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This couldn't get any worse

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: October 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Wish I could give it 0 stars. Too bad. I shelled out $50 like a chump. Now they're giving it away almost. Still not worth the $15 Amazon is charging. Maybe $.01. Actually they'd have to pay me knowing what I know now. No redeeming qualities. Everyone who gave it a positive review is an Infrogrames/Atari hack, all games released by that company are junk. The amount they sold of this title came from brand recognition alone, and all those people were betrayed. Moo2 is still the best game of its kind, I wish another group of developers could try to re-create something similar. I miss it so.

Very disappointed

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: February 11, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I watched the developement of this game carefully for several years. I waited through the delays. I was worried by the reviews. I was terribly disappointed by the game.

I love turn based space strategy games. I played Master of Orion II all night or all weekend more times than I can remember. It has to be my favorite game of all time. There are a lot of people like me, so when Quicksilver decided to make a sequel, a lot of people had very high hopes.

MOO3 has more aliens, more tech, more planets, a bigger galaxy, more ships, and more customization options than MOO2. It also has tools that are supposed to make it easier to manage, like viceroys, real time space combat that mostly runs itself, and auto play features. Yet the bottom line is, the game just isn't fun.

There are a lot of numbers, a lot of spreadsheets, and a lot of bad UI. There is not the fun or light hearted graphics like in MOO2, and even though a game a MOO2 could take 10 or 20 hours, a game of MOO3 can take much longer. Even with a small galaxy.

If you have waited as long as I have waited, you will have to buy the game whether you have been warned off or not. I did. But you won't enjoy it. It is just too boring, frustrating, and tedious.

they really screwed this up

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 13
Date: August 23, 2004
Author: Amazon User

i am coming at this from a moo2 perspective. i am a big fan of that game. when i initially purchases moo3 a year or more ago, i sat down and impatiently tried to learn the game. i only spent about an hour or less and i gave up. what was i missing? anyway, i chocked it up to not spending enough time to learn the game. i went back and had fun with moo2. recently, i sat down and spent another 3+ hours trying to learn moo3. i went through all of the guidance dialogs, read all of them.

the main problems are: the game has become too complex. you can automate almost anything, but there are so many things to control that's all you can do ... automate. so you are left with little to control. attempting to control most any aspect of your economy or war effort by hand will most certainly result in a failure, unless you are willing to spend hours per move.

also, there seemed to be some problem with the game AI. without going into details, after playing for a bit i seemed to come to a stalemate. i was hopelessly outgunned against an enemy that blocked my progress into the rest of the galaxy. he would not attack me, no matter what. i tried inciting him in all possible ways. i even tried to surrender to him, and he refused?!?? i threw everything i had at him and he just kept detroying my ships, but never came after me.

also, as the game got more complex, it too longer and longer for the computer to process its moves. it got so it was taking 20+ seconds on a 2ghz machine. annoying to say the least.

bigger is not better...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 13
Date: February 13, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I am a huge fan of Master of Orion series. The first two games were true gems. So what is truly wrong with the third one? Its simply too anal retentive. The micro-management you have to do with this game is simply overwhelming. The first two games were fun, easy to play and simple to get into. There was enough details to keep the interest but its not overwhelming. It was also entertaining, fun and quite addictive. However, playing MOO 3 seem to be more like work. Its not very fun to play, instead of being addictive, its a type of game where you want to take a break. While the basic concept of MOO3 remains the same as the earlier two games, the game designers didn't improved the game, they just made it harder.

The sad thing is, the overwhelming details that the designers inserted didn't make the game any better. There is no real reward for all these details. The game get really boring really quick. The designers just want you to micromanaged a growing galactic empire. A very tiresome and unexciting chore.

Most fans of MOO series would be deeply disappointed by this game. Its a game that will cater to the very few while droving most away.

MOO 3 - A great game of grand strategy and macro management

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 13
Date: August 16, 2005
Author: Amazon User

So... after waiting for a good long time after it came out, having been dissuaded very strongly by the horrendous critiques of the game post-release, I purchased the game last week.

