Recent reviews by Ephemeral

Utterly addicting. Different people will find different game-play loops that will anchor them - it could be perfecting the logistics network (while you could belt everything like Factorio, over enough of a distance it becomes less efficient. Trucks are friends), or landscaping your island just the way you want.

For me its refining and redesigning ever more compact and efficient industrial building chains, then tearing it all down and doing it better when new technologies unlock.

I've put a LOT of time into single playthroughs, I think the latest is at 100h.

Dev updates regularly and the meaty patches add cool stuff. Highly recommend.

Tremendous efforts have been given towards documentation and tutorial screens, in addition to the classic Distant Worlds automation features. As a result, a game can play itself as you learn within it. Distant Words does what few 4X games try to do: reduce abstraction as much as possible, to really feel like you're in charge of an empire, not just ordering ships about on various tasks.

There are still some questionable UI choices, but in the defence of CodeForce, simply making all of the mechanics fit into a screen is no mean feat.

The graphics are okay, with good quality planetary textures and middling ship quality, but if you're looking for a visually remarkable 4X game this isn't it. Sword Of The Stars 2, a 4X game which came out in 2011, in some ways still leads the pack for ship identity and fidelity. Though care has been taken to give each race a distinct visual identity here, there is nothing iconic about them. Distant Words 2 though is much more than the vessels, and though you could play the game simply gallivanting around in a single battleship while letting the game run your empire, there's more to be done and it gives you stuff to do in spades.

Activities seem abundant so far, though at times many seem like they provide simple stat boosts, others immerse you in a well crafted universe and provide some story chops. Comparisons to Stellaris in its early days seem apt in terms of events and narrative: CodeForce though have taken the opportunity provided from having hand-crafted races to provide a more structured story experience.

The problems come with stability. Crashes are frequent, and while complexity breeds more ways for things to go wrong, its just under-baked at the moment. In a world though where other 4X games made by large studios teeming with QA personnel also come out with bugs aplenty, it was not a huge surprise.

With UI/UX tweaks, stability improvements and more races (which the devs say will come in time through expansions) Distant Worlds 2 has the makings of a game that dwarfs its peers in the 4X space, just like the original did years ago.

At this price point, Distant Worlds 2 provides so much value. Few games offer so much content, and there are AAA titles commanding AAA prices left in its dust. Might want to wait for that first patch, though.