I might be about to step into that same old beehive again, so tell my family I love them if I don't make it out alive this time.
I really really don't like Distant Worlds. I tried hard to like it since there are some good ideas behind it (free market economy, non-involvement by the government, and above all the very important outsource-whatever-you-like-to-the-AI, which every game should have), but almost all other aspects and the execution are thoroughly off-putting to me.
It's been a year since I last touched it, so I won't be going into all the details.
Combat: All around horrible. Could just as well not exist or be entirely abstracted.
Writing: Clichés. Nothing but. I don't know whether it's laziness or aggressive, laborious intent to bore. Includes the races - sh!te.
Economy: Good idea, but the execution makes no economic or even logical sense.
Visuals: Ugly. And a suprisingly resource-intensive kind of ugly that won't even run on my notebook. Impressive for a 2D game.
Treatment of space: It could just as well not be set in space. Space is meaningless to the game.
AI: Unusually for games this large, it can actually handle all areas of the game. Sadly, it's not at all good at it.
Gameyness: Again, clichés lifted straight from any other game. Calling it GalCiv - Free Market Edition would not be far off.
Argh. I can't think straight about it.