Master of Orion 1+2

MOO2 is one of that elite group of games that has been continuously installed on the hard drive of every computer I've ever owned. As a Civilization nut who missed out on the first MOO, discovering MOO2 was just a bit like stumbling over the unannounced sequel to Civ that chronicled what happened after you launched that ship to Alpha Centauri (with apologies to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, another fantastic sci-fi TBS game). You simply cannot go wrong with this game. If you like deep strategy in a sci-fi setting, engaging art and a deep research tree, and the ability to tweak every aspect of every one of your vast armada of battleships, this is the game for you. It has a great balance between development and combat, and you can change the game's and your species' settings so that your gameplay experience is perfectly suited to your tastes. And now I get a treat, too, because I can discover the original MOO as well. I'm excited for it!

There are over 150 reviews to tell you how awesome this game is. What I am going to tell you is this: INCREASE THE CYCLES!!! What are cycles? I don't know really. DOSbox vodoo... They are visible on top of your game screen in the windowed mode and they MUST be over 10000 for you to keep enjoying MoO! The game opens with 3000 cycles. My clicks' response time was around two seconds and I had to wait for half a minute for my turn to end. What you do is you hit Ctrl+F12 until you are satisfied with the speed. My personal choice is 30000 cycles. I played this game for more than 20 hours until I realized something was wrong with the speed. That is how capticating this game is!

These titles are classics that all game collectors and affectionates should have in their collection. Master of Orion was THE father of all 4x (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate) games. It combined empire management with tactical combat and spruced it up with a comprehensive diplomacy and spying system. As all great games, it was easy to play, hard to master. For its time it had good (now laughable basic) graphics, but the design is still exemplary and something that many games designers can only dream of living up to. As one of the first games to support sound cards the music and sound effect are basic, but hold immense nostalgia value. Master of Orion 2 took a good game, and added a little twist - a bit more history, more races, more options, more involved combat. All in all a game just a tad more complex. It also has (a know also outdated) but excellent hand-drawn SVGA graphics with more detailed designs. Opinions differ as to which is the *purest* 4x game (both of them were so good), yet everyone agrees that these *ARE* the etalons to which each and every other game are measured. If you think an old, game with "basic" graphics can't hold your attention... ...well maybe not. It's not flashy, it takes time and effort to win a game and the game definitely *won't* hold your hand. On the other hand, so much effort has went to these games, there is so much detail and finicky tuning that you might miss on your first play through that once hooked you'll be a orion fanatic for life.

This review is mainly about MOO2, since my memories of MOO1 are very fuzzy. As you probably know already, MOO2 is a 4X game. What makes this such a timeless classic is the sheer addiction involved. I will admit it here: it's not the most complex 4X game around, but that doesn't make it any less addictive. How do you want to play the game? As with every other 4X game, you are allowed near limitless freedom in your methods of pursuing your objectives. You can coerce a weak race into giving you annual tributes before annihilating them. Random events make the game even more flavourful. A supernova may destroy an enemy's home planet, therefore giving you a temporary upper hand. The graphics in this game are rudimentary, but they are very pleasant looking. The interface is very user friendly. Music and sounds are also limited, but the music, for some reason, never gets tired IMHO. I smile everytime the research music plays, and even the main background music is so fitting and relaxing that it's hard to turn it off, even from my mind. Combat offers a lot of flexibility too. Certain weapons are more tactical than others - for example, the spatial compressor is a superweapon that obliterates almost anything smaller than a Doomstar, but it requires huge volumes of space to be fitted into; a gyro destabilizer is a very tactical weapon that disorientates an enemy ship and kills its hull. These little intricacies can make all the difference in how you want a battle to work out. Other cool feats include colonizing enemy planets - bombing a planet into submission is the easiest way to colonize it, but you will have to raise a new population all over again. The game is not complex in that it doesn't throw tons of numbers at you. You can read the statistics, and easily understand what's going on. But where the game is addictive is in the choices it gives you. There is so much freedom, so much flexibility. Granted, the tech tree is somewhat biased, since certain choices are obviously better than others. Nevertheless, this game offers a lot. Even if you're just paying $5.99 for Master of Orion 2, it'll still be very worth it.