Master of Orion 3

by Atari

Product Features

• not just military and economic consequences
• Slick and intuitive interface makes navigation and gameplay a snap for novice players.
• Complete campaigns to satisfy would-be galactic conquerors.
• Robust Multiplayer lets 8 players slug it out for galactic domination.
• * Manage policies dealing with freedom and oppression, slavery, and racial tolerance. Will your civilization thrive better as an oppressive tyranny, a free republic, a unified theocracy, or something in-between?

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005TS56
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5.2 x 1.2 inches ; 4 ounces
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: February 25, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (94 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #18,130 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Platform: PC

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

You assume the biggest role ever! No longer will you represent mere interplanetary dictators. In Master of Orion III, you become the controlling force behind an entire galactic civilization.

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very pretty, but wholy unfair game, August 13, 2004

By 

Dan Egli "-- Dan" (Salt Lake City, UT USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars 

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

Being a MOO fan, I was stoked when Moo2 came out. I bought it, played it, and fell in love with it.

Then Moo 3 comes out. "AWSOME! I'M THERE!" was my thinking. Ohh would I ever be disappointed! The micromanagment that I so enjoyed from Moo2 is gone. The AI builds EVERYTHING now, and it's such a klunky interface (albeit a very pretty one) that it litterally took me TWO DAYS to figure out how to design and build custom ships.

Now add in that the stupid AI always builds things that are not going to help you advance. The game MIGHT have been playable if there was a way to disable the AI. But you cann't. You can override it, but that's it.

Now take into account the fact that the game makers decided to remove what was one of my favorite items, the combats between vast numbers of ships. Which would not have been so bad if they had done it to ALL. But the people who now inhabit the planet Orion (namely the "new orions") can have hundreds of tiny tiny ships (about the size of a single person fighter craft) in combat, while you are limited to 60 ships of any size, and you will soon find it virtually impossible to reach orion!

Then consider how long it now takes to build ships of any decent size. In moo2 it might very well take as many turns to build a powerfull ship on a poor planet. But it would only take like 10 turns on a ultra rich planet with all the upgrades (core waste dump, deep core mines, automated factories, etc...)

And it's hard to get the most out of your planets because now you need to control the type of industrial buildings that get built on the planet, and each planet has multiple regions of various types. Ok, that would work if sufficent information was given about the various types of regions. Sure a fertile area is best for an agricultural building, but what about "hard scrabble"? Only about one in three or four types are intuitive.

Now add in the horrible system with which your relations with other races are managed, and the fact that each parent race has 3-4 "child" races, which means that you could potentiall have multiple "Klackon" or multiple "Psilon" type races in the game.

And finally add a users manual that really doesn't help much. Don't get me wrong. I love a manual with a story. I absolutely ADORE the Homeworld 1 manual beause of the story of the people from Karak. But the manual for Homeworld is only 1/2 story and 1/2 manual. The MOO3 manual is about 90% story. Which again would not be TOO bad if it was Story up front and manual in back or the other way around. But it's not. Moo3's manual is Story + little but of manual + story + little bit of manual, etc... so if you are not absolutely ENTHRALED by the story (which I was not), you wind up not being able to read the manual!

Over all, I have to say that QuickSilver really did a HUGE Dis-service to the game's name sake. My honest recomendation to ANYONE who wants to look into getting this game: SAVE YOUR MONEY! This Game MIGHT be worth GIVING AWAY, but I would not pay $5.00US for it.

33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Went back to playing MOOII, April 17, 2006

By 

jpeib (A shack in the mountains) - See all my reviews

= Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars 

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

I reviewed this game when it first came out (I was even one of the fools to pre-order the stupid thing), but I wanted to give an update. I recently downloaded DOSbox and started playing MOOII again, and WOW! I forgot how fun this game was. I can still remember playing the first one on my Tandy back in 1994 and both those games just make me cry when I think about MOOIII and what it could have been. Don't waste your money, and do download DOSbox and start playing MOOII again.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Sad, August 26, 2003

By 

James B. Clasby "Some Guy" (Trumansburg, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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

Sad. Just sad.

I LOVED and still play MOO2 on a semi-regular basis - one more turn, one more turn . . .

I waited for over a year, participated in the discussion boards (Clasby - the tiny giant) and anxiously awaited the game until my pre-ordered copy showed up. Part of the big enhancement was supposed to be the reduction in micromanagement but it is actually worse!

Example: you want to deploy five armies worth of ground troops to conquer some planet. Go to ground force creation, *click*, decide how big a force (division, army, whatever) *click* type of force (marines, tanks, whatever), *click*, then decide which specific troops you want in the unit, (potentially hundreds more clicks based on race, experience level or whatever but luckily there in an auto-build), *click*. Yes you could, in theory, decide that on specific troops to account for the planets gravity and terrain but the combat itself is so abstracted that it's really hard to tell if it makes any difference anyway. And you can't really figure out what exactly the terain is like until you've already unloaded the troops. Besides, you have SO MANY ground troops by mid-game that your really better off just dumping whole (and multiple) armies anyway. Ok, so now you've got the army, *click* ok, then got to another screen where you put them on your troop transports *click* - yes they have their own task force and you can add escorts - but you don't want to. Everything gets dibanded when you unload troops. That is they disapear for a time, then go into reserves for next deployment. Ok, so that's at least six clicks per ground force. You wanted five - so that's thirty clicks - at least. So much for getting rid of the micromanagement.

Moving the ships around once their deployed is even more frustrating as it's hard to figure out where they are, where they're going and so on. Ship design is confusing and muddled, it's hard to compare weapon systems etc., etc., etc. and basically imposible to build up to date ships. I spent A LOT of time going to every planets build que and deleting the old crappy designs, and the THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of non-Combatant ground forces it wants to build to get something useful built. Even once that's done your 'viceroy' will change the funding levels every turn so you never really know when a unit will actually be finished.

Technology: Lots and lots of tech. To bad you can never be sure what exactly it does or control how, when or where it gets implemented.

Diplomacy: just accept whatever they want as it dosn't matter anyway.

Spying: Ugh!

I could go on about the details but the basic problem is that I never feel much in control of the game - and what I can control are the most tedious aspects. I'm one of the few who dosn't seem to mind the combat, but getting to that point is pretty much not worth it.

Sad.

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