Distant Worlds 2 is a mixed bag for me, but I still recommend it.

I love the realistic space simulation elements. The true private economy is brilliant, especially how civilian ships physically transport resources and populate the galaxy. I also really enjoy the tactical combat control, the unrestricted exploration, the extensive automation choices. Since I am not into heavy empire customization, I appreciate that I can simply choose a pre-made empire and jump right into the game.

The performance issues are a major drawback. Generating a world often causes severe lag and crashes my computer completely and the game completely lacks a cloud save feature. Losing progress because of crashes and zero cloud backups is very frustrating.