This game surprised me when it came out. It looked like just another Diablo clone. What I got was so much more. There are two other things that really make this game stand out: 1) The world is dynamic and evolving. If you take too long to resolve a quest, a rival (more on that in a second) may complete it instead of you, or ... bad things happen. The rebellion you failed to put down could turn into a major incursion, and then the enemies could actually gain enough strength (if left along) to attack your town. And everybody loses.... 2) The diplomacy / rivalry between the different guilds (or covenants). If you really hate that, I'd recommend the game "Din's Curse" which was kinda-sorta a sequel to this one, which got rid of the diplomacy. However, I really enjoyed it, though I usually set the rival covenants to not be too overpowered in comparison to me. That keeps them interesting without really causing constant fighting. The combination means that you almost always feel a little bit task-overloaded. But it's very cool to be able to team up with an allied guild member for an adventure. Battles for your guild-hall are kinda ... lame, I guess. But the game keeps you hopping, and it successfully builds a LOT of interesting stuff on top of what would otherwise be just another action hack-and-slash.
I remember writing this review in my head the day after I got this game back in '93. Which would be, like, twenty years ago tomorrow or something. This game was simply the WC 2 combat engine with a mission editor. Unfortunately, the mission editor wasn't very exciting, either. In a time when shareware editors allowed you to create some very complex and fascinating scenarios for X-Wing, this felt like a quick-and-dirty cash grab, thrown together in a month by a couple of interns. And this is coming from a guy who just about worshiped the Wing Commander series. Still, for the time, it was fun if you just wanted to try out some match-ups that you never actually got to see in the main game and expansions. I just don't see much of a point for it today, unless you are a completionist.
This game had some teething problems with a new engine (actual texture-mapped polygons instead of the rotated bitmaps of WC1 + 2 + Privateer), and actual filmed full-motion video instead of hand-drawn animations to tell the story. This led to some awkward storytelling and missions - especially the ones on planet surfaces. Still, you get more story options than in the previous games, and the missions offer more variety of challenges than ever before. It also concludes the Kilrathi war. So there's much to love and enjoy here!
This game was far closer to the "Master of Orion" experience than Master of Orion 3. Lacking tactical combat was a (small) point against it. But otherwise... I played the crap out of it. And then, when the sequel came out with all of its expansions... I don't think I could ever go back. Still, lacking Gal Civ 2, this is a very fun sci-fi 4x game that is really head-and-shoulders above any others of its era. And while it's not MoO2, in some ways it is a simpler, faster-paced experience, so that's not totally a bad thing.
