Master of Orion 3

First of all if you are a fan of 1 and 2 and you are either a big fan of that EXACT gameplay or you are a really big fan of the race/character setup in those games, there is a very good chance you will not like this game. It is like when a friend says he's getting pizza for supper and he's buying because say you helped him move. All day you are just waiting for that big pizza with your favourite toppings just the way you like it. Then suddenly the doorbell rings and he says the pizza is here and he ordered it without asking you what you want and it has tomatoes/olives/shrimp or some other topping you hate. It still may be a great pizza, but it wasn't the pizza you were drooling over all day and it has something annoying you don't like. However if the pizza just happens to be ok or by dumb luck different but just as good as what you wanted, your fine with it. So it goes with MOO3. When it was made the lead designer did not like the original races and storyline much. He did a major revamp and was more than a little abrasive to the fan community as he did it. Then the money behind the game forced them to put the game out before it was finished let alone polished and properly tested. The most obvious sign to player is the interactions between the alien diplomats and the player. The second most obvious is the overly complicated UI controls that supposedly were going to be refined later. Very quickly people who still liked the game "if only they fixed or tweaked" this thing or that started to do it themselves. Thats where I came in. One of the problems was people were using mods to fix or enhance so many different things that it sometimes caused issues that didn't turn up until after a long game was over half done. I created a package mod that compiled these mods into a single install, putting them in the right order that they didn't conflict. I called it MasterMasterMod 1.0. Shortly after I created MasterMasterMod, the community came up with another solution, which was to come up with an unofficial patch that included an mod control and have mods be made like extentions to the patch and more compatible with each other, much like a plug in architecture. You can find these, plus stuff for MOO0, MOO1, and MOO2. at The Master of Orion Gaurdian at www.MOO3.at

To call MOO3 a "game" or to say that you "played" it, wouldn't be accurate at all. I love MOO2 and I still play it. I micromanage all of my planets every turn, and I love managing every aspect of my empire. I got REALLY excited when MOO3 came out. When it was installed, and I saw how complicated it was, I got EVEN MORE excited! But then I started interfacing with it (I refuse to say "play" about this product). I thought, "wow, this is really complicated, when I figure it out, it's going to be awesome." Many, many hours later, my main thought was, "When do I get to make decisions?" There is nothing to do in this "game" except click "end turn." There are no decisions for the "player" to make. The AI makes all decisions, and any guidance you try to give it is ignored. I tried to have a noticeable impact upon what the product was doing for many days, with no perceptible effect. A year or two later, I decided that maybe I hadn't given it a fair chance and I reinstalled it, because I REALLY wanted to like it. I spent many more hours trying to have fun, to no avail. The third try, some years later, was no better. Look at the screenshots. That's what the game looks like. Three-quarters of the main screen is a list of all of the different spreadsheets and menus of spreadsheets that you can open. Once you open one of those, it's usually another list of spreadsheets. This honestly intrigued me, at first, because there are sliders and check boxes and pull-down menus all over all of the spreadsheets. Objective testing, however, proved that any boxes I unchecked or sliders I moved, either a) had no noticeable effect, or b) were immediately changed back to their previous states as soon as I wasn't looking. I've put 30-50 hours into this game, over the years, trying to like it. I came to the conclusion that I was not receiving any fulfillment from the product, because there was no way for me to influence what was happening. When I'm building an empire, I want to control it as a totalitarian dictator. If you're looking for something for your computer to be doing when you're not around, and you don't want to help crunch numbers for SETI, this is as good of a choice as any. This product, with the removal of all UI, would make an interesting screensaver. Maybe there are mods that turn this product into a game, but they would have to change some fundamental aspects of it.

Luckily, these problems are now fixable and without them the game is competitive with GalCiv and the like, not quite to the legacy status of Master of Orion 1/2, but pretty close. At the very least its flavor is uniquely of the Orion series, which is definitely a plus in my book. I spent a long time waiting for Master of Orion 3, and my disappointment in the actual product was palpable. MOO3 allows unprecedented (for MOO) levels of micromanagement, but with the actual challenge at zero it backfires on it. I remember spending hours just clicking 'Next Turn' until I finally got to the top of the tech tree and in boredom went and wiped out all the enemies, which put up little to no fight. The problem in these kind of deep strategy games when the AI is terrible is much more than you would think. With no sense of danger or risk, you just pound next turn, slowly crawling up the tech tree, doing unnecessary micromanagement since if you have half a brain you're already ahead of the AI and making new and exciting ships to take out vastly outclassed enemies has no sense of excitement when you realize you don't even have to make your best ships to stomp out all other life in the universe. Yawning the whole time in this game only to hit a showstopper bug means you will probably never play it again. All the things that make complicated strategy games great become a negative when there is no challenge. However, if you go to orionsector.com or similar, and install the Unofficial Patch, which gets rid of almost all the known bugs, and find the AI mod that makes the AI not just sit there and wait to die, the game takes on a whole new life. The complicated gameplay now has a purpose and all of a sudden things aren't a chore any more they're a strategy. I will say it's not a perfect game even with the above, there remain a handful annoying aspects like micromanagement but nothing terrible, and the genre (4X) is not a crowded one even 7 years later, so I'd say if you're a fan of the genre/series, try it out, and before you ever start it install the above. Put in AI that sounds absolutely murderous and tone it down from there if necessary, keep in mind that the stock AI is essentially like playing against a lukewarm bowl of water so even if your AI mod description sounds insanely hard it's coming from that so there are probably weaknesses to exploit still. If you're a new player and do the above prior to ever playing it you will wonder why everyone hates it. I was almost too jaded after playing it unpatched to even give the AI/Unofficial patches a shot, but I'm glad I did, all of a sudden the additional management options became a bonus instead of a chore, the tech was hungrily consumed as soon as it came out of the lab to put onto needed warships to stay competitive.

In a nutshell: an overly complex spreadsheet interface that must be brilliant at crunching numbers, but wholly ineffective at conveying the relevant information to you. You never have a sense of control over the destiny of your empire. Too many tasks are automated and too many parameters exist but which carry values that never lead to clear consequences, unlike the first 2 games of the series. I bought this on its original release date back in 2003, with my brother (because we were huge fans of the series) and it was priced something like 70-80$ in CAD. This was the most bitter gaming mistake I've ever done in my life.

You look at your planet, you decide what to build next. You do the same with research. You hit next turn, and you find that your research and build order have been changed by the computer. What the f*ck? You look for the setting that takes control BACK from the computer, for YOUR human-controlled empire. There isn't a setting that do this....your decisions are ALWAYS, and FOREVER subject to being overridden by the AI. It took me ten minutes to install, play, and then delete this game. I have been ANGRY for years over this piece of sh!t. I purchased the strategy guide several months before the game came out, and I can sincerely state that THIS was the one...the ONE game I have looked forward to the most. For that reason, it was, and REMAINS, the biggest disappointment, ever. Caveat emptor...do not purchase this game.