An abysmal, insipid waste of time.
First thing to notice is the lack of beauty this game presents the player its interface. From confusing buttons to hard-to-read text, the GUI is more like a WindowBlind® skin than an actual game engine. I tend to be a bit forgiving for new games and gave it a honest try, trying my best to give it an unbiased look but no, you just can't.
My first game experience dropped me in the middle with an ugly noise which I discovered was as a ''warning'' that pirates were attacking my gas-mining port on a owned planet. The sound reminded me of random city panic alarm of a 60's movie. Completely crude and out of place. Then I take a look at my current ships... all crumpled together, moving erratically simulating orbit around a static planet, which by the way it orbits as well around the star. So I take a breath, and the first Windowesque pop-up screen advises me that we should build a colony ship. So I click yes and move on.
The game looks like it's half done, seriously. The graphics are NOT even merely decent; everything lags and with that I mean they don't move smoothly. Take the ships for example: imagine a straight line. They should move along the straight line, like a plane in the sky. In DW, they don't. They move more like a dash-line. The same is true for zooming in and out. You don't get smooth acceleration, you get frame-by-frame abomination.
My advise: stay away from this game. The only positive thing I can possibly say about Distant Worlds is the music. That's worth 2.0 points. You get the picture.