Master Of Orion 3

by Macsoft

Product Features

• Explore rich solar systems, complete with jump lanes, worm holes and hostile alien races
• Play one of 16 unique star-faring races or create your own custom race
• Dynamic Galaxy Generation ensures that no two games are ever the same
• Colossal Space Battles that feature beautiful, tactical real-time combat resolution that keeps play moving at a brisk pace
• Galactic Councils and diplomacy of never-before-achieved richness and depth. Trade technology, make and break treaties, demand tribute and propose Bills in the Orion Senate

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005Y4Q5
• Item Weight: 8 ounces
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: March 26, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #38,592 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

The Master of Orion series is synonymous with addictive turn-based strategy gameplay. Though the premise--choosing a unique alien race and then leading it in a galactic quest for glory--isn't new, there is something about the series that draws people back. Is it the original take on the diplomatic, economic, military, and exploratory components of galactic conquest? Is it the intrigue of the Antarans, an ancient and predatory race that always seems to pop out of hyperspace to attack at just the wrong time? Is it the sense of accomplishment that comes from building a functioning interstellar empire? Frankly, I don't know. But for whatever reason, these games are notorious for creating a bad case of Just One More Turn syndrome.

Master of Orion 3, then, has large shoes to fill. Appropriately, "bigger" is one of the best adjectives that can be used to describe this third installment. Fans of micromanagement are in for a treat, as the most noticeable new feature is the vast number of options available. The level of control is nice, but can be overwhelming--you'll sometimes find yourself swimming in a sea of menus, interconnected sliders, and check boxes. The array of empire management tools are all used to advance along one of three paths to victory: dominating your enemies militarily, getting elected as president of the Orion senate, or finding all five hidden artifacts.

Each planet in your empire has many components that must be managed individually--including taxes, build queues, regional zoning, terraforming, resource collection, economic infrastructure development, and military versus planetary spending limits. Successful management leads to a productive planet; mismanagement results in revolt and unrest. A vital addition to the game is an AI viceroy for each planet. Viceroys will carry out mundane work based on empire-wide policies you can set, but don't expect them to do exactly what you want very often. And even with the help of viceroys, the galactic scale is no less daunting. You must manage not only a galactic budget and research, but also diplomatic relations, spy infiltration, and military development and deployment. The manner in which the player interacts with the Orion senate is new to MoO3. You can now become a member of the senate and use it to impose sanctions or declare war on other alien races.

When diplomatic negotiations fail, space and ground combat become necessary. You assign task forces mission types that include long-range attack, short-range attack, point-defense, indirect fire, and reconnaissance. Ground forces are likewise grouped into task forces based on their size and strength. Once in combat, you can opt to control things directly or sit back and let the computer take care of everything. You can even skip combat altogether and jump right to the outcome--the fastest and easiest way to manage battles.

In the end, Masters of Orion 3 succeeds with compelling gameplay that will leave you engrossed for hours (or days) at a time. Thanks to the strategic depth of the game, vast number of management options, diverse and interesting alien races, a randomly generated universe, and a sprawling technology tree, no two games will be alike. Though dense and complex, the payoff is well worth the effort. MoO3 is a fantastic title perfect for anyone who enjoys strategy games. --Jon "Safety Monkey" Grover

Pros:

• Engaging and immersive gameplay
• More depth, longer games, and greater diversity
• Addictive--expect to dump eight hours into a single session
• Multiplayer includes a turn-limits option and financial benefits for brief turns

Cons:

• Calling it "graphically dated" is being polite
• Incredible complexity may leave a lot of gamers confused
• Productivity, social life, family, and personal hygiene may suffer

Product Description

Masters Of Orion III places you at the Head of a galactic empire, and dares you to expand it successfully! You must also control the shadows - Use espionage, assassination, disinformation and other dark deeds to earn a chair at the Galactic Council Manage policies that deal with social problems, military issues, slavery, race matters and more See if you have the razor-sharp mind and iron will it takes to forge a galactic empire!

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

91 of 95 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too Big a Departure From MOO-II, April 21, 2003

By 

Maximillian Ben Hanan (Sacramento, California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Master Of Orion 3 (CD-ROM)

I'm a big fan of turn-based resource-management strategy games. I've loved the MOO (Masters of Orion) series up until MOO-III. My biggest complaint about MOO-III is the lack of control I have over the planets in my Empire and the forces I control (or really don't). This is primarily the result of a bad interface. However, the interface is so bad that I returned the game, because it was no fun to watch what horrible things the computer AI (Artificial Intelligence) would do for me since the interface prohibited me from controlling my own units.

In a nutshell, MOO-III is the successor to a popular series of turn-based resource-management strategy games. What made the MOO series more attractive than many of its' competitors was an easy-to-use interface, charming graphics (art), and a good storyline. For instance, in MOO-II, whenever galactic events occurred, a robotic news anchor would read the report (often with a little bit of humor) while background news music (the sounds of teleprompters) played. I loved it and it greatly added to the charm and feel of the game. Star ships were highly customizable and researching new technologies to get the latest gadgets was a lot of fun.

