When comparing Distant Worlds: Universe vs Stronghold Crusader HD, the Slant community recommends Stronghold Crusader HD for most people. In the question“What are the best singleplayer games on Steam?” Stronghold Crusader HD is ranked 45th while Distant Worlds: Universe is ranked 106th. The most important reason people chose Stronghold Crusader HD is:
Easy to learn mechanics of economy, castle building and army production. Does not overwhelm players with choices.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro The universe is huge
With the possibility to simulate thousands of stars and tens of thousands of planets in realtime, the universe in Distant Worlds is truely vast.
Pro In-depth problem solving
Unlike games like Civ where solving a problem is a few clicks away, Distant Worlds has many layers of abstraction that will make problem solving a lot more difficult and more like a real living world. There may be many elements needed in order to solve a problem that the player will have to figure out on their own, making for a very immersive way to solve issues.
Pro Great for RTS beginners
Easy to learn mechanics of economy, castle building and army production.
Does not overwhelm players with choices.
Pro Deep yet intuitive interface
Many options are available in the game along with good tutorials that introduce the player to these. While not all options are necessary the inclusion of them is welcome for those that would like to take advantage of them.
Pro Unique Gameplay
A unique blend of real-time battles and castle-sim, which the Stronghold series is famous for
Cons
Con Requires a time commitment
This is not a game that one can jump into with no prior knowledge, there is a high learning curve that will take many trial sessions in order to get the hang of the full aspects of the game.
Con Lacks polish in some areas
Things like buttons on the bottom of the screen that are not intuitively placed as well as notifications that can not be filtered to the more important. This can detract from the gameplay as it is immersion breaking to have to rifle through inconvenient button placement as well as notifications looking for what you need at the time.
Con Multiplayer is a hassle
A third-party connection app like Tunngle, Hamachi, GameRanger is needed to play the non-steam version of the game and therefore multiplayer games are mostly unresponsive and error-prone