Big news for the space 4X game Distant Worlds. Matrix Games and Code Force have just announced that they have released a major update for Distant Worlds: Legends (v1.7.0.16) with lots of improvements and fixes which boost performance and several other aspects of gameplay. You just need to use the in-game updater to automatically install the new update.
Among others, the update improves ship design, fleet handling and private sector’s ship management. Matrix states: “The update improves player and AI ship design, including improvements to the design screen itself. Players will now be able to save optimized design templates for any faction and also have the ability to set detailed design policies for their empires. Fleet handling for both player and AI factions has also been improved, as well as ship management for the private sector.” You have the full list of changes here.
In addition to the update they have also announced that they placed all Distant Worlds titles on sale for two weeks, starting today till September 4th, 2012 at 33% off. That means that the full experience, that would previously cost you around $80/€75 (digital edition) will now cost you now around $60/€55 (base game costs excluding taxes if applicable).
This is a great opportunity. I consider Distant Worlds: Legends to be the best space 4X game experience available since Master of Orion 2 and Galactic Civilizations 2. It’s not lightly that I scored the game 9.4/10 (with the Legends expansion I mean. I don’t recommend you buy the game without at least the Return of the Shakturi expansion).
Considering Code Force and Matrix Game’s willingness to continue supporting and expanding the game (don’t forget there’s a new expansion announced although its release date is still uncertain), I think this is a great opportunity, and a must buy if you ask me. Get Distant Worlds: Legends at Matrix Game’s store.
Distant Worlds: Return of the Shakturi (the previous expansion) is also a good choice if you don’t want to go all the way but I definitely recommend that you buy up to Legends. The last expansion does justifies the price for what it offers. Note that Distant Worlds: Legends requires that you buy the Distant Worlds base and Distant Worlds: Return of the Shakturi expansion.
Remark: The 33% discount seems to apply only to the download edition of the game and not the boxed versions. Those range from 22% to 26% discounts from what I can see.
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Why won’t they make 1 edition with both xpacs included. Grrr.
This! Make Complete Collection or something!
Oh please wait until the game is complete. Or after the “complete collection” comes the “ultimate collection” and then the “even more ultimate collection”. Like all the bundle releases of Sword of the Stars.
If that offer was on steam I’d probably buy it. I just don’t like to spread out my games through the whole internet. At least not if they cost more than peanuts.
But lets wait for the expansion and what will happen then.
They are not on Steam but consider that Distant Worlds games are standalone DRM-free. In other words they don’t need any third party tool, or require that you need to be connected to the internet to run. And, you’ll be able to download and install them on as many computers as you like. There are both digital and boxed versions available also.
Still full price at the game store.
Guess they didn’t update the front page prices yet but if you go into the “Download Edition” link you will see that the 33% discount is already being applied. Notice the text: “Purchase them now and Save 33% during the sale!” and the final prices are not the ones indicated in the front page, they are sales prices. However, I noticed now that the boxed versions have a slightly less discount, from 22 to 26%.
Thanks, they really need to do one edition like said before and a 50% discount.
Worth every penny, warts and all.
Agreed. Expensive Distant Worlds may be, but there’s no question I’ve gotten my money’s worth!
Discount is processed on the matrix site after you order it.
Total 60.97 Dollars! instead of the 80 bucks otherwise!
Great tip!
this game with all its expansions is really expensive…..BUT it’s a really great 4x game and the new patch will be testplayed by me right now :D.
i can just advice everyone to read the nicely done review on spacesector (this site .p) and think about purchasing it. i also purchased the game during the last christmas-sale (also 33%), still expensive but i don regret it. so if you have the money and love 4x games…buy this one. at least the vanilla game + shakturi addon …. without the addon, many added and NECESSARY UI elements aren’t there….making the learning curve even bigger. and don’t get the false impression….this game has a big learning curve!!!! at first i lost the interest because of the many informatione you have to process and the many things you have to consider (i still think i don’t fully understand the resource part^^….there are MANY!!!).
as i learned about the game around its vanilla release i didn’t bother because i couldn’t build stuff on the planets and read that i “only” could control the state sector…not the private ships. this was a big down-turner for me. but boy… after playing this game i understood why this limitation^^.
have fun!
Thanks for your kind words about the review. Here is the review link by the way.
you’re welcome :).
