This is pretty much it. If the games had come out in order #1, #3, #2 - ignoring for a moment the clear technical challenges there! - it would be pretty much seen as a perfect curve.

SC3 is not as good as SC2; it's not BAD. There's always some awkward spots in games as big as these (I know people who dislike the Zoq-Fot-Pik, for example), and while I have my beefs about SC3, there's no denying it deserves praise and attention here in a reasoned measure.

Hi got that temp header as well so looks to be a wee problem with installer but game installs fine.

Getting back to the comparisons between Deus Ex 2 and Star Control 3, Deus Ex 2 had a very good reason to be hated early on: for a lot of people, it'd crash soon after start up. Many missions could not be completed and even if finished you often got different results then you should. The universal ammunition system worked largely to ensure that you'd be constantly to short on ammunition to do any fighting except with melee weapons. Locational damage had been completely removed except with the sniper rifle, which was cumbersome and downright painful to get a headshot with when the game registered a shot to the head as taking place at all.

Enemy AI tended to alternate between being some of the stupidest we'd ever seen and very obviously cheating. Inventory space was so short you essentially could not carry any meaningful variety of weapons or tools.

On top of which, it was nearly two years late coming out.

This is the Deus Ex: Invisible War that people who bought it the moment it came out got. This was how it stayed for almost 6 months afterwords, before a great many patches made it playable. Even then, the story felt tacked on, the game was repetitive, and there wasn't anyways near the customization the previous game had had even with the expanded weapons augmentations and physical augmentations.

I think most people wanted to start off from the aftermath of he first game, maybe even play as JC again.

That said, Star Control 3 wasn't hated so much as it was hard to adjust to. There was no massive character derailment, the Spathi were still cowardly aliens with improbably fast, powerful ships, everything was at least a little familiar. Most of us old time players eventually warmed to Star Control 3. Star Control 3 still felt like a Star Control game. It just took adjustment.

It probably helped we hadn't had a much more stable, more faithful sequel to a much beloved game using the same engine released at about the same time by the same people, though. That definitely counted against Deus Ex, Invisible war.

referring to Deus Ex 2

I actually got to play it properly on the original xbox a couple of years
after the pc release - and rather enjoyed it

I tried The Ur-Quan Masters and the first fight with the fire breathing guys killed me in less than 4 seconds... so... if the actual SC games are anything like that then this series can suck it....

i wanted to try The Ur-Quan Masters to see if id like it but after 3 attempts fire breathing spider asshole kills me every time after i save the outpost on earth with crap from mercury...

Your Earthling Cruiser is faster than the Ilwrath ship. Run away from it and shoot missiles from a distance. Your problem is probably that you're trying to fight with your flagship. :)

Ah yes, the "I'm playing it the wrong way, but I insist on blaming the game for that!" attitude.

Starcontrol 2 is utterly brilliant and the combat is made so that some ships that are very weak against some, can easily win against others. It's a kind of rock paper scissor kind of thing. Your weak Spathi ship could be beaten by some massive cruiser, yet it could take down another cruiser just as easily and that's the charm of the game. In the single player game, it was a lot of fun recruiting different races and getting to pick the ships before you entered combat.

About Star Controls 3: when I bought it some 14-15 years ago, I enjoyed it. It wasn't bad, it wasn't brilliant, but it made some crucial errors. The main one ,was doing away with what made SC2 so epic: the size. It wasn't as free and big anymore and exploring was far less rewarding. Instead of feeling like you had an ENORMOUS galaxy to explore, it turned into just a large one.

The main sin, for me, was making the Precursors, which I had always wondered about in SC2, ... cows. In SC2, the idea of finding a massive space port of these mystical and ancient beings (akin to Stargate and its own ancients) was very profound. But giving a face (and such a poor one at that) to them ...

Oh, and SC2's music was much better.

Woo man I couldn't get enough of this game when I was a kid. Back to it thanks to GOG! Great addition.

The sad thing is that he's complaining about the Ilwrath fight at the very beginning of the game... the one that can't cloak and has no health.

While I vehemently agree with the idea that Star Control "can suck it", I do think that anyone who can't handle that first Ilwrath after multiple tries should probably stay far, far away from the game before they have to fight a Kohr-Ah or something.

Star Control 3 isn't a bad game. It's just not what people wanted in a lot of ways. The combat's still fun, talking to the aliens is still fun, but there are some really questionable story choices, and they traded in the exploration and resource management for colonies that pretty much do everything you need on autopilot.

Play Super Melee for a while using various ships versus an easy AI opponent. You'll get the hang of it more easily that way. It's fun on its own terms, too. Just remember that the easy AI is ignoring half of its abilities.

A lot of the ships in the game can dominate certain opponents and perform horribly versus others. Anything fast and agile vs. a Mycon. Chmrr vs. Ur-Quan. Earthling vs. Vux at a distance. Bunch of other matchups I no longer remember.

Doog > all in regular game.

Not in SC2, of course.

It has a nice very fast spinning galaxy map...