This is not a game. This is an application. It's like Quicken for your galactic empire. If you're looking for a game, look elsewhere. But if you're looking for a unique, deep, realistic, and incredibly complex simulation of running the universe, Master of Orion 3 is for you.
It's a wonderful game, especially if you're a fan of turn-based strategy. But it's also deeply flawed in several ways.
Graphics - 6/10
The entire MoO3 development consisted of five people. No where is this more obvious than the graphics. I have deep, deep reservations about the graphical quality of the game. The resolution is locked at 800x600, a very poor decision. The color scheme is annoying, and the graphics are tolerable, at best.
The most noticable area is in ship to ship combat, where the absurd scaling of the ships results in attempting to to guide as many as several hundred tiny dots towards other tiny dots, while they flash tiny weapons at each other. It's almost impossible to tell what's going on, and nine times out of ten, you should just leave combat to the AI (more on the AI under Gameplay).
Sound - 7/10
It's there. Nothing more than that. At times, it's useful, but usually it just accents what you're doing on screen. The only real peeve I have about teh sound is the heavy 'thunk' you hear every time you close a panel. It
gets old, fast.
Music - 8/10
Average background music, not bad, but not great. I usually ended up turning on Winamp anyway.
Plot - 9/10
Considering the nature of the game, it has a surprisingly interesting plot and backstory. And your race's historical interactions has a lot to do with how they're treated by other races. The plot isn't a selling point, but it's
a very welcome extra.
Gameplay - 8/10 (4/10)
I gave two values for gameplay, because there are two styles of play. The first is to sit back, let the AI do most of it, and guide your empire on the grand, macro scale. The second is vicious micromanagement.
If you like micromanagement, you will loathe MoO3. The whole focus of the game design was to get as far from micromanagement as possible. If, on the other hand, you got just as tired as I did queueing up base facilities in Alpha Centauri, you will welcome the change.
The interface is.... flakey. At best. There are several things that should be much easier to find and get to than they are, and a lot of the window design is non-intuitive. But if you have some patience, you can get past this.
Of course, the macromanagement approach isn't perfect. It relies heavily on AI to manage things like production queues on individual planets. And the AI isn't always that bright. You'll discover this for yourself the first time you look in your ship reserves and discover 400 Troop Ships and no troops. The AI, for a number of extremely random reasons, just loves building Troop Ships. There are other flaws, as well. Quicksilver (the developers) are aware of these, and working on them, but you should know about them before you buy the game.
Replay Value - 10/10
I can play this game over, and over again. If you're willing to put plenty of time into it, it's a very rewarding experience. The replayability goes up tenfold if you install the Military AI fan modification (available off the MoO3 forums at the official site,
because without it, the enemy AI is fairly passive. But even that aside, the joy of exploration, tech discovery, and most of all, rolling over enemies with your superior military might, never go away.
Overall (not an average) - 8/10
I'd be lying if I said this game was perfect. Among the flaws already mentioned, it also features an utterly useless manual and a tendency to crash if you Alt-Tab out of it. An updated manual, thankfully, is being worked on, and will be released for free with the patch. But it's an excellent game, and one of the purest strategy titles I've
ever played.
|
