Master of Orion

It's fairly faithful rerun of the original (awesome) MoO2. There are a couple very minor improvements (spies have new options, diplomacy has been changed, you can build installations on warp points). Nothing game breaking, but it gives it an air of novelty. A lot that has worked well was removed. Times are hectic, so turn based combat, which rocked in the original was changed into real time. I wasn't able to find any tactical depth in that, ships fly again each other and one side goes boom. I failed to find any incentive to design my ships anymore, since I'm not getting any feedback from changes. Forget boarding of ships. Maybe the modifications to weapons make some difference, but since I can't really track them, they don't matter to me and I often end up just having combat auto resolved. This, for me, was a very bad decision which removed 30% of fun I had with the game. Another thing that rocked in MoO2 was necessity to pick one technology out of several and having to get the rest by espionage, trade or just do without. Here the idea was only preserved on a very few techs, removing the dilemmas. I guess it was done to ensure the less popular techs are actually used, but I'd prefer rebalancing instead. One thing I have to give the game credit for are races which are nicely designed and advisors have a bit of personality, sobe being really hillarious. But again - why have some original races been removed? Bottom line - I had some fun with discovering the new stuff, but after a few hours of playing, I've realized the game is too faithful a clone and has removed too many things that were very good. If it was a standalone game, I'd give it decent three stars. But since I've eventually quit and returned to 20 years old (!!) MoO2, finding it more fun, I'm giving two. If you're horribly bored of the original, buy this. Otherwise save you money and play the original.

whatever happened to DRM free on GOG? are you serious?

Caution: You may not play online until you link your GOG account to wargaming.net I'd be fine with having to install Galaxy (I use it all time anyway) in order to play the multiplayer, however. Furthermore, accepting EULA will defuse GOG's appreciated customer protection at numerous points.

WARNING: - Requires online DRM. - Requires installation and use of GOG Galaxy. - Requires creation of WarGaming.net account. - Requires agreement to third-party [WarGaming.net] EULA and TOS. - Requires linking your GOG account to WarGaming.net, which permanently enables limited datamining of personal, non anonymizied information from GOG. - WarGaming.net collects personal AND anonymized usage, tracking and telemetry data from both their respective website(s) and game clients. - WarGaming.net monitors and permanently stores all communications made in multiplayer games. - WarGaming.net collects IP and MAC addresses, hardware and software configuration information from you, both in-game AND by use of their website. - WarGaming.net can not-only revoke your ability to use multiplayer, but require you destroy all copies of your game. By linking with your GOG account, they *could* legally force GOG to delete the game from your library. - WarGaming.net is responsible for multiple bloodsucking, privacy violating, Pay-to-Win MMO shovelware titles such as World of Tanks and World of Warplanes. - No Linux version is available from GOG at this time. That said, I'm a huge fan of MoO and MoO2. MoO2 is hands-down my favourite 4X game, I still get people together for LAN multiplayer on occasion. Probably like many of you, I would have loved to have seen these games get a higher resolution UI, implement a few community patches and maybe get a new soundtrack. These games are almost perfect and have withstood the test of time because of that. I WILL NOT BUY this game for the above-listed reasons, but from what I've seen of it, much of the game's flow, balance and core mechanics have been upset in this remake. I consider it unfaithful and terribly disappointing to say the least. But let's be clear, this IP was grabbed up by a scumbag anti-privacy Pay-to-Win shovelware MMO company, not by the real fans who might have cared about preserving the integrity of the game.

This is NOT 100% DRM free game. Avoid and boycott DRM.