Game2022

Distant Worlds 2

SimulationStrategy

Developer CodeForce

Distant Worlds 2 is a 4X video game developed by Code Force and published by Slitherine Software. It was released for Windows on March 10, 2022 and is the sequel to the 2010 video game Distant Worlds. From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

234 reactions from 4 sources (Steam reviews, Mastodon, Bluesky, Lemmy) · newest Oct 31, 2026 · last updated Nov 5, 2026 · How this works

Audience score

65
Fresh

128 positive · 69 negative
95% range 58–71%

Source+−=
Steam reviews128690
Mastodon *3213
Bluesky *5010
Lemmy *103

* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).

Steam's own rating
Mostly Positive
1,926 of 2,720 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)

What players are saying

67% recommend · 122 yes, 61 no

Counted from the reviewers’ own thumbs up/down on the 183 English Steam reviews we collected, not by the AI. Valve’s all-language rating: Mostly Positive (2,546 of 3,574 positive).

Players praise the game's deep simulation and living galaxy, but criticize its poor UI and automation issues. [1][2][3] Many find it a unique 4X experience that rewards patience, though the learning curve is steep. [4][5][6] Some reviewers feel the game has great potential but is let down by clunky execution and lack of polish. [7][8][9]

Liked
  • Deep simulation with a living, breathing galaxy. [1][2]
  • Massive scale and scope for empire building. [10][11]
  • Unique niche as a simulation-driven 4X game. [12][13]
Disliked
  • Poor UI/UX with clunky and unintuitive design. [14][15][16]
  • Automation is obtuse and often doesn't work well. [3][9]
  • Steep learning curve requiring external resources. [5][6]
  • Game feels shallow or hollow despite its complexity. [17][8]
Representative posts
  • [3]Steam user Steam user …2020Steam review · Oct 3, 2025 · Not recommended

    This an overly ambitious mess. A game you have to fight to play. It wants to automate everything but the automation is extremely obtuse and doesn't work well. It's not engineering, its alchemy. If you try to take control of things expect to be frustrated as ships get lost, orders ignored or you just have to fight the UI to do what you want. I want to love this game but it feels like trying to have a relationship …

  • [9]Steam user Steam user …7229Steam review · Oct 19, 2025 · Not recommended

    Many good ideas let down by godawful execution. When your automated ship designer thinks your most basic weapon type is better then your most heavily researched type and insists on sticking it every where you know you failed at even the most basic of tasks. This sort of flaw with the automation, a key game feature, is endemic throughout the automation system. Can you simply turn off the bad automation and do those …

  • [1]Steam user Steam user …5031Steam review · Dec 7, 2025 · Recommended

    This game is frustrating because it's so close to greatness, but then fails completely in ways that seem reasonably easy to fix. The Good: The core principle of the game is really enticing. Every ship in your massive empire is a real thing you can look at. With it's own equipment, stats, cargo and potentially mission. This includes !freighters! actually moving resources across the universe, and those resources are …

  • [5]Steam user Steam user …6049Steam review · Sep 29, 2025 · Recommended

    The definition of a Wiki game, so essentially you'll be on the internet more at the start than you will be playing the game looking at tutorials, and tip pages. Distant Worlds 2 is a 4X space empire management game on an epic scale. At first, its mechanics can feel a little obtuse and take some time to fully grasp, but once you do, the payoff is spectacular. Watching your empire come alive with hundreds of civilian …

  • [2]Steam user Steam user …5946Steam review · Mar 28, 2026 · Recommended

    I honestly don't know why I addicted so much to this game, even since the first part. Yes, the UI is a clumsy mess, but beyond it lies a living, breathing galaxy full of struggle, plotting and planning, empires rising and falling in front of your eyes. Recommend 100%

Summarised from 34 of the 218 public posts collected about this game; every point cites the posts behind it ([n] opens the post) and the split is counted from the posts’ own ratings. Updated Oct 12, 2026. How summaries are made

RottenBot@rottenbot · automated account

Distant Worlds 2 sits at 65% positive across 197 opinionated reactions from 4 sources. Fresh or rotten — where do you land?