Quick review:

Does it deserve to be called MOO3? NO.

Is it terribly addictive and fun? YES.

Long Review:

Aside from the name "Masters of Orion 3" this could have been entitled anything, and the races re-named and it would have been fine and dandy. This is, in fact, a VERY different game than the first two beloved MOO games. In MOO 1 and 2, the interface was clear, simple and you had direct control over all things.

MOO 3 on the other hand is a completely different game. The first couple of games you will howl in frustration as you realize your prople are a little more free-spirited and independant than your MOO 1 and 2 citizens, and you cannot quite Stalinisticly relocate them across the universe on whim. You will also find the terror of the fact that your ship captains and task force admirals also have minds of their own and don't have time in the heat of real time battle to listen to some bumbling head of state. :oo

It really is a game about policy directives. They should call it Space Administrator.... and that's the way I love it! :) I am really starting to appreciate the beauty of this game. And while most things have been impersonalized and drawn further away from your control.... some things are improved upon: Spies now have individual names and missions they are trained for. Inserting and extracting them in enemy territory is challenging... but even if they get caught.. sometimes they escape! :D

Some problems with the game include certain blue-grey on blue-grey tab menus... which for the first couple of games you think are just part of the background art. :p Also, the controls are incredibly counter-intuitive. One thing you will miss from MOO1/2 is turn-by-turn space battles. Now they are in fairly FAST real time situations. One con related to this is that the task forces you build have very set parameters (the combination of ships you can have) and I am not quite sure what the rationale is for this.

Armies are alot more fun... no more generic soldiers landing, but companies with mobile and marine attachments as well as command and psy-op components. You usually have to fight to land and secure some groung and then fight sector by sector. Oh, did I mention that individual planets have different sectors?

The story is VERY important to playing game and enjoying it. Before you play, I would read the whole manual/story. You will note that it is a solipsistic power trip of recasting the MOO universe into their scheme of things and to explain why none of the alien races look like they did in the previous games, or some are missing.... but it is still in good fun.

The manual is flawed.
The Galactic encyclopedia is useless.
It hasn't been patched in a year.
The learning curve is steep.

But I am honestly having more fun with this game than I have any other strategy game since Europa Universalis 2 or MOO2. :)

Unbelievable (I mean unbelievably bad)!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: December 31, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I unfortunately purchased MOO3 when it was eventually released, happened to be surfing Amazon.com tonight, and decided to read some of the reviews of MOO3. After reading a number of them (especially the favorable ones), I felt compelled to submit this review of MOO3 as hopefully the final word on this game.

I waited on pins and needles waiting for MOO3 to be released (after a number of release delays). When it was delivered, I read most of the manual, except for most of the excessively expansive storyline. If I wanted all of that, I would pick up a Card, Herbert, or Weber novel.

And then I loaded MOO3 and started playing it at the hardest level.

Many hours later, all the while disregarding nonsensical diplomatic messages, protecting my borders with invincible fleets (which I couldn't upgrade and still haven't figured out how to), micromanaging the game to an unbelievable degree (which is necessary because the queue only allows a three future projects at a time), and generally expanding my empire, I quit only after sending the maximum amount of full battle fleets against the Orions to their deaths even after inflicting enormous damage.

So I started again at the hardest level, and did it again.

This game suffers innumerable deficiencies. It's not a matter of being a slow gamer or a fast gamer. I appreciate and enjoy both kinds of gaming. This game is terrible, and frankly I read the positive reviews and wonder how much those authors were paid to write them. MOO2 is the game to which all turn based strategy games are compared, and the makers of MOO3 must know that it would be compared to MOO2 in such a fashion. As such, their release of MOO3 is an insult to the genuis that is MOO2.

MOO3 is properly placed as a prequel to MOO and MOO2. That way, the trilogy improves in quality and enjoyment with each release. And in the unlikely event there is an MOO4, I hope the makers learn from their mistakes of MOO3. At least with this long-time MOO2 fan, they have a lot of redemption after their release of MOO3. I will further wait for the gamer reviews before any such purchase. Fool me once, shame on you: fool me twice, shame on me!

