As someone, who plays PC games for more than a quarter of century now, I consider the new Master of Orion a good game. The presentation is outstanding: the races and sounds, the hi-res planets and ship design (especially Alkari) is superb and really good on the eyes. Game loads very fast, I never had a single crash and the turns still pass quickly even after 400. I love turn based tactics, but in here real time battles allow you to not waste time; if you want to change something the AI planned, you still can. There are some problems: special events are almost non-existing, spy missions are only very easy or very hard, "barbarians" (pirates) are a joke and I had some mouse zoom quirks; can't say anything about race balance after few games, but I don't consider it a major thing since I only play single player. What I like most however, is that the AI actually WORKS, compared to, for example, CIV games. I had Psilons asking for alliance, other computer players trading and exchanging techs, the more they liked me the less they wanted and not once had the AI done something illogical. They don't attack when unnecessary and don't send single units to you for slaughter like in oh-so-many other strategies; that thing alone makes this game better than I guess about 80% other 4x. I'm using unofficial patch which fixes some things and the games is even better thanks to it. If you have any love for space based 4x, go for it. I hope you'll be pleasantly surprised, as I was.
