Master of Orion 3

This game was a truly decepcion. It's one of de worst games I ever play.

First, a little history. MOO2 - purchased at GOG, own the disc, and have many hundreds of MB in add-ons and updates - was and is one of the best 4X space games ever made. It has strategy, tactical combat, endless tech tree, ship design, decades of replay variety, humor, challenge, alternative ways to win, etc. In other words it struck a perfect balance with all the main "wants" a gamer might have for such a game. It was an archetype that helped define the 4x space strategy game genre. And it was fun, so much so that the late game micro-management grind that tends to bog down and unhorse such games from delusions of grandeur did but little to shoebox this game into the forgotten past. Much like Heroes of Might and Magic III, it was not perfect, but about as perfect as a game of its ilk could be. And has withstood the test of time. But NOT this game, MOO3. Read the media hype and falsehoods for years before buying it, had a bad gut feeling, but still bought it. Almost like when considering Heroes V of Might and Magic, another mega-turd. It was MOO, how could one not buy it? When I saw planets and ships that didn't look right, more like soap bubbles and those little plastic flags they put in your steak at Ponderosa, I knew there was something horribly wrong. I delved into the meat of the game to find the diplomacy, ship design, options... and was greeted with a massively obtuse and unintuitive menu system (GUI). In MOO2, what took a few clicks, now took an atlas, prayer, and luck. And the game wasn't fun. At all. And the humor wasn't funny. And the AI has the strategic genius of a Roomba. What a disaster, a complete sham. I feel sorry for anyone involved in wasting their lives programming this waste of magnetic media, and even more so for those who paid money for it, including myself, who have been better off investing with Bernie Madoff than purchasing this game. At least Madoff is exposed to some sort of justice, however weak, and your gut feeling of "too good to be true" could be backed by many people who probably "told you so." Well, I am telling you so now. Buy this game to support GOG, or as a collector to complete your space game or MOO collection, but no matter what, don't buy it to relive the glory days of MOO2, those are past history.

boo. I'm a big fan of MOO1 and MOO2, but this is gross

I really enjoy this game when I feel like a few minutes feeling productive and influential in a science fiction setting. Competent AI assistants and regents could handle any of the details of the simulated colonization/exploration scenerio that I encountered while playing, allowing you to focus on the parts of the game you enjoy the most without the situation falling apart as it does in some other titles (including previous entries in the series, apparently). A valuable game to look at if only for the art and interface design, which might be the best that I've seen in a computer strategy game.

Master of Orion 3 was my most anticipated game at the time, the original title was my favorite game. While none of the developers of the previous games were involved, I had hope in the idealistic Quicksilver to get things done. As it turned out, while they were chirping out cool ideas they were trying to implement, trouble brewed behind the scenes. The game lost its producer half-way through development and what was once a comprehensive vision became a jungle of glassy, well-intended shards. What wound up in a bizarre red box on a frigid February day and, subsequently, in my college-poor hands, is a mystery. The art direction was unified and repulsive. Every fun aspect of empire building was washed away by layers and layers of abstraction and complication. Diplomacy became a game of e-mail and even further abstractions. Simply playing the game was a chore. The game sold okay and it was enough for Infogrames to charge Quicksilver with a pair of patches before dropping support entirely. This mess of a "game" (more like a boring galactic toolset) isn't worthy of the Master of Orion game and I suppose if we'd all been wiser, we could've foreshadowed the trainwreck from miles away, but we were far too hopeful and naive. Do not buy.