A Disappointing Sequel
Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2025 2:10 pm
I waited for many years after playing DW sans the U DLC for DW2 to come out with the Shakturi DLC and all I can say is it's been a big disappointment. A tedious boring game that lacks challenge.
I finally met the Shakturi and found them to be total wimps. There were 4 gravitic rifts stupidly placed in my empire near many of my well established colonies and I had 4 big fleets sitting on them playing whack-a-mole since rift striders kept coming out. When the Rift Refugees came out of those 4 rifts they had a combined strength of almost 400K, my fleets were 200K each. Incredibly stupid the rifts were in my empire and were foreshadowed with a constant flow of rift striders that I was racking up experience points on. They should have only appeared when the rift refugees were ready to pop out.
I was expecting something like the formidable ancient enemy from the paradox garbage stellaris and instead got a wimpy band of refugees whom I wiped out in less than 9 months. Stupid they were all part of one big fleet as I knew the parts of the fleet would go to the rift where the fleet flagship was so wiped out the rift refugees the Die Hard way, one by one. I bushwhacked the refugees back to their galaxy before they could set up a single colony as I made sure to hunt down the 4 world ships quickly. They should have been made 4 separate fleets to make it more likely they'd establish a colony.
I did play my first long game with the Shakturi on normal difficulty to relearn the game system and had the Shakturi arrive late so I could focus on research. I had only 4 other empires as I wanted them to grow and become a challenge but the ignorant algorithm placed all 5 of the empires near each other instead of spreading them out because the algorithm is only designed for the default of 12. I wanted fewer empires which could grow instead of a dozen rinky dink empires that wouldn't grow enough to be a challenge. I ended up with 2/3 of the galaxy while the 4 wimpy AI empires only filled a third. When I pointed out this lame spread of empires early on to Maxim at Matrix all I got was a lame excuse about not wanting to fix it.
This game is basically a boring game of whack-a-mole against space bugs that aren't really much of a challenge. I had them set to very low and by the time the refugees appeared I had actually destroyed all space bugs in the galaxy. I found the game tedious since the devs have decided to not make this game friendly for those of us who enjoy manual control. No noticeable improvement there since the original and that's sad.
The Artificial Ignorance empires were a sad joke and no competition either. Too many worthless invasion fleets and too few actual combat fleets that are poorly modeled with pathetic templates. They only managed to kill a few space bugs and only the little wimpy ones and none of the swarms.
I guess if I crank up the difficulty to the max and bring in the refugees much earlier it would be a bit more of a challenge but overall this game is tedious and boring! As long as the rifts appear long before the refugees I'll know what to do to cut them off at the pass. I'll perhaps give it another try in a year or so but I'm off to play a new game that's going to be more fun and mentally stimulating.
I finally met the Shakturi and found them to be total wimps. There were 4 gravitic rifts stupidly placed in my empire near many of my well established colonies and I had 4 big fleets sitting on them playing whack-a-mole since rift striders kept coming out. When the Rift Refugees came out of those 4 rifts they had a combined strength of almost 400K, my fleets were 200K each. Incredibly stupid the rifts were in my empire and were foreshadowed with a constant flow of rift striders that I was racking up experience points on. They should have only appeared when the rift refugees were ready to pop out.
I was expecting something like the formidable ancient enemy from the paradox garbage stellaris and instead got a wimpy band of refugees whom I wiped out in less than 9 months. Stupid they were all part of one big fleet as I knew the parts of the fleet would go to the rift where the fleet flagship was so wiped out the rift refugees the Die Hard way, one by one. I bushwhacked the refugees back to their galaxy before they could set up a single colony as I made sure to hunt down the 4 world ships quickly. They should have been made 4 separate fleets to make it more likely they'd establish a colony.
I did play my first long game with the Shakturi on normal difficulty to relearn the game system and had the Shakturi arrive late so I could focus on research. I had only 4 other empires as I wanted them to grow and become a challenge but the ignorant algorithm placed all 5 of the empires near each other instead of spreading them out because the algorithm is only designed for the default of 12. I wanted fewer empires which could grow instead of a dozen rinky dink empires that wouldn't grow enough to be a challenge. I ended up with 2/3 of the galaxy while the 4 wimpy AI empires only filled a third. When I pointed out this lame spread of empires early on to Maxim at Matrix all I got was a lame excuse about not wanting to fix it.
This game is basically a boring game of whack-a-mole against space bugs that aren't really much of a challenge. I had them set to very low and by the time the refugees appeared I had actually destroyed all space bugs in the galaxy. I found the game tedious since the devs have decided to not make this game friendly for those of us who enjoy manual control. No noticeable improvement there since the original and that's sad.
The Artificial Ignorance empires were a sad joke and no competition either. Too many worthless invasion fleets and too few actual combat fleets that are poorly modeled with pathetic templates. They only managed to kill a few space bugs and only the little wimpy ones and none of the swarms.
I guess if I crank up the difficulty to the max and bring in the refugees much earlier it would be a bit more of a challenge but overall this game is tedious and boring! As long as the rifts appear long before the refugees I'll know what to do to cut them off at the pass. I'll perhaps give it another try in a year or so but I'm off to play a new game that's going to be more fun and mentally stimulating.