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What a Letdown

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 33 / 42
Date: June 01, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Nothing like MOO2. This game is clunky, takes forever, and is, to be blunt, terribly boring. There are some good ideas, but they got too complicated with everything, and it's not fun to play. The only way I'd recommend trying this game is if you can get it extremely cheap (try eBay). My guess? You'll play it once or twice, and give up. UGH.

Very pretty, but wholy unfair game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 17 / 19
Date: August 13, 2004
Author: Amazon User

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.

Went back to playing MOOII

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 15
Date: April 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

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.

click...click...click...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 16
Date: April 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

MOO-III is the latest (and with any justice in the universe, the last) of a space-based series of resource-management strategy games. I was a big fan of the last version, which was a marvel of slick, intuitive controls, engrossing combat/empire management, and cheesy (but fun!) graphics.

Sadly, I returned my copy of MOO-III one week after I bought it. It's the first game I ever played that felt more like *work*. It's slow, boring, and comes with a poorly written manual. It's also the best example of why you never let engineering geeks run amok designing any interface without some play-tester feedback.

It feels like it takes seven clicks to do *anything*. (I suspect that had this title's programmers designed a car's stereo system, you'd have to twist a dial three times, honk the horn, and stick your head out the window in order to turn the damn thing on.)

A couple small kudos are in order: the graphics are a vast improvement, the aliens truly look *alien*, and the Galactic Council is awesome.

However, these are all ephemera; the talent to create an even moderately enjoyable and entertaining game was sadly lacking in this design team. What a sad waste of programming ability.

All Work and No Play

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: October 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

My advice, don't touch this game, even if you get the game for free. That is, unless you enjoy spending hours and hours and hours... being frustrated as you toil away. After "playing" mooIII for a couple of weeks, I felt I should have been given a paycheck.

Try Galactic Civilizations instead

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: September 26, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I should have taken it as a sign when the rebate earlier in the summer (2003) meant that Amazon was giving this game away for free.

This game is too complicated and not enough fun. I loved MOO II and hoped to find this as an improvement. It's a huge step backwards in playability and the game does not seem to be particularly stable.

There are a lot of interesting concepts in the game that are poorly implemented. The interface is not easy to decipher and I finally gave up.

Fortunately, I found Galactic Civilizations instead. The AI, game play, and support and all excellent. I'd recommend spending your money on that instead.

Still a spreadsheet

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: August 26, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Bought game, found it to be a mess. Got patch. Less of a mess and now it's apparent it's just not a fun game. After the greatnest of MOO 1 and MOO 2 it's incredible that somethign this bad got out the door.

Big disappointment after Master of Orion 2

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: August 07, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I love MOO2, have since it first came out and I still play it to this day. It has great replayability. MOO3 on the other hand, doesn't have much playability, so don't even consider replayability. Months after getting it, I still haven't finished the first game because I got too bored with it. I dominate the galaxy with no chance the other races could put up even a small challenge. That could be alleviated by playing at a more difficult setting, but it's quite a statement that I'm winning and not enjoying it. To run the empire the way I want requires incredible micromanagement. The AI governers can not be trusted to develop the regions or fill the military que. Each turn I have to visit every single one of hundreds of planets and tweak what's going on. It is mind-numbingly tedious. On the other hand, the space combat must be done hands-off. Once you opt to start a fight, take your hands off the controls until it's done, letting your AI run the real-time battle. It's just not practical to run the battle yourself. All in all, a huge disappointment and I'll go back to playing MOO2.

Disappointing

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: September 11, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Dont waste your money, just get a mod for orion 2

So much potential, too much frustration

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: February 19, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Like most MOO fans I started with the original game and when its sequel was introduced, I quickly snapped it up. As you would expect, the interface had changed, but for the better and after a little bit of experimenting, I was conquering another galaxy (most of the time).

For years I awaited MOO3 and when I bought it, I couldn't wait to load it up and start playing. The new features looked so appealing and there was so much potential. And, again, I was prepared to learn a new interface, but then I started to play MOO3 and that's when it hit me -- whoever designed this game didn't understand how to play MOO! The interface has become terribly cumbersome and many functions that should be intuitive have been made, or so it seems, needlessly complex.

After trying to understand this game for two solid weeks I had to admit defeat and the game remains silent. So much potential, but just too much frustration trying to play it.

If you're trying to decide what to do based on these mixed reviews, understand this: even those giving this game higher marks have warned you there's a steep learning curve. Ultimately, it's just not worth the aggravation. You have been warned . . .

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