Started it up yesterday, as the arthropoid pregenerated race (possibly a mistake - the hyperdrive system seems to be intended as strict downside relative to other forms of travel, to compensate for the many bonuses hyperdrive-capable races start with).
I'm enjoying it but many areas so far feel a bit flat. Of course it's a 4x rather than a 'grand strategy game' aka CKII, but the lack of interaction at least early on is disappointing for a Paradox title. The other empires don't seem interested in contact or conflict, and my neighbour has a trait (Harmonious Collective) that ensures a blanket refusal to allow access to my ships or research stations (my own fault I hadn't realised what frontier outposts do, so they got to set up shop around a system with a primitive civilisation before I did, while I couldn't extend past my borders - which reached only to one adjacent system - to set up mining stations).
Anomalies (which seem to repeat too frequently - hopefully as with other Paradox titles events and event chains will become more varied with patches and DLC) aside, exploration feels unengaging - planets don't have vary variable characteristics per type, strategic resources start to unlock late, and I haven't come across anything akin to MOO's artifact planets let alone any of the variety of Distant Worlds. This is sad as this part of the game has tended to be a strength of the better space 4xes.
Ship customisation seems like make-work - everything I've unlocked so far is just a basic stat upgrade, without the variety of function of DW or of the MOO titles (including the most recent).
On first loading the game it seemed a lot like Distant Worlds with a useable interface, which is basically the space 4x definition of perfection. Having played since it's enjoyable but feels very shallow (not unlike the latest Master of Orion, which at least has nostalgia to trade on), and there are very basic interface features that appear to be lacking altogether - I haven't yet found a way to obtain a list of available colony ship targets, only a tickbox that shows planet habitability (but not planet type or size) on the galaxy map - itself an awkward two-layer system that isn't obviously necessary where Distant Worlds achieves a better result with a mouse scrollwheel. Losing the fuel cell system was a shame in Master of Orion; lacking any kind of fuel restriction or DW's fuel station approach is also disappointing here. Early gameplay seems devoted purely to setting up mines and power plants to fuel them, and I haven't yet found any clear use for excess credits (I tried a couple of times to do instant cash-for-mineral trading with a neighbour, but despite a +1 agreement rating the transaction never went through - may be a bug as I didn't receive notification that the offer had been declined).
Also, some of the race descriptions etc. need tweaking for consistency with their context - I encountered a primitive civilization of 'Fragmented Nations' described as using nuclear weapons and close to mutual extinction. The race trait was Pacifist. The fact that these races - although they can't engage in diplomacy - use diplomacy modifiers is a bit awkward. I'm a race of - to Iron Age societies - godlike alien insects observing them from orbit, and they appear to be fully aware of my existence, xenophobic towards me, and finding me repugnant to boot?