Ascendancy

The Good
Graphically beautiful, with a nice tech tree and plenty of interesting structures to build on and around your planets. The galaxy is modeled in three dimensions, which (as far as this reviewer knows) was a first in this genre. There are a lot of races to choose from, and the game itself can be customized extensively, so in theory you could play it forever.

The Bad
Politics and diplomacy are minimal, and ship design and combat are extremely lacking -- basically, the bigger the ship the better, so there aren't really any interesting tradeoffs to make. The three dimensional galaxy helps cover up the weak AI opponent, since the jumpgate system forces you to move through bottlenecks and generally limits you to frontal assaults. The races are many, but they just don't have a whole lot of personality when compared to those in Master of Orion.

The Bottom Line
There are good things about Ascendancy, but too many bad things along with them. I recommend that you resist the temptation to pick up this game, and stick to MOO and MOO2 instead.

The Good
This game has more "soul" than almost any other PC game. By that I mean something like the integration of graphics, music, and content to generate a deep sense of the game's personality or atmosphere. The graphics are amazing for 1995. I never get tired of the music, which is very spacey but also a little like an old Morricone soundtrack. It's got a great-looking and easy to use 3D star map, and 21 species with cool pictures and their own musical themes (which you only get to hear for a minute).

As a reviewer wrote elsewhere, this is the most low-stress of all strategy games. You never feel hurried, and apparently you can keep playing indefinitely. Some players won't appreciate this.

The Bad
There's no way to know what a new item DOES before getting it, so no basis for a decision on which technology to research.

The help-click feature is a joke, compared to games where it's done well, like the Heroes of Might & Magic series where you can right-click on practically anything and get useful information.

As everyone has pointed out, all interactions with computer opponents are clunky.

I suppose this is asking too much of the programmers, but after the mind-blowing diversity of the species descriptions, gameplay-wise they're just about identical. Tree people, giant amoebas, and microscopic parasites all build the same industrial-style planet improvements and research the same technologies.

The Bottom Line
Beautiful, compelling, somewhat flawed space-conquest strategy game.

The Good
To start out this review, I would like to mention that this game is one of the few strategy games in existence that doesn’t make me want to turn off all of the sound effects and music and throw in one of my favorite CD's. All of the sound effects that are present in the game are perfectly chosen for whatever event they've been assigned to, and they seldom annoy me even if they have been repeated a thousand times. Of particular note, though, is the music. The music has a late 70's-early 80's synth-orchesta space opera theme to it, sort of in the style of the first Star Trek film. The quality of the music, despite being played back at a rather low playback rate, is very good indeed. The music has an epic feel to it and is enjoyable to listen to, and each of the (several) alien races have their own short musical theme that plays during diplomatic engagements, like in Master of Orion 2 (although the soundtrack for that game is inferior compared to the one that this game sports).

Another item of note is the in-game graphics system. While the 256-color palette isn't as sharp as it was back in 1996, it's still quite nice and is capable of producing some very atmospheric in-game graphics (atmosphere being the thing that this game oozes). The style of the user interface is very slick and looks very different in comparison to many other 4X style games. The 3D starmap and system map is easy to operate and it looks very nice to boot.

And on a final note, I also like the system that's used to set up a game session. It has a relatively high amount of options available, and it has a very nice galaxy preview window.

The Bad
There's not much in the way of anything negative I can think of in regards to Ascendancy, except for two non-critical issues, which I will explore presently. First off, it's almost impossible to forge alliances other alien species. You usually have to wait a few thousand turns for them to warm up to the idea, and by then they are usually killed off by one of the more hostile aliens not long after they do decide to sign up with you.

The other problem with Ascendancy is the mediocre combat AI that the computer uses. Instead of employing Incredibly Clever Tactics (tm) to smash your fleet to a pulp, the AI rushes your ships and planets like brain-dead lemmings and open fire as soon as they are in range of a target, regardless if you have (or don't have) superior firepower at your disposal. And the AI will always choose to fight to the death, and it will never make "strategic withdrawals" under any circumstance. Also, the AI has a completely nonsensical method of building structures on the surface of a planet (for example, it will build a factory on a square that enhances research).

The Bottom Line
If you happen to find a copy of Ascendancy available for purchase somewhere, I would recommend that you pick it up. It's quite fun.... just as long as you don't mind the less than strong AI that's present in the game. Besides, the soundtrack that this game sports is worth the price of admission alone.