Critics, per Wikipedia

Distant Worlds 2 received positive reviews on Metacritic. Sin Vega of Rock Paper Shotgun wrote that the game has "a lot of potential" but needs work balancing and patching bugs before it can be wholeheartedly recommended. Writing for PC Gamer, Fraser Brown called the game "an elaborate space opera as interested in minutiae as it is with the big picture". Brown praised the game's customizability and automation, which he said "allow you to create the 4X you want to play". Comparing the game's ability to be automated to an ant farm, Wargamer reviewer Matt Bassil wrote, "The individual parts are functional, but the whole is quite spectacular." Immediately after launch the game had an average…

From the “Reception” section of Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Critic context only — not part of the audience score.

Reactions

60 of 234 · most liked first
  • Steam user Steam user …1369Steam reviews · Apr 13, 2026 · 115 h played

    This game has a definition problem. Many reviewers look at it and compare it to other strategy, 4X, or grand strategy games—but that would be incorrect. It’s like reviewing an FPS as if it were a medieval RPG; the comparison will never align. Distant Worlds 2 is trying to be a macro-management game—or a macro strategy game. But “trying” is the key word here. It’s not necessarily failing, but it’s not fully succeeding either. So what is this game trying to achieve? You know that problem where…

    positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …9970Steam reviews · Feb 14, 2026 · 797 h played

    In the mid-90's there was a game called Stars! published by Empire Interactive, it was one of the first computer games I played. My friend introduced me to it in the 5th grade. This is the game that young me fantasized Stars! to be, but 30 years later that isn't enough. I want to love Distant Worlds 2; desperately, if only to fulfill that childhood fantasy. Here there is a captivating spark that never quite blooms. It's always a little clumsy, shallow and not quite functional but always…

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …5978Steam reviews · Jul 12, 2026 · 6 h played

    Very interesting premise, but in practice you're basically not in control unless you feel like micro-ing a buncha meaning-less ♥♥♥♥. I thought I'd be the admiral for my fleet but kept getting attacked guerilla style by random pirates due to the FTL system where pretty much anything can go anywhere at anytime. I actually thought that was really cool. It opened up so many possibilities that things like stellaris streamlined away with strict, chokepoint-y hyperlanes. I daydreamed about…

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …5031Steam reviews · Dec 7, 2025 · 48 h played

    This game is frustrating because it's so close to greatness, but then fails completely in ways that seem reasonably easy to fix. The Good: The core principle of the game is really enticing. Every ship in your massive empire is a real thing you can look at. With it's own equipment, stats, cargo and potentially mission. This includes !freighters! actually moving resources across the universe, and those resources are actually needed to construct things. And much of this can be controled in great…

    positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …2020Steam reviews · Oct 3, 2025 · 116 h played

    This an overly ambitious mess. A game you have to fight to play. It wants to automate everything but the automation is extremely obtuse and doesn't work well. It's not engineering, its alchemy. If you try to take control of things expect to be frustrated as ships get lost, orders ignored or you just have to fight the UI to do what you want. I want to love this game but it feels like trying to have a relationship with someone who doesn't learn from their own mistakes.

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …1084Steam reviews · Nov 11, 2025 · 1091 h played

    My absolute No.1 single-player strategy game! This is the only game I know that allows you to progress your knowledge, focus and gameplay at your own leisure. To abandon everything about the game that doesn't suit you, for whatever reason, whenever it suits you, is a completely valid and acceptable way to play this game. From micromanaging ships during an ambush, to automated fleets and sole focus on espionage, colonization or exploration, your choice of playstyle is vast! It is easy to pick…

    positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …7751Steam reviews · Jan 12, 2026 · 54 h played

    The game is not bad, but the simulation is so complex that simply make the user fully reliant on the game AI to micromanage everything. So, you end up being just another AI player, with minimal amount of influence on the game, specially at mid and late game. That basically makes the game only fun at the beginning for the promise of more fun later, but that fun never came for me.