Requires extraordinary patience to learn, but...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 10
Date: April 04, 2004
Author: Amazon User

...it's actually not too bad. but let's get the bad out of the way first: the battle graphics are pathetic. the world map graphics, though, are very pretty and stylish, as are the animated races which are all artistically done. the problem lies in tedium. answering all your diplomacy messages in a large game is mind-numbingly mundane, since you'll almost always accept proposals presented by other races. Also a big turn-off is the lack of automatic upgrades to your ships. You must do these manually. It's not a big deal, since you won't have to do this often, but it seems sort of unnecessary. Another very significant problem is the insane mediocrity of the first twenty turns or so. this time is spent almost entirely on colonizing other planets, give or take some turns depending on the size of the galaxy you're in and how many races you choose to surround you. One more problem lies in the AI of your governers. You can turn them off (thankfully), but then you have to make all your build queues manually, and that's also a bit of a chore since construction takes much less time than, say, Civilization 3, so a lot of time is spent readjusting the three queues in your planet bases. Also, you'll never want to control the real-time battles, nor will you want to watch them, since the graphics are disgustingly bad and the gameplay for that part of the game is weak. Now, for the good: The game is very surrealistic, the music is fantastic, the graphical style is pleasant to look at, and neat little touches such as being able to see your forces blow up entire planets, or invade them, or bombard them with long-distance starships. that's the cool part of this game, seeing all your work put to good use, creating massive armadas and armies in dropships. basically, capturing a planet comes in three simple steps: eliminate space defenders, unload all ordnance on the planet next turn, and send in your ground troops and give everyone orders. it's very nicely done. or, if you prefer, you can just blow up the planet with a planet destroyer. all in all, if you can look past the faults of the game (i'm sure for many, it'll just be too much to handle), you'll find that it's a nice piece of software that had a lot of effort put into it.

This is not a game, it's an ENTERTAINING TOOL

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 11 / 20
Date: July 15, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I love strategy and reading the reviews here for MOO3, thought it would be really bad. Then I bought MOO2 and 3 at a low price to se what it was all about. First I played MOO2 to later compare MOO3 and...

... First: MOO2 is really good, turn based battles are just fun and construction of ships is engaging... (needless to say the year it was released and all the graphical issues), ok. I beat the game twice an then installed MOO3...

...Now, we are in front of a 100% different interface, ok, let's play , In strategy games I always choose the HUGE maps, fine, in MOO3 the time it takes to play in a small galaxy equals huge maps on other games due to the micromanagement required, I'm not complaining, just is the first game that I play on small maps, ok...

story short:
After a week and sleepless nights I coul finally understand the Game and I came up with one conclusion: IF YOU REALLY LIKE STRATEGY GAMES (including chess)and you understand the meaning of PATIENCE you'll be very entertained by this software (my case).

If you can't use your imagination, don't like to read, and your patience rating falls below 70% (minimum required) you won't enjoy MOO3 !!!

THE BIGEST FAULT BY THE DEVELOPERS WAS TO SELL THIS AS A GAME, IF ONLY THE BOX HAD WARNED YOU THE REAL COMLEXITIES OF MOO3, another story would be written on the reviews here ! IT'S A VERY CLEVER AND ENTERTAINING TOOL !. :)

Great Potential, Many Problems

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: June 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

First, I've owned and played MOO1 and MOO2. A lot. They were great,and I still play MOO2 occasionally. MOO3 appears to be a natural evolution of the game, and it has great potential. But...

There are plenty of bugs in the game and a pot full of inconsistencies. The first patch is out, but it does not make any claim to fix all the bugs and/or correct the many flaws in the game. My advice: wait for version 1.5, hopefully by the end of the year (my guess, not theirs).

