Experience first-hand the challenges of leading one of 16 different races into unequalled galactic supremacy and face a universe of decisions. Set policies, explore, build , declare war, negotiate - put all these elements into motion to guarantee your place in the annals of space and time.
Are you prepared to become the Master of Orion, and to discover the truth behind the Orion Sector and its inhabitants?
Welcome to the world of Master of Orion 3. Your journey begins here.
This game has been patched to the latest official version: 1.2.5
Age requirements: ESRB Rating: TEEN with Blood and Gore, Violence.
Minimum system requirements: Windows XP or Windows Vista, 1.8 GHz Processor, 512MB RAM (1 GB recommended), 3D graphics card compatible with DirectX 7 (compatible with DirectX 9 recommended), 2GB HDD, Mouse, Keyboard.
Average customer rating 2.0 out of 5.0
I didn't want to be reminded of this...
(by
Pigeonbane)
When Master of Orion 3 came out, I bought it with a friend of mine. We had heard some of the buzz about the game, and we had heard that it wasn't very good, so neither of us were willing to buy it at full price. We split the price, and went back to my place to try it out.... full review
I remember the manual. It gave a nice backstory for the conflict, and got me enthused to play. i thought to myself, "surely there is some fun to be found here!"
I was wrong.
We spent a few hours with it that day. At first, we thought that we just needed to figure out the game's intricacies, and a beautiful experience would open up before us. We could see for ourselves what it means to become a galactic overlord, one conquest at a time! We'd crush empire after empire under our boots!
We were wrong.
When we couldn't take anymore, my friend went home, and brought the game with him. I went to visit him a few days later. He had discovered the whole "click End Turn until you win" strategy, and was ready to quit. I took the game back to my place and gave it several more hours of play over the next few days.
In the end, we faced a dilemma. Neither of us ever wanted to play the game again. We didn't want to throw it away, because someone might dig it out of the trash and try to play it. We couldn't destroy it because we had paid good money for it.
We made a sacred pact that day.
We both uninstalled the game. He kept the install disk, and I kept the play disk, so that neither of us would ever have the means to reinstall the game on either of our systems. To this day, I have no idea where he keeps his disk. Mine is sealed away where it can't hurt anyone. From time to time, I'll take it out to remind myself of my ordeal. I do this with the curtains drawn, so that nobody sees it, and a stiff drink in my hand, to dull the pain. This dark legacy will haunt me for the rest of my days.
Some day, I'll pass the responsibility to my son, and he can become the custodian of MOO3.
Where MoO2 was a jewel, MoO3 is a disaster. When I first run the game, I was marveled by graphics and a load of new races and ideas. But the promise quickly turned into disappointment.
The biggest problem of the game is not that it's bad. It's a decent manager - if you ignore interface so bad it chases you away all on its own. The real problem is, the game refuses to be played.... full review It's so focused on its million tabs, controls, checkboxes and sliders that it doesn't really allow you to make much of a choice, or if it does, it fails to deliver a decent feedback. So you just sit, keep hitting end of turn button and watch how technologies appear (no, you can't chose the direction of research, you're researching everything at once), planets develop (you can make some token decisions regarding placement of zones, but if you leave it on automatic, it produces just as good results), and sometimes get to produce a ship a send it around.
MoO2 had one of the best tactical combats I've seen in space 4X game. Well, here you can forget it. Clumsy realtime battles where individual weapons only manifest as differently colored beams and flashes, since you control taskforces not individual ships anymore.
The game is overcomplicated, but not in "hardcore" sense where you draw satisfaction from having complete control over everything, but in sense of burying you in loads of meaningless data with little to no significance, leaving you utterly frustrated.
Bottom line - stick with MoO2, there's very little better here and most of the game is much much worse.
I love Master of Orion 1 and 2 - easily in my best all time games top ten. However, MOO3 is a completely different beast, and the biggest disapointment I have ever had in computer gaming. There is nothing that links this game with the other two, it is over complicated and under fun. If you love MOO 1 and 2, then don't get this game, it will leave a sour taste in your mouth.... full review />
I brought it when it first came out in 2003, and since then I have kept trying to play it, just one more time, to see if it was in fact better than I thought, perhaps I had missed something? Each time I have turned it off after a few hours of frustration and confusion.
Pigeonbane)
Wolfling)
Mafu13)