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Even though the title – "Distant Worlds 2 review in progress: two steps forward and one back" - might suggest that it's a negative review, it isn't. I would say that it's balanced. Here's a quote from the begining of the review:

"But in the spirit of the ancient ones, I can share a review-in-progress of what I've seen so far.
Alright, alright. Partly it's because it's a long game. But it's also because I really want to keep playing."

So the author (Sin Vega) loves the game, or at least loves playing the game. Which doesn't mean that everything is perfect...

Here's the link:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/distan ... n-progress

Sin Vega is the only reviewer that consistently puts the time and effort into reviewing the deep and fairly unpopular games I tend to like and then presenting the experience in a clear way.
It is uncommon for reviewers to put the many hours of gameplay needed into reviewing stuff like Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead, Shadow Empire, Sailwind, DW2....

Really good to read that thumbs up from them.

Edit to add a link to another Sin Vega article from June last year, that I very much agree with, about their hopes for how DW2 could differ from DWU. A good read.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-ra ... s-going-on

The second part of that review is up...

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/distan ... s-2-review

Thanks deMangler for the heads up. It's amazing: it reflects so much how I feel about DW2 that it's almost scary!

Great review. Even the headline only aligns with my opinion. "a troubled but brilliant 4X that sets its own terms"

I love this game, but it does have issues. If it can get continued support to remove issues and expand on core play it will be awesome in time.

In my current campaign, I did not find any carbonite! My ship building grinded to a halt, and trade for the material could not keep up. With the few military ships I had, I attacked some early pirate bases and monster sites. Found out that one of the monster sites was my one and only source of carbonite.

Some might think that is an annoyance, but I found it to be really fun and emergent gameplay. The game sort of randomly challanged me and I was hunting for the resource for a while until I found it and managed to solve the issue.

In the same campaign I found a great system I wanted to expand into with two ruins and a caslon gas giant for fuel. But could not build there because it was out of range. So after some more research, I now went there to expand. only to find another empire had built bases there without me noticing. I think it might be time to sound the drums of war!