Still better than the new editions. IMO the peak of turn'based space strategy games and the model by which all such games should be judged. Start with a home planet in an unknown map of star systems. Build your tech, economy, fleet and politics, meet strange new alien races, decide whether to befriend or attack them. Search for relics and preferred leaders. Build your spy network, steal foreign tech and safeguard your own, even make bad things happen in other empires and frame someone else for it... There are well-known cheat codes to get you past the learning curve, but you don't get a score if you use them. Literally millions of game enthusiasts have copies of this, and if you can find them, there are servers you can play each other on. You need this game.
First, worst and foremost, after I had purchased and greatly enjoyed (for well over a decade) MoO2 and had recently purchased and begun to play MoO3, MoO3 suddenly stopped saving or loading games due to an apparent unavailability of directx surface. In the same week, after so many years of very good function, MoO2 seized up and never worked again. Neither will load at all with Windows7, and both stopped working with XP at the same time. I tried to find tech support, but no matter whom I sought out, none was available. They are still retailing the programs but there is no support for them. That was the worst of the problem. I am at a loss as to why the developers discarded almost entirely the very functional intuitive interface used in MoO2. I am a fan of the series and have played it since the first release of MoO (1). MoO3 seems to allow the player only a supervisory role while the computer plays the game. Combat is nearly impossible to coordinate, and the planets do as they please. I can understand setting zones, and that is fine, but the older series let you pick which buildings to construct where and what to do with them. No matter how much you try to play and strive to understand, the NPCs always overpower you and have all the advantages. Everything takes excessively long to do and cannot be accomplished in time to compete with the AI characters. It is simply too difficult to play well, and once you start to figure it out, it quits working at all. Not what I would call a successful venture.