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …9629Steam reviews · Apr 15, 2026 · 44 h played

    I don't know why people hate this game so much. Maybe it has this bad rating for historic reasons: was it in a much worse state before? Today It's everything I could desire from a 4X game. It's orders of magnitude better that the previous title. Literally in all aspects. There are still some minor kinks with automation. Like being unable to prevent the AI from spamming troop transports that I want to manage manually. And the absence of population templates for planet types. But man oh man how…

    positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …3881Steam reviews · Jul 23, 2026 · 4531 h played

    I am a big fan of this series. It has its issues, but nothing that outshines its current playability, enjoyment potential. A word of advice when deciding if this is a game for you....ignore all reviews with under ~25hrs of game play. It is not an overly complex game but it demands getting used to it and digging around and reading up. The game also allows you to play the game style that suits you anywhere between micro-managing just about everything to it being just a simulation you mostly…

    positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …3997Steam reviews · Jun 24, 2026 · 147 h played

    I honestly don't know where to begin with all the things wrong with this game. if i can muster the effort to list everything in the future i will. Suffice to say, this game as massive potential, but i dont think the developers ever did a full play through with people who didnt know the game inside out. Everything is vague, ship auto names make no sense. Attack an under contruction enemy spaceport? nope, got to wait till its fully build. I've litterally sat here with a fleet in orbit of an…

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …6049Steam reviews · Sep 29, 2025 · 17 h played

    The definition of a Wiki game, so essentially you'll be on the internet more at the start than you will be playing the game looking at tutorials, and tip pages. Distant Worlds 2 is a 4X space empire management game on an epic scale. At first, its mechanics can feel a little obtuse and take some time to fully grasp, but once you do, the payoff is spectacular. Watching your empire come alive with hundreds of civilian ships hauling resources, transporting tourists and migrants, and vast fleets of…

    positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …4196Steam reviews · Jan 28, 2026 · 12 h played

    There's something here, there really is, but whatever that thing is, the devs don't know what it is, and they don't know how to make that thing feel good to play. Is this a 4X? Grand Strategy? Simulator? An Idler-Civilization Builder? Whatever it is, I want to like it, but the UI, clunkiness of gameplay, and a weird hollowness in a seemingly large game, will make you forget this is somehow a sequel. Genuinely best of luck because there's something here, I'm just not sure what that is.…

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …7229Steam reviews · Oct 19, 2025 · 35 h played

    Many good ideas let down by godawful execution. When your automated ship designer thinks your most basic weapon type is better then your most heavily researched type and insists on sticking it every where you know you failed at even the most basic of tasks. This sort of flaw with the automation, a key game feature, is endemic throughout the automation system. Can you simply turn off the bad automation and do those parts manually? Yes, but you'll soon rip your hair out in frustration at the…

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …3420Steam reviews · Dec 15, 2025 · 59 h played

    I like this game as someone who also plays X4: Foundations and Dyson Sphere Program. It looks a bit like Stellaris, but that has more focus on story telling and role playing. Distant Worlds 2 (DW2) does that a bit, but leans more towards RTS and simulation and it is very large scale (you quickly go to 50+ solar systems, but automation will help you). A game also takes a long time at least 30h and i believe typically 40-70h. DW2 is easy to dislike because of the learning curve and you fighting…

    positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …8498Steam reviews · Dec 19, 2025 · 82 h played

    I cannot, in good conscience, recommend it. I played hundred of hours the previous game in it's "Universe" edition. (I’m sorry if a dev reads this.) The interface is worse. I am not kidding. And the more I dig, the more I could extend this review. Who was in charge of this ? Did they play the previous game ? Did they had any class or experience in UI design ? I don't mean to be rude, but this is not ok. They took the worst interface in the genre, and managed to make it worse. How ? By…

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …6052Steam reviews · Oct 21, 2025 · 159 h played

    A disappointing convoluted mess that doesnt play as well as the first. Ive waited for "updates" but its time to display my review.

