Master of Orion 3

After having enjoyed the classic MOO and MOO2, this was an automatic "must buy" for me. It turned out to be one of the worst games I've ever played, and the only worse ones didn't cost me nearly as much. To give an example of how broken this was, I was running short on food, and one planet had a few open slots where food would grow, so I ordered a farm to be built. The local governor thought it would be a great spot to put a factory, so he cancelled my farm and started a factory. I cancelled the factory and put a farm down, only to have it replaced by another factory. Meanwhile, my entire empire was out of food and falling apart, but NOWHERE could I build another farm that would actually build. Game over. Uninstalled, and sold the game back to the store, so it became someone else's nightmare.

Master of Orion 3 was supposed to be revolutionary. You were put into the shows of the leader of a galactic empire, and had to manage it from a distance. There were layers upon layers of AIs, making decisions that you could influence (or you could disable a few outright), representing various aspects of your government and bureaucracy. The fundamental flaw in this picture is the heavy limitations of the AI and how awful it is, and how little control over the actual empire you possess. At every turn you will be fighting AIs and their poor decisions, and struggling to get done what you actually want done. And to top it off, the game was remarkably buggy and unfinished even in its patched state. MoO3's failure is legendary. It singlehandedly killed the entire space 4x genre for years until GalCiv2 breathed life back into it. Many a forum erupted in rage after the much hyped game turned out to be a steaming turd. Stay away at all costs, it's not even worth the price of admission as a curiosity. It's that bad.

The most accurate, succinct review I once read on Master of Orion 3 was "It's like doing taxes, without the fun". Everything that made the first two games fun is stripped out and replaced by a maze of convoluted spreadsheets. Control over many aspects of the game is so indirect that at times you feel like you're simply watching an AI make (usually bad) decisions for you. Now I'll grant you that I didn't play MoO3 for more than about 5 or 6 hours total between 3 installs, so I never got very far into the game. But here's the kicker. I loved Orion 1 and 2. I *wanted* to like Orion 3 - I really did. I *tried* to. But I just never could. Each successive install I went into the game with less expectations, hoping that my initial impression was colored by the first two games. It wasn't. As one final note, I'd like to point out that I bought Master of Orion 3 the week it came out about, 6-7 years ago, entirely on the memory and reputation of its predecessors. It wasn't the first game I'd bought this way, and it wasn't the first time I was disappointed - but the level of disappointment I had with MoO3 was so great that I have never since bought a game (even a sequel) without scouring the internet for many, many reviews, both professional and customer. I realize that most game publishers consider the first week's sales of a game the most important, but I usually wait 1-2 months at the very least, directly because of my experience with this game - even after several years. That, perhaps, is a more compelling testimony than anything else I've written.

In the past I heard great thinks about MOO1 and MOO2 so I bought MOO3. I tried and tried again but the AI, which was planning my routs and construction caused me great pain. Some years later I found GOG and downloaded MOO1 and MOO2 and had was pleased, despite the small maps / short game. So, I read the reviews on MOO3, which tell us that there are mods that can make MOO3 work. Hence I downloaded it and... I tried a few mods and non of them made the game any better. The idea of MOO3 is brilliant but it has this AI that does everything wrong: 1. Vessel routing 2. Construction planning 3. Research tree What to do? MOO1 and MOO2 are too short. Ascendancy is also suffering from a poor AI. GC1 is surpassed by GC2 and both don't have the galaxy effect. To those developers, use the AI from GC, take the map from Ascendancy and add the economy detail of MOO and you would have the perfect space strategy game. ;)

Game will not run on Windows 10. Tried on a Yoga Pro 2, and a HP 820 G2. Exception c000005. Game refuses to load. Runs fine on a Windows 7 system. tried changing screen resolution to a more standard configuration, still no luck. If you are still running win7 you should be OK, but win10 is a no-go.