metacritic just to review this game.
Distant Worlds: Universe is a corker. But make no mistake: while it’s not as forbidding as some Grand Strategy games, patience and a degree of head-scratching will be required. But it’s worth the effort. It’s enormous, complex and – above all – fun.
It's a challenging and complex game packed with features that allows you to choose just how you want to play it, while accommodating a wide variety of play-styles and strategies.
A one-of-a-kind 4X, Distant Worlds blends epic scale and macromanagement. The Universe release doesn't bring a lot of new content, but is a nice wrap-up nonetheless.
While Distant Worlds may be a paragon of its style, I can only recommend it to a select few: those with beefy computers and plenty of time to really dig into the meat of this stunningly elegant and impressively wide-ranging bit of software.
Distant Worlds Universe is a gem. It is so vast and in the same time so simple to get into. I never played a game that can adjust to player in so many ways. If you have time and will you can micromanage everything, or you could let capable AI to do it for you. Sometime I play slowly and take care of my empire on every detail. Other times I just let AI to do most of it and play it like geopolitical strategy game. This game is certainly a gem.
There is most definitely a learning curve here, but this game is fantastic once you get over it! Look up some guides on how to start as pre warp and play manually. After that you will understand enough of about the game to set whatever you want to auto.
I'll toss in a bad review. This doesn't mean the game is bad! It means I had a poor experience with this game. The game is priced on steam likea tripple AAA game. 54,95 euro.
I am a casual player, I work and in my spare time I enjoy space games. This means I have little time to do it properly. When I played the game I had to start with the turtorials, they do a very poor job of explaining the game to me. I was intimidated by the ammount of custimazation, menu's, options and so on. After a few turtorials, i knew the menu's but not how to play. For a 55 euro game I expect better. Sorry for me that isn't worth this price. Some may have more time then me, get through it and have a nice experience, I didn't.
As a newcomer to the Distant Worlds series I found myself baffled at how poorly the tutorial teaches you to play the game. It is extremely unfriendly and makes this overcomplicated game an annoyance to get started with.
Being a lifelong fan of strategy, both real time and turn based, I must say that I find this game to be very overrated and poorly executed. The concept of the game is good - I am all for space exploration, diplomacy, colonization, war and everything good that should be included in a good Sci-Fi strategy game. That being said, I find that the gameplay of Distant Worlds: Universe is simply too understimulating and the real time elements, such as combat, are a joke. I am not even going to mention the graphics.
TLDR:
Distant Worlds: Universe is not worth the full price of 54,99 euros. The game is overrated and the good reviews it has received are a sign of a starving gaming community rather than a good game.
This game is utterly horrible. How this game garners so high a score from critics and users is a complete mystery for me.
It may have some depth, somewhere. The interface is feels like it is lifted from a Win98 game project by a grammarschool student. Diplomacy is just bad. Moving ships is eyegaugingly tedious. The economy is hidden behind so obscure mechanics you might as well study for cryptology instead.
Graphicswise it is servicable, and is one of the only two pluspoints I can give it, however dont mistake this for "good" graphics.
The game runs... well... it runs. It hasnt crashed, which is the other pluspoint I give. However, the gameplay is as fun as trying to trek through a swamp covered in honey and mosquitobait while swinging a waspnest over your head. It is dreary, extremely boring and filled with unlimited "Why the **** did this happen?"
You can totally mess your empire up if you do not consider the strategic resources you NEED to expand. If you have none of them in the proximity of your colony, you can restart because you will stall your entire economy and spend hours looking at tiny ships trudging through what must be molasses.
If you somehow get through the first part of the game, you get into the "Pop-up" hell that is the mid to lategame. You can "automate" most, if not all, of the game. However the AI is dumber than a sack of potatoes. I had gone negative according to the "cashflow", which coincidently didnt lower my cash(?), by tens of thousands of credits and the cashflow wasnt changing. I checked the maintainence and I had hundreds of troops sitting on my planets, covering the availibe continents and spilling into the oceans taking up about 100k of cash per... something. The AI decided, as I wasnt in a war, that I needed to fortify my planets by fielding an army that was double that of ALL my other opponents COMBINED.
The logisticsystem is as enjoyable as having your teeth removed by a jackhammer, as you cannot influence the freighters being built, as this is handled by the ArtificalStupidity controlling the private sector. Neat idea, but outright moronic in its implementation. I had piles upon piles of resources sitting on miningstations, planets and such, but my private sector had foreclosed and had a small number of freighters, all busy trying to refuel on the other side of the galaxy, because... reasons. I couldnt build anything efficiently because the freighters was gallowanting around the whole empire looking for... I have no idea what.
Fleet handling is... at best boring, and at worst just hairippingly frustrating. For example: if you have a fleet, in which one (1) ship is out of fuel. Regardless where this ship is located, the WHOLE fleet will move at a snails pace. It was easier to build a completely NEW FLEET instead of waiting for the old fleet to refuel. And beware, if you have not placed energy collectors on your fleet, and your fleet is refueling, you might be looking at a infinite refuel-loop, as the first ship is out of fuel when the last ship has refueled. No distribution of ships to other refuel points, all just go for the one THEY feel like going to and queue up there happily using up fuel waiting for the rest of the fleet.
If you produce ships at a shipyard, they will be set automatically to be "automated" (yea... sure... automated), and will as soon as they complete head off to... somewhere, and while they do that they will run out of fuel and run at a snails pace... AGAIN. I found no way to easily multiselect ships and remove the automation, without either: placing them into a fleet and issuing an order, or individually selecting each and every ship and clicking "Select ship" and "Turn off automation".
The diplomacy is a horrid wreck, and do not be tempted to enable the AI to handle it either. The AI will act as it sees fit. I was attacking the last planet in an empire, when suddenly my ships stopped attacking. In the middle of the last battle, in a bloody war, the AI decided to accept a peace treaty with the other faction. In a war that was WON. AND, as the enemy AI cant see reality, as I had parked a fleet above his only planet, destroyed his whole fleet, pulverized every station he owned, and was blasting his every attempt to start constructing any ship, the enemy AI offered me... ME! a peace treaty where I gave away two (2!) colonies and a couple of stations. I gave away two colonies for the privilege of a peace treaty... with an empire that was beaten into a bloody pulp... and the AI was gracious to let me live and offered me a peace treaty. I was... just staring into the screen. This didnt just happen one time but several.
I cannot, in any conscience, recommend this game in any form. It is a really bad game. The interface is ghastly, the mechanics are so obscure you will rip your hair out, and the economics is rageinducing.
I played for about 30-50h. Had to stop due to mental illness induced.
SummaryDistant Worlds is a vast, pausable real-time 4X space strategy game. Experience the full depth and detail of turn-based strategy, but with the simplicity and ease of real-time, and on the scale of a massively-multiplayer online game.