Master of Orion 3

When I first heard that Master of Orion was due for a trilogy, I was excited. But then I played the game and it was an epic disappointment. It was clunky from its user interface, research tech tree, and it's fleet management. The only bright side to MOO3: it serves as an example of what NOT to do with the next Master of Orion title (if this installment hasn't killed it?)

Unless you are fully aware of what this game is. If not, try anything else here on GoG - Master of Orion 1+2, Galactic Civilizations, SimCity 2000 etc.

When it was first announced I was thrilled to no end to see another sequel to its awesome predecessor: Master of Orion 2. I played through MoO2 in anticipation of the third game. Then came the day. The day where I would finally pick up the game and play for hours and hours! If MoO2 was anything to go by, MoO3 would be even better, right? WRONG! It is an absolute disaster of a game. It is riddled with bugs and clunky interface and it is just such a step backwards from what the other two games were it's beyond comprehension how absolutely terrible this game is. You have an interface that is both confusing and so non-user friendly it beggars belief how it even was allowed to be designed much less pass QA testing to begin with! Then you have all the various races which - when it all boils down to it - aren't that dissimilar from each other. A few minor quirks and oddities but in general you really don't see that much of a game-breaking difference between them. The game itself is micro-management Hell. There are a million and one sliders and buttons and options and choices that you can interact with but do absolutely naff all in the long run. You can spend hours micromanaging everything but it really doesn't matter since you won't see any significant improvement from leaving everything on Automatic. Then there's the difficulty. It is so random and so obnoxiously stupid it is difficult to describe how wildly it can swing from one session to the next and even from one BATTLE to the next. I remember attacking another alien race and I was outnumbering it in both technology and firepower. And I still got my ass kicked. I reloaded the save and tried again, this time without micromanaging everything and I won by a landslide. It is just so random that it drives you up the walls crazy trying to figure out how to work everything to your advantage. Then you have a really, really annoying bug when it comes to money. If you somehow go over 2.2 billion credits, it will turn those credits in a 2.2 billion deficit. Meaning you have just about 5 or so turns before the game is over through no fault of your own. Thanks to poor coding you're screwed if you ever hoard money. This game is everything a game should not be. Everyone should take a look at Master of Orion 3 and learn a valuable lesson from it: This is how a game should NEVER be made. It's terrible and should never have seen light of day without extensive testing. Anyone thinking of picking this game up: Don't. Save your money. Go pick up Master of Orion 2 instead. Master of Orion 3 is a failure of galactic proportions. It's just so bad. The manual is full of cool war stories, though. Final verdict: 1/10. It's garbage. Save your money and buy Master of Orion 2 instead.

Compaired to the other two not worth playing very buggy with almost wireframe graphics. Playing this makes root canal sound good.

I remember the forums from Quicksilver, back when MOO 3 was in development. How excited i was that the devs were present on the forums and participating. Then shock and horror...I saw where this micro management thing was planned, and that one, then another, and another, and another. I commented..DONT setup 1000 micromangement details@! "We aren't" they responded. YOU ARE, read your own statements! I bought the game on the day of release. I went to Best Buy, bought it, brought it home and asnxiously installed it. 1 hour after installation, I uninstalled the game, and listed the game on Ebay. Moo3, Diablo 3, BG 3...MASSIVE disappointemnts. Seems the 3rd incarnation, is once too often for going back to the well. DO.NOT.BUY.THIS.GAME