Such a great game. I played it over and over again back in the day. You really could take your civilazation in whichever direction you wanted. you could design your fleet of ships and tailor every single ship type to be exactly what you wanted, from cheap, small ships with just a laser, to giant behemoths that take many turns to build. The different choices of race to play as really changed how you played the game. Alliances and who you at war with were really important. Getting votes to become the leader of the galactic alliance. Space news reports on tv and random events. Master of Orion 1 was so much fun, one of my favourite games ever.
I don't even know where to start here, MOO2 is by far the best Sci-Fi 4x game I have ever played! The research system is great, the tactical combat is amazing, the micromanagement is surprisingly a whole lot of fun, and the species creation is more in-depth than any other I have seen. If you have ever enjoyed any 4x game, then you will absolutely adore these two games!
The 4x genre is found here in this game. You grow your civilization, colonize worlds, research and develop, and defednd your empire...or crush your enemies.
The original MOO is my favorite game of all time. Moo2 is also excellent.
MOO is the best 4x space game ever made. I've played nearly every 4x space game made since and haven't found a better one. It has just the right amount of features and abilities, many other games have come along, including the sequels to MOO and added more features, and while fun at first they soon become nothing more than tedious. MOO2 is excellent also, but like I said, toward the end of the game the additional features they added to make the game more complex and seem like it should be more satisfying just end up becoming tedious to manage in the late game. The first MOO is just a masterpiece. I build all my own PCs and never consider my build complete until I get Master of Orion installed. It is my favorite game of all time. I have wasted way too much of my life playing it, but it's always fun to play again. I played it so much I still have the original DRM memorized. (on each page of the manual it had a ship design with the name of the design, you had to type in the correct design name to get past the copy protection) With modern PC's it's much better when playing on "impossible" difficulty. The computer turns don't take so long to process. lol. With my old 486 that I played the game on originally it could take a few minutes for each turn to process.(Back when developers actually spent more time on the AI than on just about any other aspect of the game. Now too many developers spend all their time on graphics and forget gameplay and AI. Or depend on multiplayer and forget the AI altogether.)
Tip- You don't have to build stargates at every system. If you keep your fleet at a system with a star gate, you can select movement to another system with a stargate, then after you tell the fleet to go there, you can then select the fleet and change the destination to a system without a stargate and the movement will still happen in 1 turn. (requires hyperspace communications tech) Stargates are high maintenance so if you build fewer of them you'll have more money.
These are really good games. Although I am not that good at MOO2 I am terrible at MOO, although I love it at the end when you can have 30 doomstars in MOO2. Watch out galaxy you have the most powerfull fleet in the game. The game is a well thought out game that you can have different strategies depending on the game. The thing I hate is how the silicoid are useless, wish you could at least do something with them. Besides that these games are great, there are a must buy for a classic sci-fi game.
