Customer Reviews

Master of Orion 3: The Ultimate Space Strategy Game: Prima's Official Strategy Guide

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I have yet to write a review and I am reluctant to write one about a strategy guide before the game is even released, but I found myself compelled.

The content might be there. I will not know until the game arrives, but the format is plain silly. There are numerous sections listing fact after fact that would have been better given in a table with a little blurb to highlight the most interesting aspects.

I found the book a terrible introduction to the game. If the game comes with more info in the manual, I would suggest skipping this book.

Any strategy given is presented with broken scenarios and lame platitudes that I feel fall well within common sense. What reference material is there is suspect. I would be surprised if I ever will need to refer to this book after I get the game.

If you plan to buy this with the game, you might reconsider and wait to see what documentation comes with the game. Actually, why bother? Most information online will probably outstrip this book within the first few days of the game's release.

I just wanted a preview of the game. My mistake. I should have waited.

Oh...and I almost forgot! The screen shots are awful. Not a one is sized bigger than a matchbook. So if you are trying to see what they are refering to in the pictures, forget it. They are too tiny.

its more like a manual spin-off than a strategy guide. It doesn't tell you how to do anything. It has lame tutorials for all the races and it only gives you some *hints* (all of which you can find out online). The whole book basically leaves it up to you figure everything out.

It could have been so many times better. Its almost like the person who wrote it never played it and just read the manual and interviewed the staff to get some details.

Instead of giving you strategies and tips on how to play more effeciently or giving you different styles of play, it just goes through all the screens one at a time and repeats most of whats in the manual.

The name of book is false advertisment. It should be named:
Master of Orion 3: The Ultimate Space Strategy Game: Prima's Official Redundant Manual

Prima is notorious for having factual errors in gameplay on the games they review, since most of the games they review are still in the beta(testing) phase. It is all about shipping the game and strategy guide on the same date. Most strategy guide buyers know this, as well documented in the MOO3 forums. However, if you are dying waiting for this game (like me), it's a nice book to whet your appetite...

Got MOO3 and the guide for my birthday. Both are pretty wortheless, but the guide especially so since it is no guide. If you loved Alpha Cnetauri or the Civ games, you'll be severly disappointed with MOO3 and the strategy guide.

See other reviews for details. Don't waste your money on this...

This strategy guide was alright for a casual read and to learn a little bit about the game that may have been confusing, however it's little more than a well-formatted manual (as in taking the info from the manual and presenting it better).

The strategies it offers for each race are little more than a few turns in 'what-if' scenarios, that cover some basics, but don't cover a lot. The diplomatic tendencies of each race are hidden inside flavor text but in some cases they are absent all together (Psilon merely states, "don't beg or plead", and there is no flavor text at all for the Nomo). There needed to be one basic chart to describe this.

Speaking of charts, there are charts scattered throughout the manual to help understand how things are weighed, but it's very cumbersome because they are not located in one convenient location. The charts are scattered throughout the manual to coincide with the flavor text. It would have been far better to have these charts in one section (for ease of reference and of photo-copying/printing) and just have flavor text make an aside, such as (pg. 3 chart).

Also lacking is any chart to help with fleet creation or ship construction. This would have given milestones of information on how to format fleets and let you understand what it means when you make a ship point-defense, long range, or short range. Yes there is flavor text to briefly describe this to you, but they did offer many charts for ground combat, so why not for space combat? There are charts for armor, weapons, and ship chaises for the fleets you can create, but even to this day it's difficult for me to predict the behavior of the fleet based on what task each ship has and what I assign the fleet to do.

The technology tree listed in this book is just two pages of a list of techs, and perhaps what the prerequisite is for them. A much better approach would have been to create a flow chart like "Empire Earth" did for their units and tech trees.

Also when deciding on how to initiate a diplomatic deal to exchange techs, it's impossible to know how things are weighted. There's no indication on how many points each tech is awarded, and how the deal rates on a chart for success chances, such as 'poor', 'fair', 'good', 'outstanding'. Something like this would have been wonderful. "Galactic Civilization" had a slider in-game to give you an understanding, but "Master of Orion 3" doesn't have such a slider, so when this manual too didn't contain any sort of chart for diplomatic deals, it was more than a let-down, it was an outrage.

Most strategy guides are a collection of charts and flow-charts for ease of reference, with a back story and flavor text to entertain the reader. This book requires you to read through to find out where things are located and offers little in the way of help when dealing with diplomatic channels, ship and fleet creation, and tech trading. Overall, this manual is helpful, but it's not great. Player-created sources of information are far better. The MoO 3 Guardian website (you can search for it) has a good collection of information on "Master of Orion 3" and does a far better job than this manual. Buy it if you want an off-line reference or something to read (which in all accounts, it's entertaining).

Seriously, this guide is pretty good.
It may not have things it promised (*cough*mp*cough*),
but it is a pretty useful game guide when it gets down to it. If you were having
trouble with the game,
this is a must.

this "guide" is practically worthless! it does NOT explain ANYTHING that is not explained in the manual, even with as much as there was that was left unexplained by that dicument. there are not really any "strategies" in this "strategy guide". i know that it is not possible to write a walkthrough for a game of this type, but i was hoping for a guide to explain the many things that the manual did not, like specific measures to combat unrest, etc. this book does not do that. the only things i found useful in this book are explanations in game terms of what each Orion Senate proposal does and explanations for what tone of voice, so to speak, to use in diplomatic offers to the different races. it also rates each race in terms of "playability" that is marginally useful. if i had it to do over again i would NOT buy this book.

If the in-game help is as good as Civ3's Civilopedia + Scenario Editor then this book will be completely useless for anything but newbie strategies. I was overall dissapointed. I was looking for reference tables (if the game should lack it), formulas and algorithms for the economics and combat (Orion Secotor has theem but they are outdated - published the IFPs were removed).. The best part of the book for me was the race overviews and that they have been ranked in general difficulty. Not a bad as RollerCoaster Tycoon's prima guide (glorified manual), and not as good as SimCity 4's prima guide (totally rocks).

it is Feb 25th and the game is out
no reason to buy this guide to whet your appetite
no reason to preview the game
get better information online
...await the patch, maybe, but
consider the only favorable review is from Texas
--enough said.

honestly, I have no idea what's in this book, however, I do know that MOO3 is going to be a ridiculous game; and a stratagy guide to explain it all will be great. the stratagy guides for the other games were top quality, and i expect the same of this one.