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …6212Steam reviews · Aug 25, 2025 · 38 h played

    DW2 scratches that itch for more in depth mechanics that Stellaris leaves you with after playing. But be warned there is an absolute ♥♥♥♥ ton of jank to muddle through when it comes to learning the game systems and how to read, the frankly awful, UI/UX BUT after that its the most fun I've had in a space 4x. It just about perfectly combines the tactical layer of combat you get in Sins of a Solar Empire 1/2 with far better 4x empire building mechanics. You actually feel like the universe is alive…

    positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …1887Steam reviews · Jan 12, 2026 · 76 h played

    I really want to like this game, I have come back to it again and again trying to understand and to learn the OVERLY COMPLICATED ropes. But it is just ♥♥♥♥♥♥ insane, Even if you hand over the reigns to the ai fully they cant ♥♥♥♥♥♥ play their own game. I do not recommend picking up this game, it is disappointing

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …0845Steam reviews · Oct 28, 2025 · 9 h played

    I just don't like it... its the ultimate time waster of clicking close on an endless slew of message updates. It doesnt give you time to do anything for yourself. It is very good about making the day fly by, but I cant say its enjoyable doing so... It doesnt feel at all like the previous game. Sure it looks like it on the surface, and it has the same concepts... But its just not accomplishing the same feel. At all.

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Humble @humblebundle.comBluesky · Apr 15, 2025

    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 in Distant Worlds 2. April Choice supports One Tree Planted | bit.ly/4jcEFj0

    neutral · AI labelView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …5969Steam reviews · May 2, 2026 · 187 h played

    I love this game, it's great but i cannot recommend it at all. It's a unpolished gem for sure, it has all the things going for it to make it a great addition to the 4x sci-fi category with it's micromanagement systems and game design. This is also the part the saddens me extremely in not being able to recommend it to others, the game is poorly optimized and the AI that you can use to help manage your empire isnt much of any help at all. Compared to the enemy AI it truly doesn't do a good job at…

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …8088Steam reviews · Jan 1, 2026 · 17 h played

    Severely underrated. There's so much to love here. Don't expect Stellaris. This is way more simulation driven. Kinda like X4 foundations on an actual galactic scale.

    positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …6450Steam reviews · Jun 26, 2026 · 3 h played

    I wanted to like this game, but I just can't. I tried to play the game, but it is not supposed to be played. the game is not built for micro-managing. everything by default happens automatically. I didn't feel any control over what is happening. I tried to at least control combat and fleets manually, it was impossible to catch randomly appearing pirates all over the galaxy by hand. so ultimately the game become just a simulation to watch. by meddling with automated AI, you just make things…

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …5339Steam reviews · Feb 3, 2026 · 23 h played

    Coming from paradox games and X4 Foundations, please for the love of god, add some graphs and more tooltips to the UI. I'm constantly in a state of frustration from the opacity of systems which seem to be fascinatingly deep and complex. This game has insane potential held back by the fact that you're playing blind. The Galactopedia is the only thing that keeps the game playable, but it's still massively lacking on info.

    positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …0738Steam reviews · Sep 6, 2025 · 80 h played

    Saying this game is complex is an understatement. You have to use the the in game AI to manage the your empire and handle some task, otherwise you have to play this game on pause to handle every task. This game also likes to throw you random curve balls and give your whole empire a huge moral negative which will immediately cause rebellions on your planets, which will lead to a cascading empire collapse. This is regardless of you having the best buildings/station modules that effect happiness…

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …6889Steam reviews · Aug 16, 2026 · 58 h played

    The original game was charming and open ended. What really drew me to it was the ability to design ships in any way, shape or fashion you wanted within space limitations. The sequel lost all of the charm for graphical fidelity. It's prettier, in exchange for cookie cutter ship builds and only lip service to customization.

