You can get the demo here: http://www.soldak.com/Drox-Operative/Overview.html

After reading the description, and seeing the video and screenshots here on GOG.com, I was a little interested in this game, but I had seen mention of a demo and I'm glad I chose to try that first.

Firstly, I had a couple of issues after installation of the demo (the GOG installer may or may not have these issues). The mouse cursor kept moving up to the top left making it impossible to navigate the menus. Turned out it was due to a default setting for the game to use a joystick/controller. Easily fixed by changing the user settings config file to turn this off, then restarting the game. Next issue was that the keyboard was not registering, but after a quick Google search I found others with the same issue that resolved itself after rebooting the computer. Lo and behold, rebooting my machine also fixed this. So now I was able to play.

I was hoping for a nice top-down space game with combat, trading, missions, politics, etc. And sure enough, these are all present. But even on the easiest settings the game was just too much for me. I had just created my ship, and was flying around the starting sector and before I knew it I was being attacked by a faction who hated me. Another ally I had quickly became an enemy (via natural degradation speed of the relationship!). Then when I did find another ally in another sector, they were wiped out by monsters almost immediately after I found them. So how was I supposed to get any influence with any of the factions I'd found?

I'd have expected something a little slower and easier for the easiest game settings. So this really turned me off the game and I've now removed it from my GOG wishlist.

Of course, this is just my experience and opinion and others may enjoy it, but I really do recommend trying out the demo version first, as this game may not be quite what you expect it to be.

I don`t know the demo, I bought the game -and the dlc- right when they popped up on the gog page. With higher difficult settings it can be hard, but with the minimal difficulty settings the game is fun. You can set an option that makes the changes in relationships and wars happen not so often, which helps a lot. I don`t know if the demo has this options, I don`t even know which options the demo has and which stage of development the demo represents.
Maybe the game got balancing patches after the demo came out and those patches, balancing and options changes never made it into the demo.

The full game gives you a lot of options to configure the gameplay experience, which is a significant plus.

Also, once you get your ship up to level 4, start a new game and choose monsters to start at level 0 (it shows as easy difficulty). I found it to be much more laid back and slower paced. Choosing huge galaxies and 3 races to start can also help.