Closing Thoughts
Distant Worlds has come a long way since the series’ inception in 2010. In my opinion, the game didn’t start well. But, CodeForce and Matrix Games redeemed themselves with the release of the first expansion, Return of the Shakturi. And, by the second expansion, Legends, Distant Worlds became a great experience, the best space 4X experience since Galactic Civilizations 2, in my opinion.
Shadows, the third expansion, brought, among other things, the pirate gameplay and the very important PreWarp experience, which made possible to have the experience of developing from a very, very humble beginning, where exploring and exploiting a star system seems like a galaxy in itself. This was a very cool addition in Shadows.
Now, new players have a lot to experience with Distant Worlds: Universe, but also a lot to learn. This isn’t a simple game. Distant Worlds is very complex and as deep as can get while still being approachable to a large audience. The UI has improved dramatically over the expansions, especially in the second one (Legends), which made things a lot easier. There are ingame tutorials that help you get started, but reading some parts of the manual will most probably be required.
And, if you want to master the game you’ll need to consult the ingame encyclopedia frequently, and perhaps make a few visits to the game’s forums to ask some of the veterans there what something means or is used for (oh, I know because I did that a lot myself!). So, you’ll need a while to get a hang of things.
And, the game’s scope can be quite huge. Of course, you an setup a galaxy as small or as big as you like, but there will be a lot to do still. You can automate certain aspects of the game at first and then progressively turn that automation off, when you feel you’re ready. So, the game can feel quite daunting at first. But, the learning curve is totally worth it, in my opinion.
http://www.spacesector.com/blog/2014/05/distant-worlds-universe-launched-and-first-impressions/