'ate house atreides
'ate duke leto
'ate the fremen
'ate walking

luv me food
luv me nephews
luv me spice
luv me desert
luv me arrakis
luv me dune
simple as.

I spent more than 250 hours in the game: liked it at first, but on aggregate I put a negative review - here's why.

Short version.
For a full release + DLC you are offered a sandbox without a single story campaign, with a decent amount of bugs.
Moreover, the concept of "we don't have enough content - what should we do? let's do everything to make the player consume the existing content as long as possible, overcoming absurd logic and bugs" is particularly annoying.

Long version.
1) Lots of small bugs.
For example, in Conquest in some house removal missions, the timer expires a month earlier than stated in the mission description.
That is, you play the mission from start to finish and lose, because it was not enough 2-3 days, which you counted on. Moreover, you realize that this is a bug, only after several save-loads.

2) The game is in full release, it has DLC, but no story campaign.

3) No shields, it's much more effective to take everyone out with firearms.
Although the game was actively promoted under the premiere of the second part of the movie - where it is explained in detail that firearms are often ineffective and it is necessary to use special melee techniques.

A few examples.
You need to eliminate an enemy Corrino base: a sandworm sits near it and only eats your army. All the time. In the same place. Doesn't touch the enemy.
Or.
Outposts of renegades often appear in your rear: you should be distracted by them, because any pack of them can capture a settlement. Even if it is VERY well fortified.
Or.
The enemy constantly has new units popping up out of nowhere, although according to the game mechanics, each is expensive and time-consuming to create.
Maybe this is how the developers increase the difficulty of the game from "low" to "high" and "insane".
More cunning, clever AI actions ? Maybe diplomacy in which opponents make alliances ? No.
Or.
I could go on for a long time.
And the longer you play, the more you notice.

Well, 600+ hours, you'd better hope I enjoy it. (tldr: I do!)

As a long long time player of RTS (started with the original RTS Dune 2!) as well as 4x games (anyone remember Reunion from the late 90s?) What this is and what this is not is an RTS and a 4x Game.

That sounds like it needs more of an explanation. It is not an RTS to the truest sense of an RTS, and its not a 4x game to the true sense of a 4x Game. Instead, its a beautiful blend of both.

What you might enjoy -
1. Theme. This is as Dune as it gets, moreso towards books and newer dune movie and less from the original Dune games, this is a great thing IMO, as the franchise starts to re-gain traction, this allows a wonderful bridging to the epic story that is Dune
2. multiple layers of depth, and multiple paths to victory. This isn't a cookie cutter build to win the game, there is depth and multiple paths to victory, this ramps up even more when we start looking at multiplayer, where games can shift and win conditions can change throughout the game.
3. The community is great, if you havent joined the discord, that should be step one!

What you might not enjoy -
1. it has a steep learning curve, the tutorials are getting better, but you will still be hunting for resources and sometimes they can be hard to find outside of the community.
2. Games can be slow, you can speed up the game, and pause is your best friend, but when playing multiplayer youll be playing the fine line between game speed and ability to multi task.

I've been playing this since beta, and have not yet stopped playing it. the developers are active and keep working on new content, good new content. I could try to tell you how great it is all day, but honestly, I will let my total hours played speak for the game directly.

Hope to see you on Arrakis!