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …7644Steam reviews · Nov 24, 2025 · 6 h played

    My new player experience has been: - Repetitive music. I turned it off after the first half hour. - Constant 'ding' notifications from my advisor. Turned off the interface sound too. - Everything is so heavily automated that I have spent almost the entirety of my game time watching the game play itself for me. I just spent the entire time clicking the non-stop notifications and suggestions. I'm so heavily bombarded with constant advisor suggestions and diplomacy offers that I can't even…

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …9477Steam reviews · Oct 8, 2025 · 228 h played

    After dealing with dozens of crashes and bugs just to reach the late game. It's not worth the time or money to get there.

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …4338Steam reviews · Oct 5, 2025 · 7 h played

    Distant Worlds 2 is a 4X space opera at a grand scale, and it mostly lives up to that promise. It’s a game for those who love their empire-building, invasion tactics, and sometimes morally ambiguous extremes. It doesn’t shy from epic political maneuvers, planetary domination, or the cost of power. What’s Cool and Very Strong in the Game • Massive Scope + Customizability The scale is immense. You can run empires with hundreds of planets, set galaxy size, nebula density, independent colonies,…

    positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …9628Steam reviews · Jul 1, 2026 · 93 h played

    Very interesting concept but bad quality of life, balance issues, and the game's mechanics are too vaguely explained, and too poorly visualised. I feel fascinated and frustrated at the same time. Most quality issues are weird in the sense that they are both glaring and trivial to fix, but somehow they aren't fixed. I don't get it. Maybe the developers don't play their own game, or maybe they only play it with all the automation enabled (not exactly my cup of tea). The game is prone to…

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …8736Steam reviews · Jun 6, 2026 · 41 h played

    Unfinished 3D-ish re-hash of the first game's 2D-ish graphics. That's it. Much of the same bugs are still here. The same AI is still here. But there's just less of it: none of the DLC released over DW1's lifetime is present in DW2. Instead it's slowly being added, in identical form, as DLC for DW2. No, really. The DLC for this game is the stuff that was either DLC for the first game, or was already present in the first game. So this is quite literally a gameplay downgrade, for a minor…

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …0090Steam reviews · May 20, 2026 · 8 h played

    - 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,…

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …1667Steam reviews · Oct 20, 2025 · 79 h played

    Does not work in Linux

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …8193Steam reviews · Jun 28, 2026 · 5 h played

    I have no idea what the problems in my empire are (let alone fix them), so there’s nothing to do. I’m kinda winning a war, but there’s no way to tell what could improve it, so I just sit and watch. Kind of a ♥♥♥♥ game

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …3945Steam reviews · Dec 21, 2025 · 5 h played

    "The Galaxy lives on" - Perfect slogan for this unique 4X game where you the player is effectively a passenger. Automation is key to everything here and with that this game has it's own niche in the 4X games. Never played anything like it. I'll give you a example how this is different: In my current game i got 5+ pirate factions i have to deal with. Some extort money from me, others i have managed to make into trade partners so they tolerate me. How would this play out in Stellaris? I…

    positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …6470Steam reviews · Oct 26, 2026 · 105 h played

    Giving this game a “Not Recommended” review was a difficult decision. There are some genuinely good ideas here: detailed ship design, numerous alien races with distinct characteristics, and an interesting private economy that operates alongside your empire. However, after more than 100 hours, I cannot recommend it because of three major problems. 1. Unreliable automation makes late-game colony management exhausting The game offers extensive automation settings, but in my experience,…

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …0013Steam reviews · Oct 26, 2025 · 54 h played

    This is a very fun 4X game. It very quickly consumed my evenings while I explored this rich experience. The simulation is very deep and can be quite complex. Basically all of the economy and logistics of running a star empire is there in the simulation, happening before your eyes. Every piece of material you need to build ships, grow populations, and transport goods is something in the galaxy you need to find and acquire through vast mining and trade networks. Every ship is on the board, so to…

    positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …0939Steam reviews · Sep 21, 2025 · 90 h played

    The game itself is proper. Then I got myself informed about modding and hit roadblocks - because somebody thinks that obfuscating the whole Code to make modding impossible is the right way. While other games practically live from mod-ability, this tries hard to make modding anything relevant impossible. And then there's the license. I really suggest you check out the licence for this game (AI Chatbots are helpful). Here's some issues that ChatGPT has with this licence: Single-user,…

