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 with the automation. You have to learn what automation does and how you want to use it.

Automation
By default nearly everything is automated and you are asked to accept or decline suggestions that the automator makes. At the start this made me wonder what my purpose as the player was. At the start of the game you can have a bigger impact by manually microing some ships to explore certain places or built mining stations at certain spots. However after a while your empire becomes too big to order indivual ships around.

Thats where automation is nice. You can decide to automate things you currently do not want to focus on and also control the exact amount of automation. In my current game i have building of mining stations fully automated and my 8 defense fleets and 3 attack fleets that automatically defend and attack threats. But i also have some manualy fleets that i order around myself because im at war with another factions and have certain areas i want to focus on.
But you could also fully automate the fleets and just give global orders to mark certain spots for invasion or attack and wait for a capable fleet to pick up that order.

Fleet management itself is also done by using fleet templates which defines what ships are in a attack fleet for example. Thats cool because building ships is now abstracted into a fleet which you just 'top up' and the required ships are built/upgraded automatically.

Simulation
What is also interesting compared to Stellaris is that everything is simulated. So if you want to built a spaceport somewhere, the mined steel first has to be picked up by a construction ship which then brings and uses that to built the station. Theres also fuel which is mined and distributed. Your spaceships need this to effectively use the hyperdrive. It plays a big role in engagement range and mobility around your empire.

Theres also a civilian economy with its own ships. You will have to provide a budget to get them built, so they haul cargo and resources around. However you do not control them.

Research
The game has a huge research tree to focus on everything you'd expect from diplomacy, weapons, jump drive tech, trading etc. Personally i think it's has clear sections and tiers, but it's not always clear what research exactly does.
What could be improved is that it only tells you the absolute numbers of upgrades.But i'm more interested in the percentual improvement compared to the current situation. So the game now makes you hover back and forth between the previous and new research popup to spot the differences.
I do like the clear icons from the research tree, compared to the AI generated ones in Sins of a Solar Empire 2.

Notification spam
You'll get so. many. notifications. It drained me at first, but you will just have to learn to disable ones that are not too interesting. Quickly the 'new resource discovered' message can just be blocked for example. Even your civilian ships getting attacked is not super interesting, they will get rebuild.

Diplomacy
Won't comment too much on the diplomacy. You can make friends, form alliances and make enemies. There also spies that you can give missions to steal technology or sabotage things which are chance based.

Races
I've only played quite a bit with the Atuuk (they're like Star Wars Ewoks). I found them pretty funny. They're naive cute bears that can work together but aren't too smart. They have their own mechanics and quirks. For example you can tax them 71% and they're so happy about it :D. Try that with humans and they get really mad.

You can't make your own race. I've read many comments about people finding this a big downside. Personally i like predefined more. There's at least 12 races (dlc included) and multiple govermental types, so loads of variation there.

Music
I didn't like the music at all. There are mods out there that just replace the entire soundtrack with that of Stellaris and other games which i use. Theres even a community member Nico Guerrero that remade the entire soundtrack, very cool!

Closing
Theres much more i could talk about like ship design, planet invasions (mostly a numbers game). But i want to end with that it's very customizable in terms of difficulty, enemy factions, universe generation, automation levels. So you can really tailor it to your play style.

All in all, a great game for people that don't mind to read a bit and tinker a lot.

Good game. Nice graphics, fun exploration, alright story. Just cant get myself to finish it though

I played about 24 hours, but it isn't registered correctly in Steam

They recommend a new save, but the base game hasn't changed, except for very minor things. You can't really expect people to replay 30+ hours for nothing.

So i loaded up my existing save. Everything seems to work fine..

I haven't played that far, but flying up to the space platform you arent allowed to take anything with you. It forces you to play a certain way. It takes away a bit from the sandbox experience that i had with the base game.

I find the price a bit too high as well. Dyson Sphere Program can be bought for just 14 euros. Compared to 32 euros base game and 32 euros dlc

Great game and i really appreciate the offline play!

A bit of feedback:
- Its difficult to find buildings. They are unique but also look a like. Maybe having the ability to show the names or something would be good
- Text under the the icons in the building menu would be great too. Now i have to keep hovering to find out what everything is

Maybe this gets better when you know all buildings eventually though

As a positive: i love the UI, it looks great

Bought this on a deep sale for less than 10 euros and it's now the great casual pvp shooter experience i want. It runs great and haven't encountered any issues so far. Glad they removed most of the cringy voicelines pre and post game.

The gameplay pacing is a little on the fast side for me, but i've gotten used to it.

One of the few modern ARPGs thats fully moddable and can be played fully offline

Classic ARPG with nice controls and a good gameplay loop. You can save anywhere at any time and also resume from there. The skill / perk system is a bit like tetris and looks good so far. There are different ways to boost your character and gear (rerolling etc). So everything you'd expect from a ARPG is there.

It took some updates to click for me, but i really like playing the Exorcist which feels like a Diablo 3 mage to me. I'm personally not too fond of asian culture (no offense) and more into standard fantasy, but it's also nice to see something else for a change.

The recent update of the Orang Bunian was a cool surprise too.

Slower paced arpg with a nice gameplay loop. Great voice acting as well.

Cozy low stress exploration experience