The biggest problem, for me anyway, is getting used to the AI. Actually, there are two of them, one for the computer players, and one for you. The AI for the computer players needs work and the developers know that. But if you can live with the strange way it does things (e.g. going to war for no reason, then declaring peace two turns later, and declaring war again two turns later, etc.), you can play on. I'm not sure, but it may be possible that the AI cheats. In all the games I've played, the computer opponents were always far ahead of me in everything: ships, weapons, strategy, money, etc., etc. They can be beaten, but even in easy settings you'll have to work hard to do it.

Your own AI, known as your viceroy, is a macro-manager. You have to give it some guidelines, of course, but then it takes over and manages your affairs for you. Micro-managers beware -- you only make it harder by constantly fiddling with settings for your individual planets. Another "but..." You will want to get involved in some micro-management anyway, especially ship design and some building lists. You have to learn the hard way what your viceroy does well and what it doesn't.

There's more: you travel between stars on starlanes, just like in Space Empires IV. That makes for some interesting strategy. It also makes the game really, really slow. Research is another tedious process. You spend lots of time and money researching the empty spaces between objectives. Combat is...well, it's slow, too, and you don't have a lot of control. Also, all ships have to be assigned to Task Forces. I'm not sure why this was done, but I find the process unnecessarily cumberson. And ships that are not assigned are just not available for anything; they don't even show up on the map. Ground troops are managed in much the same way. I find all this too complicated. Individual ships can't be upgraded; you build replacements and (eventually) get rid of the obsolete ones.

The game manual is best described as skimpy. It usually tells you where the buttons are, but it gives no clue about why and how anything works. It's printed on dark gray paper in 6-point type, so if you use reading glasses, you can only read it in bright, direct sunlight. The illustrations are black on black and very small.

If you were thinking of buying the official strategy guide, my advice is DON'T. It was apparently writen for the Beta version; much of the information is incorrect, lots of things are completly missing, and some advice is completely wrong. Check out the forum instead.

In summary, this may yet be a great game when all the bugs are worked out. In particular, the viceroy is a cool idea that simply needs more work. Right now it's a bit of a challenge to play around the bugs and shortcomings, and because it's so slow at first, I find the game's not a lot of fun. While you're waiting for the next several patches I recommend Galactic Civilizations.

Overwhelming yet disappointing and dated

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: July 08, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The main problem with this game is that despite the graphical updates and some gameplay tweaks it just feels over 5 years out of date. The amount of micromanagement you can do is astounding. If you are a control freak and like to count grains of sand on a beach, then this is the game for you. For the rest of us mere mortals, the management detail required to really get the most out of this game is just WAY TOO MUCH. The manual is not only worthless, it is a complete waste of time to read it (140 pgs plus) as it tells you absolutely nothing that you can discern just by looking at the various in-game screen interfaces. I don't really need a manual that tells me the Unload All Ordinance button means you unload all of your ordinance (140+ pages of stupid drivel like that). Updates from the previous game include real-time space combat. On the surface this would seem great, however the graphics aren't even as good as an old Asteroids arcade game and the interface is limited to Move, Attack, Stop, and Retreat. What astonished me was the additional levels of complexity added to the strategy aspect of the game. MOO2 had copious, if not excessive, micromanagement tasks. MOO3 has increased the level of micromanagement detail by a factor of 10. For diehard fans of MOO2, this is probably fantastic. However, for the vast majority, it renders the game incomprehensible. Yes, you can opt to switch on the AI and let the computer management the detail stuff but you may soon find yourself just pushing the turn button to watch the computer play itself - where is the fun in that?

This game takes what made MOO2 successful and expanded upon that - greatly. Normally this would be a good idea, however in MOO3's case it is so complex, most people new to the game will find it like trying to decipher an encyclopedia written in a foreign language. In fact, I would warn anybody that hasn't played MOO2 to shy away from MOO3 - you are likely getting in over your head. For people who are extremely detail oriented and controlling this may be the game for you. For the rest of us, you are better off getting an old copy of MOO2 and trying it out first. If you don't like it, you certainly aren't going to like MOO3.

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