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.