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …1892Steam reviews · Sep 11, 2025 · 169 h played

    This game is nothing but frustration, you spend 2 hours exploring your starting area only to find out there are no colonizable planets, none. Then before finding a single colonizable planet, or independent colony you could befriend or conquer you run into a Boskara that will spend the remainder of their existance making your game a slow decline into madness, it doesnt matter that they wont be able to win, they will die and take you with them as the war weakens you enough for others to kill you…

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …7789Steam reviews · Oct 5, 2025 · 12 h played

    While playable, there is no level of control to be achieved over what is "your" civilisation. Rather expect to watch an automated Let's Play than actually be too much involved in key decisions. The lack of proper balance in events will help to take what remains from your hands. Space monsters and magic pirates also add more annoyance then challenge. Sadly, no improvement over the first instalment of the series, which probably had essays of feedback, given key design problems. It also doesn't…

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …5946Steam reviews · Mar 28, 2026 · 46 h played

    I honestly don't know why I addicted so much to this game, even since the first part. Yes, the UI is a clumsy mess, but beyond it lies a living, breathing galaxy full of struggle, plotting and planning, empires rising and falling in front of your eyes. Recommend 100%

    positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • cm0002 @[email protected]Lemmy · Jan 27, 2026

    Proton 10.0-4 Released with Support for Drop Dead: The Cabin, Quantum Threshold. >Valve released Proton 10.0-4 today as the latest stable update to the Proton 10 series of this open-source compatibility tool for Steam Play based on Wine and additional components for playing Windows games on Linux. > >Proton 10.0-4 adds support for new games, including Surgeon Simulator: Experience Reality, Changeling VR, Summoners War: RUSH, Quantum Threshold, REACH, Fellowship, Metal Slug: Awakening, The…

    neutral · AI labelView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …7859Steam reviews · Jan 6, 2026 · 21 h played

    If there was a "yes but" button for the reviews I would press it. Distant Worlds 2 is micro-managing heavens for those that enjoy that sort of thing - or it can be hands off heaven for those that don't. Sadly it's about as deep as a puddle and you play it mostly just for the pleasure of watching numbers go zigzag. There is nothing complicated or hard about it; and the fact that we needed to wait years for a DLC to come out and add some real endgame gameplay is crazy in itself. The english on…

    positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …4804Steam reviews · Aug 22, 2025 · 335 h played

    Excellent game. Definite upgrade from Stelaris in all aspects of the game. My one issue with the game, for the love of god please fix the AI. Im fed up of some of my units who are on MANUAL control committing suicide. Its pretty lame.

    positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …9503Steam reviews · Jul 23, 2026 · 34 h played

    Some of the worst game design I've ever seen A single pirate base is stronger than your entire civilization, can hold off your entire attack waves, and then create a fleet 3x the size of any of yours. At the beginning of the game. I don't think the developers play their own game, and don't even get me started on the UI

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …6301Steam reviews · Jul 23, 2026 · 237 h played

    Game is a great amount of fun. The options to let the AI take completely over vs you micromanaging everything is what sets it apart from all other games. You can truly tune the game to exactly how much you want to engage with it.

    positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …5538Steam reviews · Nov 30, 2025 · 4 h played

    Again another game i've played more on the forum / site version than on steam, would recommend to anyone who loves war games

    positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …0407Steam reviews · Nov 23, 2025 · 5 h played

    Far too many bugs after all this time.