MOO-III lacks those fun news reports. Starship design is a droll affair conducted on a menu system that Apple Computers must have long ago rejected. Choices are limited and the auto-build function tends to do most of the work. Researching new technologies is now a bore since I don't do much more than allot money to each area of technology being researched and wait for the results. In addition, social unrest factors in my empire constantly delay new projects since the "people" are against orbital mines or some such. I tried out many different empires before realizing that this problem was game endemic rather than empire endemic.

The Galactic Council is one of the few game details that are improved from previous MOO games. There is a voting process similar to MOO-II and, of course, the powers-that-be (the New Orions) in this game have something like 1,134 votes to your 2 as a new player. Trying to get a diplomatic measure through the new council is near impossible as well (even after some 200 turns into the game). It seems as if only the New Orions can propose really cool new measures such as Galactic Space Port Tariffs. Unfortunately, the other empires tend all do have a chip on their shoulders (or alien parts I guess) so all that really happens is you get constantly condemned at the Galactic Council. It's sort of like a replay of the USA trying to get anything done at the UN. Never the less, this was one of the few aspects I liked on MOO-III.

The story line and game fluff are also outstanding. I enjoyed reading them very much. If only the game play was as well done as the story background.

Documentation was very weak. There is no graph that shows the strength and weaknesses of various government types. There is also no documentation for the various planetary specials (want to know what "ancient battle damage" means?) in the manual (By the way, "ancient battle damage" means that a planet is easier to terraform). Much of the games' necessary information is in an attached document that must be printed out using some 60+ pages of printer paper and ink. The Prima clue guide is a bygone necessity to even try to understand what's going on in the game and the Prima MOO-III clue guide didn't help much either.

What turned me off most to MOO-III is a poor game interface. The designers must have realized that they put an awful lot of detail in the game (can allot zones of development on a planet's surface) so rather than make it easy to control these aspects of the game they designed AIs to do it for you. You don't even get a choice of whether to turn these AIs off (as most people did in earlier titles in the MOO series). You can guide them slightly buy choosing policies that will direct the AIs, but they seem to do whatever they want to anyhow. I couldn't figure out how the AIs made the choices they did and neither could any of my friends. If I could understand how the AIs made decisions for my galactic empire then the game might have been playable. As it currently stands, in MOO-III, the player is more like a galactic CEO than a galactic leader. I make decisions, but I have no idea what's going to happen with them. Space combat is much the same with ships being very difficult to control and doing stupid things when under control (such as ships with long range weapons closing to short range).

I can't recommend MOO-III. Its' poor game interface and unwieldy AI makes the game more of a core to play than a pleasure. It's simply not too much fun. MOO-III minimizes its' fun parts with a poor interface. I only give it two stars for its' awesome story line (too bad I didn't get to see much of the story line since the game play was so bad!).

I recommend Space Empires IV Gold by Malfador Machinations instead of MOO-III.

Review by: Maximillian Ben Hanan

27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Ultimately disappointing, November 2, 2003

By 

Chris from San Francisco (Somerville, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Master Of Orion 3 (CD-ROM)

If you are like me (interested in the next MoO title, skeptical that people who hated this game are either stupid or too impatient), you'll likely buy it anyway. When you do, you should know the following:

1) The manual is useless. Worse than useless, it's often wrong. The only way to learn how to play the game is to hit the discussion forums at the quicksilver website and read the newbie questions. It will take a couple of days.

2) The game as published is buggy and almost crippled in some aspects. There are two patches available from MacSoft... download and install them immediately.

3) It's a terribly slow game. I don't mean, slow like RTS games are "slow" because there's a long startup period. I mean, slow like by the time you get well into a game, the turn processing takes >5 minutes in a large galaxy, and it starts to get boring to play it.

4) There's an open-source version of this game being developed, called Free Orion. Check it out; offer your help if you can; these people have the right idea.

I wish there were a "perfect" or "definitive" game of galactic conquest out there that was optimized for the modern OS's, but there's not. This one isn't even close.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but should have been great, November 17, 2003

By 

"bknabe3" (Lubbock, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Master Of Orion 3 (CD-ROM)

If you have the time to put into learning it, it's not bad. Overall, I like it, but as a follow-up to MOO2, it disappoints. On the plus side, I've played it on everything from an 8500/250 (pre-G3 chip) to a dual 1.42ghz G4, and the turns process well on all of them, even the 8500/250. This is better than MOO2 Mac, which didn't start processing at reasonable speeds until the G3's came out. Sadly, the graphics in the game are on the low end of the spectrum, even for when development started. The aliens are drawn well, but the diplomacy screens disappoint. Ships are just colored arrows on the screen until you get into close, and even then they are low quality (by modern standards) images. MOO2 combat graphics are better.

I was disappointed by the Orion Senate screen. I was excited by the prospect of proposing laws and resolutions, but the implementation left me cold. You are allowed to propose laws and resolutions, but only within a very limited selection. And most of those don't interest me at all.

When you first start this game, if you haven't read anything at all, you will be quickly lost. If you've read the manual, you'll be better off, but you'll soon realize just how many necessary things are left out - but do read the manual for the storyline, it's the best part. The best way to learn gameplay and strategy is to go to the web and find the newbie forums. After reading through them, play awhile, then go back to the advanced forums to learn the tricks you haven't figured out on your own.

I haven't tried multi-player yet, so I can't say anything about that. I hope that it will be better than the single player game.

MOO3 is good enough that I continue to play, but not so good that it will replace MOO2 in my list of favorite games.