Master of Orion 3

I used to have this game on disc. Bought it at launch. Played >1000 hours of a flawed, un-intuitive, broken mess. Still loved every minute. With the addition of Strawberry or Tropical mods, available on the moo3 site, this game is the greatest 4x ever made. The diplomacy system in this game is what Creative Assembly has fever dreams about. With mods, its so complex and actually works. Pros: The most complex 4x ever made(Distant Worlds stole so many ideas) Great combat system(When you fully understand the systems, combat is bliss, and satisfying) Excellent emergent gameplay every game you start(No one game will ever be the same) Unmatched Diplomacy in any game ever(nothing will even come close, this was a labor of love) Gog version works right out of the box(needs mods, but the steam version isnt even updated) Medium: Learning curve greater than Eve online and most Bachelors Degree courses Takes months, almost a year to win some games. Cons: Requires mod to have widescreen support(the age) Completely unforgiving High micromanagement requirement(If you don't like Victoria 2 then don't buy) Like Stellaris some games are unwinnable(unlike stellaris, you can win combat outnumbered, and you can win most games with pure cunning). Overall: 10/10. No other game has ever come close, except Sins of a Solar Empire, but the scope of MOO3 will have you coming back for years to finally show those pesky Orions who are boss.

I liked 1 and I loved 2. 3 Was a huge disappointment. 2 still has the best graphics in my mind. In 3, you are lost in a sea of sliders. When making fleets, you are forced to make task forces. While this was interesting at 1st, it became more of a hindrance than anything else. I ended up making my giant ships into 1 ship task forces so I didn't have to deal with making tiny ships for the picket slots you have to have on armada's. This can be dealt with easy enough, but the fact that when a ship was made, it wasn't ready for service but stuck in the reserves was annoying because it forced you to take 1 extra turn to make the formation. And when you have multiple planets on multiple systems making the ship, you have easy display to show you how many of those "Deathstars" are ready for service. You have to double click on each system and then go into your reserve tab to see how many are ready. In the end, its an idea that sounds cooler on paper than it does in reality because there is no quick way to see which ships are ready or which are ready for a refit without keeping track of your task forces on a piece of notepaper. As for technology. Much like advance buildings on the planet, there is no sense of achievement. In 2, a cutscene shows the new technology you just finished and the implications of it. In 3, all you get is a sentence on your turn summary that says "Lasers are now complete." While this multi-project research may help you in the game, it doesn't explain what is being studied or what you will get out of it without going into this poorly explained "matrix" and even then, the info isn't avialable without then going into the in-game encyclopedia. Colonies are over complicated as well in this game. In 2, you send a colony ship, it makes a colony that ready for orders. In 3, If you send a colony ship, depending on the quality of the planet, it may or may not become a full colony. If it doesn't, then you have to send more ships until you have the 1,000 people to make it one, which then comes back to dealing with ship formations. This is something else that looks better on paper than implication. The only thing they seemed to do right was the diplomacy. The diplomacy web to show who feels about who is great. Now I have one screen to see that my 2 allies actually hate each other and are at war with each other. And being in the senate has more to do than just simply voting on the next president. Now you can vote on ordinances and regulations. Like tariffs on trade routes, sanctions on other races, and a multitude of other little things. In short, this is a game that looks better on paper than implication. I know some people will go against my idea that there needs to be pretty graphics for achievements, but that's why we play these games. For the sense of achievement. I want to see that Meklar holding the pointer showing me that I finally achieved the stellar converter and telling me what I can do with it. I want to see the colony ships landing on the barren planet surface rather than waiting for the colony name to go from "orion" to "Orion" to show that there is enough people to start building there.

Having played all 3 i can see why people were so disappointed with MOO3. For me though, MOO3 was the first of the series i ever played and i really enjoyed it. That said it is radically different from the first two and is much more automated. Additionally, in its vanilla state it had dramatic game breaking bugs in much of the game. However with the correct patches and even some tweak and fix mods available the game is awesome, extremely fun, and challenging. It does however take a lot of trial and error to discover how everything works and how to do everything. I personally LOVE Moo3 and have been playing it for over a decade. Please dont let the negative rating dissuade you from giving the game a chance. if you like 4x space games and like empire building im sure with a little patience you will greaty enjoy Moo3 too!

Admittedly with out any community patches or mods this game is crap. That being said, if you patch the game with community content (with or without mods) it actually becomes a decent game. I do not own the GOG version but still have the original discs. Fully patched many of the bugs that crippled this game are gone and it becomes more enjoyable to play, especially with the AI able to invade planets. One of the best features of this game are the planetary assaults. Unlike GalCiv II which had some rather cheesy battle mechanics, or GalCiv III which has an ok system, this game give you a choice on tactics to use as well as the sound of battle (with commentary by the assault commander). The larger the world (number of regions) the harder the world becomes to take from the enemy (or you). Different races have strengths or weaknesses when fighting. Or if you don't want to invade just use orbital bombardment and kill off everything. Migration is another feature that can make colonization easier along with setting targets for colony ships. Building up the regions after a planet is colonized can be left up to the viceroy or be micromanaged. The viceroy system could have been very good in addition to other aspects (which I can't remember the name of). And last was the space combat. While far different than MOO2 it was in some ways better. Again though it could have been done MUCH better. The real time battles (after patching) can be a lot of fun beyond just point and click. A fleet with only spinal mount weapons that is slow to maneuver might be at a disadvantage over a more maneuverable fleet with turret mounted weapons. Without buying the gog version I don't know how much of this holds true. Last I read (a long while ago) it was. If my disks ever give out I will be buying a new copy off of gog. If the reviews here scare you off thats fine, its an old game. For all that if you gather all the patches released by the community give it a try.

Well, I was there. I followed all the process since the beginning, since Alan Emrich, the original designer, made his first post about what MoO3 was going to be. The excitement was real. Then, the cuts began. A planned feature was cut, then another, then another, then another... And then, the game was pushed back a full year. Emrich was also cut, and the art director (I still remember the name: some Rantz Hoseley, famous for his "anti-cheese campaign", who later created one of the most cheesy races in gaming history) was put in charge of design. An art director with an ego the size of the Fujiyama (the Human race portrait, in fact, is his own). Someone who didn't know sheet about game design, and whose ego didn't allow a single drop of criticism. Still, hoping for post-release support and expansions, I made the mistake and bought it. The result was a buggy mess which basically played itself (legend has it that 1.0 could be won just and exclusively by pressing the "Turn" button). This game did not just killed a saga, it killed a whole genre. Until GalCiv came to resurrect it, the 4X genre was dead after MoO3. Many years later, I heard about all the "community patches" and had to give it another try. Bugs may be squashed, but the game remained the same. There's still very little to do save some devplanning which you cannot really tell what it affects. If you move it to the macro direction, as they claimed, you have to ensure that macro is playable and fun to play, not just a plain "Autocolonize On/Off" feature or some obscure and limited devplans. You still don't have the feeling of... simply doing something of significance. Many years later, many patches later, was still boring. And in a time when there's a Distant Worlds, a Stellaris and, most of all, the gem that is Endless Space 2, there's not point in wasting your time and money searching for a game where it isn't one.