Posted January 13, 2021
The first words in the introduction part of the manual clearly state that the game "is a spiritual successor to Master of Orion 2" and the developers really did a great job in (at least partly) copying - and also partly improving - the concepts of MOO2 that made it a great game in 1996!
After approximately 10 hours of playing my first game I can definitely recommend this game!
Some PROs:
- the user interface is clean and easy to use after a very short time,
- the research tree offers a lot of diverse and useful technologies (without making the mistake of MOO2 that allowed only some races to research all technologies while others often had to choose between one or another technology - in ISG an elegant solution was found by just making technologies within the same category a little bit more expensive to research if you have already researched one (or more)),
- an adequate ship designer that offers all you need to easily design or upgrade your ships, although it only offers a total number of 12 concurrent designs (but until now I have not needed that many ship designs anyway) and
- logical ship upgrade options (you cannot just upgrade a ship anywhere in space, a grave mistake of e. g. Galactic Civilizations 3 in my opinion, but have to fly to a system with a starbase for upgrades),
- an easy to use turn based combat interface with all the nice options of MOO2 like individual ship movement and weapon use,
- the planet screen has been much expanded compared to the original MOO2 game: you do not just move your colonists between farms, industries and research labs, but have to take care of the population's morale, build infrastructure, production and - as soon as possible - improve the plant's ecology and/or terraform it to your race's ideal climate. In your first game this might look complicated but after a short time everything is clear and easy to handle, although I would recommend to change the production allocation mode from the triangle that is initially displayed to the slider display (you will know what I mean when you see it :-))...
- another PRO for me is that the game is not only drm free but also one of the very few games that do not try to 'phone home' when the game is started! This has nothing to do with game play but I appreciate developers who do not spy on their gamers, thank you!
The exploration part of the game has really changed (compared to MOO2) but that is not a bad thing, just different and I am ok with it!
There's a lot more to see and do, statistic screens, diplomacy, leaders, galactic events - and hard to kill space monsters :-)!
Over all I really enjoyed playing the game so far and can only ask the developer for very few improvements (for which I would even pay if they came in another future DLC):
- how about an option for multiplayer using local LAN oder direct IP Internet connections like the original MOO2? I am sure a lot of players would love that, escpecially if you do not force them to install an unwanted/unnecessary client software for multiplayer games (aka galaxy or steam) but just keep the game really drm free for multiplayer too!
- and I would like to have maps with even larger galaxies than currently offered! How about an insane/immense option with about twice the size of your current largest galaxy?
edit: removed typos
After approximately 10 hours of playing my first game I can definitely recommend this game!
Some PROs:
- the user interface is clean and easy to use after a very short time,
- the research tree offers a lot of diverse and useful technologies (without making the mistake of MOO2 that allowed only some races to research all technologies while others often had to choose between one or another technology - in ISG an elegant solution was found by just making technologies within the same category a little bit more expensive to research if you have already researched one (or more)),
- an adequate ship designer that offers all you need to easily design or upgrade your ships, although it only offers a total number of 12 concurrent designs (but until now I have not needed that many ship designs anyway) and
- logical ship upgrade options (you cannot just upgrade a ship anywhere in space, a grave mistake of e. g. Galactic Civilizations 3 in my opinion, but have to fly to a system with a starbase for upgrades),
- an easy to use turn based combat interface with all the nice options of MOO2 like individual ship movement and weapon use,
- the planet screen has been much expanded compared to the original MOO2 game: you do not just move your colonists between farms, industries and research labs, but have to take care of the population's morale, build infrastructure, production and - as soon as possible - improve the plant's ecology and/or terraform it to your race's ideal climate. In your first game this might look complicated but after a short time everything is clear and easy to handle, although I would recommend to change the production allocation mode from the triangle that is initially displayed to the slider display (you will know what I mean when you see it :-))...
- another PRO for me is that the game is not only drm free but also one of the very few games that do not try to 'phone home' when the game is started! This has nothing to do with game play but I appreciate developers who do not spy on their gamers, thank you!
The exploration part of the game has really changed (compared to MOO2) but that is not a bad thing, just different and I am ok with it!
There's a lot more to see and do, statistic screens, diplomacy, leaders, galactic events - and hard to kill space monsters :-)!
Over all I really enjoyed playing the game so far and can only ask the developer for very few improvements (for which I would even pay if they came in another future DLC):
- how about an option for multiplayer using local LAN oder direct IP Internet connections like the original MOO2? I am sure a lot of players would love that, escpecially if you do not force them to install an unwanted/unnecessary client software for multiplayer games (aka galaxy or steam) but just keep the game really drm free for multiplayer too!
- and I would like to have maps with even larger galaxies than currently offered! How about an insane/immense option with about twice the size of your current largest galaxy?
edit: removed typos
Post edited January 13, 2021 by RainbowDragon