Master of Orion: Collector's Edition

The game you blends elements from CiV and the old Master of Orion games (particularly II). If you loved Master of Orion, but thought it could use updated graphics and controls, or like CiV but really wish it were set in space (NOT a distant planet, but proper space -looking at you Alpha Centauri), then this is the game for you. There are however still many game breaking bugs however most are being patched out. So my verdict would be to wait a year or two for the price to drop and the bugs to go, before buy it.

The game is good.. mostly. But it does have some glaring problems. For instance, if two fleets meet (doesn't matter in which order) if one side is superior, the battle will result in 0 losses. Always. And that is just fantasticly dumb. The whole idea is that attrition is something that needs to be accounted for. So one side just doesn't railroad their opponents. That any size will have losses, to prevent that type of strategy, In this regard the game is utterly broken. I can build a massive fleet, and just annihilate the opposition. This is something that wasn't possible in MOO2. Another thing was the fact that diplomacy mattered in MOO2, it certainly doesn't in this version. The AI will pretty much ignore your actions, whatever you do. Again, broken. Beyond that, I think they've done a pretty good job. The game is fun, until you either railroad the opposition yourself, or get railroaded. And that just brings the game down to medium. MOO2 is in my book, still the best 4x game ever made. If they pay attention to the things I mentioned, it will be a much better game. But as it stands now, the game is good, but not better than MOO2.

First, the interface: Panning across the galaxy is painfully slow, forcing you to use the "grab and pull" method, which is clunky compared to simply bumping your mouse against the edge of the screen. Want to zoom out? You can only pull back so far before the game gleefully pulls you back in to the level it THINKS you should be using. Zoom out farther, and your screen is reduced to 2D geometric shapes. Second, Gameplay: Gone is that wonderful "one more turn" feeling from the originals, and in its place is a slog through the development of inevitably unsuitable planets, only to be confronted without warning by the Antares Herald, who appears next to your homeworld and flattens you. This, is on NORMAL difficulty. Lastly, where are the thoughtful, turn-based battles? What is left is a beautiful looking real-time experience that falls flat in actual gameplay.

It's pretty, the UI is pretty slick in many places, I actually don't hate the combat even though they're taking forever to get all the actual weapons tech up and running. I'm on the fence about starlanes. Now, the problems - note the recurring pointless micro theme. * Pollution. You have to stop everything to clean it up occasionally or your biomes degrade rather than simply having cleanup count against production automatically. Somebody on the design team has a broken sense of fun. * You have to research embassies, and then get permission from the AI to have an embassy (which has become a chore in its own right in the most recent updates) before you can have a trade or a research agreement which now expires, contributes very little to building up a relationship with the AI beyond an initial uptick when you initiate the agreement and agreements give you nothing until the very end often leading to declarations of war to sabotage them giving you no return on the initial investment, Because the AI is a moron, this happens a lot. I've stopped bothering with diplomacy for anything other than trading tech. It's that bad. * You have to research population and marine transports now. Your first colony currently just has to sit there and farm for dozens of turns while you wait on the technology you need because your first colony ship doesn't come with a colony base which provides some food production out of the box (you have to research that too). That might change because it's really obviously a drag on the early game but civilian transports you have to research won't. * 5-slot build queue. How did they actually regress from MOO2's build queues which weren't quite big enough themselves? It blows my mind. * Poorly thought out tech dilemmas. Battlepods or fighters? Early (more mid-game now) fighters no longer play a role in this MOO unless you can convince an AI that actually has them to let you trade half your empire for the technology.

Wow, all these negative reviews seem not to focus on the game itself but the comparison to its predecessors. I played those old MOO versions and they were good for their time but we have to understand that this is a new age and this game should rather be compared to Galatic Civilizations and Prax, etc. This version of MOO certainly gives a nice feel to it. I only played it once but I am eager to try another race... The economy is working well unlike GC2 where you constantly have to search for anomalies to keep your empire afloat. The empire is manageable, unlike Prax. You don't need a tutorial as it is very straight forward and simple to manage. You can even control your space battles TTW in space and if you do you can shift the balance a great deal. Your evolution and galaxy is manageable even if you don't set everything on auto. Yes, the descriptions are not all that explanatory but 80% fairly understandable. I don't spend much on games but EUR 17 is an acceptable price for a few weekends of joy.