I recently started playing this game again after not playing since 2018, right when the Hissho came out. I've played a couple 150 turn games and had a blast, and am very happy with the additions from the Vaulter and Hissho DLC, but I've heard very bad things about the last two.

The Umbral Choir sound ridiculous and awful to play against, and I've heard hacking is poorly implemented and gimmicky. I hear also that the Nekalim are a bit of wet noodle of a race, are weak, and don't fit well into the game. 

Is there any truth to this? What're your experiences with the last two DLC? Because I'm honestly pretty content with just the first two. Any responses are appreciated.

Apologies for formatting; I’m on my phone.  Hacking is a double-edged sword; it’s an easy way to capture Minor Civs or loot Pirate bases, but on higher diffs the AI gets buffs that render your defense programs useless.  About the only thing you can do is rush Firewall for your Home System.  And I hate hunting down the Choir.  Almost as annoying as finding that last Vodyani Ark.  Awakening is bad because of the Academy, and vanilla Nakalim are super weak as AI.  With ESG Mod or the Academy Nerf mod, I actually like Awakening more than Penumbra.  With the Academy neutered and Nakalim buffed a bit, it adds a neat faction without adding busy work.  The AI actually plays Nakalim very well in ESG Mod 1.4.  They capture and convert a lot of enemy systems with Temples in ESG 1.4.  One last thing, with Super Weapons toggled on Penumbra is cheat mode.  You can stealth four or five Planet Crackers, charge them to full on an AI Home System, uncloak, and then detonate it in one turn.  Same thing with stealth Obliterators.  The AI has no real defense against this, and it completely trivializes the game.  If you’re gonna run Penumbra I’d turn Super Weapons off.  The AI builds better fleets if they’re not wasting cash on Core Crackers or Obliterators anyways.  Limiting AI choices generally makes them play better.

I see, I'll probably just forego the last two DLC in that case. The Umbral Choir's cloaking just seems silly and like it doesn't fit into this sort strategy game anyway, and nothing in Awakening really seems that appealing to me. 

Also what exactly did they do to the Academy in Awakening?

Penumbra is worth it for the stealth in my opinion, but the hacking I've always found annoying. The Umbral Choir is, in my opinion, a big mess of half-implemented ideas with a cool visual theme. 

Awakening is completely not worth your time, don't even buy it to support Amplitude because we've received at most a single patch to fix it. It's unbalanced, the Nakalim mechanics only serve to hinder them, and the Academy just exists to be a jerk that occasionally has a lottery for a crazy fleet.

To answer your question about the Academy, it's a neutral faction that asks for resources in exchange for one of four roles. Two of these roles (Master of Dust, which gets a crappy version of dust to trade, and the Librarian, which can pay the academy to get lore answered) have no gameplay functionality, Vault Keeper, which can choose a political party to get the laws of, is good, but the Spear of Isyander is by far the best role. The Spear of Isyander gets the Academy's best fleet at the time of roles being handed out, which, even early game, is a late game fleet with amazing modules. With this fleet, you can almost guarantee someone's complete destruction in the early game. This isn't too bad, however, Isyander is a terrible neighbor. He colonizes every system he can touch, proceeds to build nothing on it, and spawns 2-3 more fleets just to be safe. If you try attacking Isyander, he has a hissy fit and demands you pay him money before he lets you into his role auction again. If you refuse to pay, he'll spawn 2-3 more fleets each turn. Even if you completely destroy the Academy (which is impossible as Vodyani or Umbral Choir), he'll STILL spawn ships and KEEP whining. The Academy is literally just a minor faction that can colonize, it uses the same AI as minor factions. This means that it can't actually produce ships or buildings, it just spawns them when it feels the time is appropriate. The problem with the ship spawning, as mentioned previously, is that the Academy can spawn late game ships early on, and starts with the ability to use wormholes. The Academy is also hostile to all players, regardless of whether you have a role with him or not, meaning he WILL siege your systems with his late game ships at turn 11. A bug that just serves to make this problem more annoying is that on higher difficulties, the measure of academy "aggression" towards players is bugged, and is multiplied per player in the galaxy. Meaning, turn 5, he'll get super angry and just start raiding everyone.

Full transparency, I am the head developer of the ESG mod that SableShrike mentioned, I've fixed as many of these bugs as possible in my mod as of like, April 2020 when I made the mod that ESG based its code off of, and Amplitude hasn't yet implemented any of the fixes I have reported.

 Hey CaptainCobbs, I've been reading some comments about Awakening. The sentiment I'm getting is that the expansion is terrible on its own, but actually quite good with your mod installed. I know you said that it "wasn't worth getting" but would you agree that your fixes in the mod solve its major problems and make it a worthwhile expansion?

I don't think even with my fixes the expansion is worthwhile, for multiple reasons, however, if you just want to get your hands on a new faction with different mechanics, the Nakalim certainly.. are something.

I did my best to remake the Nakalim mechanics in a way that complimented their playstyle, but honestly, their mechanics just weren't thought out. Influence Conversion just isn't something that happens in a realistic setting, you have to go out of your way and put yourself into a vulnerable position for you to reasonably acquire a system. And usually it just leads to the player you took the system from declaring war on you.

I also think Relics and Temples are an utterly terrible mechanic as they are currently implemented. Relics provide a few neat bonuses and are the backbone to your science (In ESG, in Vanilla they're only worthwhile for hero bonuses), but they overall just feel boring. Maybe if you could exchange relics for technology they'd be better, but I've never really enjoyed that whole experience. Temples too, what were they really intended to do? Why cripple your system to attempt to take another one? It's always bugged me that temples are just kind of.. there. I remember they had some interaction with relics, like increasing the amount of relics you could assign or something, but they half the FIDSI on a planet in exchange for a bunch of influence plus a relic slot. Keep in mind, the influence it produces is ALSO halved by the -50% malus. In ESG, I gave it an extra population slot and added a hard-to-reach quest reward to remove the malus, but I still don't feel like Temples are at all interesting as a mechanic.

The only thing I'm a fan of the Nakalim with are their ground strategies, ships, and starting vision. Their (ESG) collection bonus gives two REALLY great ground battle strategies that can absolutely destroy people if you use them properly. In addition to that, on average, Nakalim have most module slots on all of their ships, so your military is going to be generally above average compared to most factions (though this is somewhat fumbled by their TERRIBLE heroes). Nakalim (in ESG) also get vision over their home constellation, leading to a lot of "Hey bro, let's play on single-constellation galaxy!" moments.

I'd generally say ESG makes it better, but I still absolutely cannot stand the Academy even after almost completely lobotomizing it, and the Nakalim are still just.. uninteresting.