Wow, this is great news. I had thought it would be November or December before we saw a sale on Distant Worlds. I have to admit when I first saw an email appear about a Distant Worlds post on my phone, I thought it was going to be further info about the announced expansion.
Dream come true! I was lurking in their forums practically everyday since i got my itch to play it again.. login into that forum is a nightmare and i couldn’t, and was slowly dying inside. Love this game soososososos much
I’ve been playing Distant Worlds on and off since launch. For me, no other 4X experience is as complete. You literally have control of everything and those parts that are automated (private sector) are dependent on infrastructure that you must develop.
I.e. Spaceports for construction and logistics, mining stations and gas collecting statins for basic resources and gas elements for fuel.
Military is easily managed with automatically managed fleets, fleets the player has created but then automated as an unit and fully managed fleets. I can’t recommend it enough.
Yes the game is becoming better and better..
I played the 0.16 beta patch. Its much more stable than the 0.6 version.
I hope they will add alot of the forum-wishlist for the next expansion.
The discount is a good way to get more space4x fans the DW experience..
Very good news :D
I thought like Keith Turner that I have to wait till december to the lower the price.
I got a question about the download version.
Is it possible to burn it on CD/DVD, so you can use it as a backup?
Of course, and I can even tell you the size. Around 800MB total. That’s the beauty of DRM-free. Store it (HD or CD/DVD) and it’s yours for life. And you can even play in the Himalayas if you want to. And, with what I’ve seen so far of Matrix Games’ support quality, you can relax that patches will be easy to install and they will surely help you if you happen to misplace your key. And the forums are quite active and mature also.
Thanks for the quick answer.
Finally I can get this game, because 60 Euro I can justify for a good game compared to 90 Euro before. :)
Btw Adam, your site is great and I really like the way you test and review the games.
So people can get a very good idea what they will get by buying the games.
Thanks Dennis. We surely do our best to inform everyone on what to expect from the games. Therefore the in-depth reviews and previews. We have covered quite some games so far, Distant Worlds: Legends, to me, is the best space 4X game I’ve covered in the last three years, the time this site is up. I recommend everyone who loves these kinds of games to get it now as it is cheaper. Matrix Games doesn’t do sales very often.
Sale price or not its really worth it! Now I just have to wait for September for their further announcement for the expansion and hopefully they will release it as soon as possible
Well, I didn’t mean that the game isn’t worth the money. It’s just it felt weird to pay 90 for a game.
Weird to pay $90 for a game? Lol. Here in Australia most games are around $70-$100
but yeah its pretty risky to invest that much on a game that you haven’t heard before. I was in the same situation as you where I was thinking that it is too much to spend on my usual strategy games.
Anyway it all ends up whether the game is your cup of tea or not.
This game is just a “must-have” for any 4X fan!
I bought the vanilla DVD many moons ago. The game was very difficult to play. I was getting alerts of attack but couldn’t find out where the attack was coming from. It was frustrating. Maybe it was too complicate for me. I enjoyed SEIV, GC, GCII, and Armada/Supernova.
Buy the Legends expansion, you’ll love it. But, since you come from the turn-based school I advise you pause often and play “manual” as much as possible, otherwise you may feel like you’re watching a movie and having no control. As I said, put as much of the game’s mechanics in manual mode, pause a lot and you’ll enjoy the game a lot more. That works wonders for me.
Thanks for the update. You’ve got me interested to buy the expansions, because I only have bought the vanilla game. A couple of questions though:
If I were to buy just the Return of the Shakturi expansion, how would this be? Do I really need to buy the Legends expansion as well to experience a huge improvement (in terms of fun gameplay) compared to the vanilla game?
How good is the AI in automated ship design in the Shakturi expansion, because I’m not a huge fan of immense micro intensive ship design?
Finally, I remember from playing the vanilla game a couple of years ago that my 4 year old pc had some problems in terms of performance with the game. Did this also improve with the expansion or did it become worse?
Thanks for your help!
Return of the Shakturi is already a great improvement over the vanilla version due to many reasons that you can find in my RotS review but especially due to its major user interface improvements. Legends offers a ton of things on-top Shakturi but let’s put it this way. As you ask about fun I would say that RotS is a big improvement over the vanilla version in terms of fun. You’re much more in control of things. If RotS is a big improvement then Legends is a huge improvement in terms of fun from the vanilla version. It’s totally worth it to buy up to Legends in terms of fun factor.
