Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares

The Good
Everything. good graphics, designing your own spacehips, fun battles, different alien races means different gameplay. Master of Magic colony management style. lots of random encounters (space flux which prevents ships from travelling in space for a random amount of time, stars going supernova needing reserch points to be saved, wealthy merchants donating you money etc...) fun fun fun!

The Bad
Stupid AI, the colony autobuild is so dumb it hurts. (sometimes it decides to build trade goods instead of important buildings even though i have 70k+ credits and earning a great amount of money each turn). the diplomacy is virtually non-existant. alien races will decline a trade pact but will accept it after you offer it again after offering a reserch pact in the same conversation!
The Antarens are too easy to beat at a late stage, so even if you are going to get crushed by your enemies you can always win by destroying the Antaren homeworld. If you have a large amount of ships that need to be refitted you still have to redesign each and every one (why not change the basic design and just press a "refit to design" button?) If you deselect Tactical Battles when starting a game by accident you'll never have a chance to change it. and you will want to change it! (as stated before, the game's AI is not exactly amazing)

The Bottom Line
Despite the evil things listed above the game is still superb and as addictive as Master of Magic and civilization (well... almost as addictive as civ ;-) ) fun. go and play it. Seriously.