Is DA Worth the Time?

Undoubtedly worth it. I never really played Dread Lords, but between the two Dark Avatar is ten times better.

Yes.

~ Wyndstar

the answer to this question would definitely be yes

DA is totally worth it.

Without question. DA's AI is better, the new options create greater gameplay variety and replayability, and support for DA (and thus the addition of new features) is ongoing.

Most people will recommend DA, however there are still an alarming number of people who do not prefer DA.

Personally i havn't played DA yet, but watching these forums i have noticed some common issues with it....
1)i hear the espionage system can be a bit of a drag
2)There is a plaque event which the AI does not respond well to - giving you easy victory.
3)some debate over the balance of race super abilities.
4)apparantly the economy is much stingier than DL

personally, from what i hear about the espionage system, that alone was enough to put me off getting DA. It dousn't bother most people though, it is just the way it works i know it is going to give me the shits.

There IS a demo.

I am AWARE of that.

Yes, it seems as if even the greatest minds of our age have not discovered how to program a computer to brush after every meal

DA is good and a change of pace from DL. I like both.

Both needs some help:
-we need the ability to reject or not use captured techs
(which can nerf your economy). DA at least allows you to use old
planet improvements. This helps with new colonies where new structures would
take too long to build. But I sometime get stuck with manufacturing
centers (after capturing a planet) and have to spend half an hour deleting the updates. You can set a planet's governor not to update automatically. The problem is sometimes you want to update everything, sometimes not.

-both tend to make things difficult economically at first. You have to put a lot
of effort into researching stock exchanges and better forms of govt. Some of the
economic improvements need to be ramped up. In both games I spend a lot of time
looking for anomalies with money to keep in the black. In DA, the anomalies are often
useless and the ones with money give smaller amounts than DL. In DL, you can find anomalies with 2500bc. In DA, the highest seems to be 1000.

-both games need to implement queues--which can be saved and reused for building planet
improvements. Something found in Stars! Not that you want all your planets the same. But I typically start most decent planets with 3 or 4 factories, then a morale enhancing unit, then other stuff.

I seem to remember reading in one of the changelogs, that that issue was addressed. I haven't had the time to play 1.6 (RL sucks sometimes, lol) so I personally can't say I've seen an improvement.

I was one of those that, even though I had preordered DA I just kept playing DL due to being unsure how I really felt about all the changes.
The last few days I have spent quite a bit of time getting familiar with DA and I got to say it has rekindled my addiction to GC2. A little different, but a lot of fun.