How good is the AI in automated ship design in RotS? I can’t really tell because I design all my ships. But what I can tell you is that the major focus of this Legends new patch (v1.0.7.16) is ship design: optimized designs, custom designs and AI ship design behavior, so Legends would be my choice in this point again.
Performance was improved in Legends, not sure if it was in Return of the Shakturi or not but it was definitely improved in Legends, I can confirm that. And this new patch should have improved performance even further judging from the patch release notes.
Graphics were also improved in Legends by the way. There are plenty more ship models, and they are crisper.
Return of the Shakturi was a big improvement over the vanilla version and it was valuable at the time. But now that Legends is out it totally justifies you go with all expansions.
Thanks Adam, as always a useful reply.
Thank you
Hi all,
I’d like to buy this game + expansions, but I read that the economic system was not great (too abundant resources and money). It would be too easy to win a game against AI after a few hours of play. Is this true?
thank you
Hi Balthazar,
the abundant resources issue was raised several times by myself and a few others on the game’s forums. Yes, in my view the game would be even better if it allowed a way to setup scarcer resources. That would raise the strategic depth even more. The new patch doesn’t seem to address that, but I haven’t tried it yet.
About the abundant money issue it’s true to an extent. It will depend a bit on how you setup your games. If you choose a simpler difficulty level with abundant habitable planets and less opponents I guess it’s safe to conclude that money will not be a big problem. However, with a tougher setup money is still a challenge, especially in beginning and mid games (late games probably not so much). But yes, overall money isn’t as crucial as it could be. But this is not an exclusive problem of Distant Worlds. Many other 4X games have that problem too. Civilization games come to mind but there are others. After a point money isn’t the problem in 4X games (as in real life empires/nations), resources and expansion room are.
The patch does seem to mitigate this money issue a little bit. It now costs much more to use pirate “services”.
Now, about “It would be too easy to win a game against AI after a few hours of play. Is this true?” I see that hardly happening. Depends on your game setup (small vs large map, amount of opponents). But, in big games with lots of races with a tough difficulty level you will need many many hours to beat the game. At least from my experience.
All games, even excellent games, have problems and shortcomings. I think you hit two of DW’s areas that could be improved further. Who knows, probably they will be addressed on DW’s next expansion, already announced but with no details available yet.
Thank you very much for your answer ;)
Adam, thanks so much for this site and your reviews of this game. They figured significantly in my decision to buy this game and its expansions (which is why I used your referral link). The sale was also a big factor :)
For anyone that decides to take the plunge and get this game, check out this post I made on Matrix Games’ forums about the game’s tutorials:
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3169698
The post includes two simple text files I made that you can add to your game’s files that I think will improve the usability of the tutorials.
You’re welcome Bryan, and thanks for buying through the referral link :)
Thanks also for posting about your game’s tutorials enhancements. The game is not fast to pickup so all there is to help speed things up for players is a good thing.
Really was hoping for Pegasus to be good but thats not looking good. I just cant decide between DW or Armada 2526. I really wish that one of them offered a campaign mode. Life with children means I cant play for hours like I used to :)
I have been playing DW (and expansions) since it’s original release and agree that it is one of the most compelling space 4X games out there. It is well worth the non-sale price.
However, I truly hope that the latest upgrade has solved a perennial problem (for me) with DW: Ship/fleet control during combat. I have used all the fleet controls and combinations possible, but still had problems with fleets sitting idly by while enemies ransacked nearby planets and other fleets flying to their certain doom when they should have been escaping.
You have to understand where I am coming from – I LOVED tactical combat in MOO2. I could utilize my (ingenious) ship designs to the max. I could board ships and capture technology. I could concentrate firepower where I wanted. etc. And the ships did what I wanted them to do – ALL the time. Even die.
Which brings me to two other problem with modern space 4X games, including DW:
1. The lack of a WOW moment (for me it was the first use of a Stellar Converter on a planet and the sight of the bay doors opening to reveal the unlucy target).
2. Incremental Research: I am really tired of Laser IV and Shield VII research which make almost insignificant advances. (MOO2 did this in the background with 10% size savings with every advance in a technology).
Regards, george
PS – MOO2 is my favorite 4x game. I’d be really happy if somebody would just update the AI and graphics, and increase the galaxy size. Here’s my $50!
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