After the horrible MOO3, it seemed like the classic MOO franchise was doomed as a gaming history footnote. Fortunately, the IP was rescued and given the AAA treatment it deserves. The biggest take away is the quality that shines throughout the game. The visuals, UI, sound, CG, etc… is all top notch and may even be the new benchmark in strategy games. The little details are amazing too, like how the mannerisms and speech of the other leaders will change according to how they feel about your empire. Granted, that in of itself is not new, but it is just done so well, that the devs deserve mad props for it. I can’t count how many times I’ll purposely ease up or even give extra aid to the Mrrshan, as I could not bare seeing their queen being so submissive and fearful of me. Granted, her claws come back out as-soon-as an opportunity arises, but I never learn…. <damn you super moe space cat waifu!!!> ...Anyway, all the beloved races from MOO1 are given the respect they deserve and all are very entertaining to play as or against. The dev’s really knocked the races out of the park with this release. The expressive races just gives the game so much personality that you really feel connected in a living universe, instead of just number crunching like in some other massive but soulless strategy games. While the MOO2/3 races aren’t in yet, I’m sure they will pop up in an expansion at some point as Wargaming is very good about supporting their games long term. The game has respectable amounts of customization for the ships and races both. While not as high as a GAL CIV3, it is still sufficient to keep the gameplay interesting and it does seem like they’ve built in the foundation to support further customization at some point too. Ground combat is typical 4x, so it works but nothing special. Space combat is done pretty well at this point though. You have a lot of options to tailor the tactical combat to your liking, such as how fast combat is (can make it essentially turn base if you want), formations, setting weapon engagement distances, individual ship speeds, etc… It’s kinda similar to the Star Wars: Empire at War games, except no subsystem targeting, but with much better battle flow controls. AI is good by strategy game standards, as it improved with every alpha/beta update as you’d expect. Still may be possible to exploit the AI in some circumstances, but I was getting some challenging games my last few play throughs which is something I can’t say about many games out there. The UI is well thought out and I never had any problem finding something or having to perform an excessive number of clicks to perform an action. Very top notch design. Finally, this game is just full of heart. You can really tell how much love went into it, as it seemed to be almost a passion project. Essentially some old fans of MOO got the opportunity to resurrect a game they loved due to the huge success of their other games. While their vision of a perfect MOO may not be exactly what some others wanted (fat chance having everybody wanting the same thing to begin with), what can’t be denied is how much went into this game. This is not some simple cash grab done by some soulless corporate entity who cared nothing about the original classics, that unfortunately happens far too often (...wipes away a tear for HOMM...). This is a tribute to a beloved classic, being given the support it deserves. That alone makes this a worthy buy in this gamers eyes. ……… well… that and our Mrrshan overlords :)