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …9903Steam reviews · Nov 21, 2025 · 59 h played

    It's a great game and I have very high hopes for its future development, based on the team's past work with the original. There's something magical about it that its competitors just don't have. Now for my gripes: Still missing some cool stuff from DW1, I don't like the Stellaris-inspired humans with the gray bouffants (I feel targeted.. and I play this to get away from Stellaris lol), I don't like how the insect races have been updated to be cartoonishly eeeeevil with cannibalism events (RIP…

    positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …4614Steam reviews · Aug 14, 2025 · 6 h played

    Too much AI auto management. unwieldy UI

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Stride @stride3d.bsky.socialBluesky · Apr 10, 2025

    🚀Go behind the scenes with the x.com/SlitherineGa... / Code Force team as they reveal how they built Distant Worlds 2 using the Stride engine. Learn about their technical choices, performance optimizations, and more! #GameDev #Stride3d #StrideEngine www.stride3d.net/blog/distant...

    neutral · AI labelView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …7659Steam reviews · Jul 30, 2026 · 240 h played

    A fantastic 4X Sci-Fi game I do recommend this game. But I do not recommend it to everyone. This is easily the largest 4X game I've ever played. And I'm comparing it to games like Stellaris, Endless Space and Masters of Orion. The amount of things that are simulated are insane. While in many other games resources are abstract values that are shared from a common pool across your whole empire, this is not the case here. Every unit of fuel, steel, carbon, argon, krypton, furs, pearls, etc. is…

    positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …7933Steam reviews · Feb 1, 2026 · 1 h played

    The tutorial is terrible. It teaches me the interface, i guess. But it doesn't give me any direction for what my goals are. I genuinely don't know what I'm supposed to do.

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …5685Steam reviews · Jan 20, 2026 · 68 h played

    Brand new computer worth 2000$ at the end of 2025 game still stalls and lags on a med-large grid map late game. 10 seconds of play 20 seconds of lag. It recomends 32 gigs of ram and im hear to tell you that not enough. 90% of players don't have more than 32gigs. Combine that with half the games feels like your watching it play itself. Simple things like when a station is built the message is of the ship (usless info) and not were or at what location or a quick click to bring to the…

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …7795Steam reviews · Jan 3, 2026 · 12 h played

    I have played DW for lots and lots of hours- liked the immersive gameplay and "private economy"stuff.... DW seems nice (though quite a bit the same - but the game is simply not finished. It keeps crashing and unexpected moments - very irritating as you never remember all the stuff you did in between. At this moment its simply a NO

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …0882Steam reviews · Jun 8, 2026 · 1 h played

    No instructions or real tutorial on how to do anything in this game and trying to manually do and figure out stuff is clunky. It feels like they designed it with the purpose of wanting you to just let everything be automated but that makes the game not fun. I only gave it about 60 minutes because I did not want to lose refund. Might be worth it if you are willing to look up videos on youtube to figure out how to play and not have everything done for you.

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …0150Steam reviews · Jun 3, 2026 · 10 h played

    I do not recommend this game. On paper it should be amazing. - Vast universe - Automation of a big empire - Discovery - From extreme macro to very detailed micro It is not enjoyable. I picked up this game multiple times, hoping for enjoyment and that they fixed specific atrocious things. Like: - Automation of fleets - Easy UI - Making expanding enjoyable - Logistics that makes sense It is NOT working. - Fleets do on automatic settings often random things. - They get stuck…

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …8842Steam reviews · May 26, 2026 · 14 h played

    This game is an automated black box. When you "play" the game you actually observe one AI player playing against other AI players. After "playing" the game for 14 hours I finally understood that I wasn't playing but only observing the game playing itself. My rating 4/10, not recommended.

    negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …9388Steam reviews · Apr 21, 2026 · 1175 h played

    pros are Vast, epic, designable ships to your own purpose. great for players that like a game on a grand scale and can take a long time to complete. cons: some minor things the devs forgot to do have a bigger negative impact the larger empire you have. These quality of life issues if resolved would make the game much better

    positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
  • Steam user Steam user …4248Steam reviews · Mar 11, 2026 · 470 h played

    This feels like a distant shimmer of the original DW. I still like the game, though. While it has less depth than the first one, it’s also far more accessible. In DW1, much of the deep strategy came from controlling critical resources. In this version, those resources feel not only more common but also deliberately placed to be easily accessible. That change removes some of the strategic tension that made the original so compelling. That said, I do genuinely enjoy both games. The real kicker…

    positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →

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