Everyone likes to talk about Master of Orion 2. How popular and great it was. But very few remember Pax. Why? It wasn't because it was a bad game. Frankly it was a very good game but MOO2 surpassed it mostly because Pax did not have the marketing muscle that MOO2 had. They both launched around the same time and MOO2 just dominated due to an onslaught of press. Yet when I've talked to most people over the years who had played both games, just about all of them liked Pax better. When you pit MOO2 and Pax head to head it was clear why. First off, Pax was graphically better. It was detail levels higher than just about anything that launched at the time. Pax also had one of the best, and still best, ship designers in a 4X. Even today I'll play Gal Civ III or Endless Space and think...man if this game only had Pax's ship designer.... The only area MOO2 really surpassed Pax was involving the micro management. Pax is much more simplified. You spend more time conquering and making unstoppable armadas in Pax than you do managing your planets. Perhaps people liked this more at the time as MOO2 was more like Civilization and the like which were all about micro management. Modern gamers playing this game...yes the game literally gets repetitive once you research everything. But then so does every 4X. I've not found a 4X title that doesn't get some degree of dull once you've advanced all the way. That isn't to say there isn't an endgame. But that the battles shift from being more tech based to managing fleet compositions and movements during combat. In fact Pax was very much ahead of it's time in this regard in allowing you full control over your armada during a battle. Modern titles still don't do this. Endless Space is fantastic but it has an on the rails battle system. In many ways it would be wonderful if someone picked up Pax and did a remake for this era. What other 4X lets you do espionage as well as Pax? None. Modern devs need to learn from Pax, not forget it.
