Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares

The Good
Almost anything. The game has good graphics, a powerful yet simple and direct interface, a fun AI ranging in several levels and a lot of customization options. I espacially like the techology system, which allows you to research about a third of all of the techologies in the game, making each decision cruical to your strategy and enhancing the inter-player interaction (trading, spying or conquering new technologies is a must).

The Bad
The multiplayer options. Although there are many possible options for playing with other players, the game constantly crashes while playing Hotseat or Modem. The latest patch helps, but not enough, and the game is not stable. Another problem is the race customization; it's too easy to make a "broken" race, which will have amazing specialty in one field (a lot of money, a lot of science, etc. etc.) and will ruin the game, but this can be easily solved by playing one of the pregenerated races.

The Bottom Line
MicroProse is selling this game, along the original classic, for an amazingly low price. Worth buying, espacially now.

The Good
1) The game was released in the Fall of 1996 and no other game of that 4X genre has succeeded since then to take away its crown. But it can be argued that "Imperium Galactica II" (released in April 2000) can share the throne, "MOO 2" being the turn-based ruler in this diarchy, and "IG 2" being the real-time co-ruler. Four games will come out, in the next five months of 2000, to attempt to take away the 4X/turn-based crown: "Reach for the stars" (mid-August), "Space Empires IV" (Oct. 1st), "Stars! Supernova Genesis" (?), "Galactic Civilizations" (?). "MOO 3" is seriously under development for a Fall 2001 release.

2) 13 races to choose from, and a very detailed menu to custom-design your own race, playing with a lot of options and variables. This consequently confers to this game a lot of replay value. Three and a half years after its release, I still play that game on a regular basis.

3) Stellar systems most often contain more than one planet to colonize.

4) Even though they are 2D, graphics still look great, except the pictures of some of the races.

5) The command-points system limits the number of warships one can effectively control, preventing a race to produce massive fleets which can overwhelm the game early one.

6) A very extensive technological tree, where the player cannot select every available option, forcing him to make important choices. This also confers to the game a lot of replay value. For example, in one game, you might choose to accelerate production by selecting "automated factories", while in another game, you might rather opt to bolster your defenses with "planetary missile base", or strengthen your warships by selecting "heavy armor". That trio represents one of the tough crossroads of the research-tree.

7) You can hire amusing heroes and mercenaries: up to 3 to become efficient star-system governors, up to 3 to be assigned as warship captains.

8) You can design your own starships.

9) There are a lots of diversified buildings you can put down on the surfaces of your planets.

10) The pictorial representations of the various planetary landscapes are superb.

11) Turn-based tactical combat between warships looks great, is easy to learn, but complex to really master.

12) A 14th race, the Antareans, can be introduced later on in the game to harass the most powerful races.

13) There are 3 different ways to win the game: military extermination of the other races, diplomatic victory by obtaining 2/3rds of the votes needed to be elected Galactic Emperor, destroying the Antarean homeworld.

14) A sufficiently extensive diplomatic menu, with an exquisite "holographic" representation of alien embassadors when you communicate with them.

15) You can spy and sabotage.

16) Lots of cool weapons and weapons-effects.

17) A whole lot of stuff to play with, making it a prodigious game with lots of replay value. I'm sure I forgot something good to mention.

The Bad
1) The galactic map generator is mediocre to bad, in the sense that it can initially create a universe which puts some races in tight spots, surrounded by cheap planets to colonize. You can thus invest hours of gameplay to then realize that you are doomed because of an extremely disadvantagous starting-position.

2) Even though many star-systems offer more than one planet to colonize, there's a maximum of about only 70 systems in the game, with a few systems closed to colonization (because they contain a black hole, or no planets, or only gas giants and asteriod fields). That's frustrating, especially if you combine this limitation with what was mentioned in the previous paragraph.

3) The game, as initially released, was full of bugs. Get the final 1.31 patch: on my computer, it is very stable, bug-free, and it only crashes once and awhile when the late game has too much stuff to process ("stack overflow"). Save often on a few slots representing different times. Don't click too much for nothing when the game enters its late stages.

4) The enemy AI is of unequal value. Except in the initial learning process, don't play below the "average" difficulty setting. What often happens is that one or two races will rapidly become very strong (usually: the Sakkras, Klackons, and Silicoids), while the rest of them will stagnate on few star-systems. I think that the cause of that is a defensive programming which forces them to build early on too powerful fleets for their means, neglecting planetary building, research, and colonization.

5) There are no social and political events on your planets. You can mismanage your empire and overtax without fear of being challenged by riots and revolutions. "MOO 3" is supposed to introduce internal consequences for your decisions.

6) Consequently, it is easy to manipulate the taxation system to unfair ends. When the game has proceeded beyond the early stages, you can overtax your population for a few turns to make a lot of cash and then accelerate production by purchasing items.

7) Spies often take too much time to train. It is unrealistic to see that a planet has to dedicate all of its productive efforts for half a dozen turns just to train one spy. Instead, like in some other games, the player should be able to build FBI/CIA-style buildings which would then generate spies or espionage points, while the planet's production queue would be engaged in building other stuff.

8) Planetary ground combat is extremely simplistic and dull.

9) Starship tactical combat being turn-based, the fanatics of real-time combat might eventually become bored.

10) There's a lot of micromanagement when the game gets into its later stages, with many planets to supervise. In a single-player game, it can still be fun, but in a multiplayer game, it will introduce boring delays.

The Bottom Line
I agree with Zzap's recent review: "MOO 2" remains the very best Space-empire building game, 3½ years after its release. It has a lot of replay value, with all of its options, but that becomes even better if you can get your hands on the third-party save-game editor ("Corion2" by Gonzalus, 1997). Unfortunately, that editor does not come with instructions, and your games will fatally crash or get weird if you mismanage the editing process. E-mail me ([email protected]) if you have questions concerning the game or the use of the editor.

The Good
This is probably one of my favorite games of all time, most enjoyable. It's nothing amazing to look at, the graphics are from way back when and the sound is almost 16 bit. But when I comes to retro PC oldies you can't beat Master of Orion 2.

For those of you who have never heard of MOO2, it is a game where you play the emperor of a space empire that starts small and you have to build it and defend your worlds, and become the greatest empire in the galaxy. However unlike some games, it's not needlessly complicated. It all starts with the race selection screen where you can choose to do what you like, pick a race based on your play style...or create your own race (a feature I much prefer).

Hidden under the visual facade of the 16 bit graphics is a really well built ecosystem/economic system. The AI battles with each other, sometimes your blamed for the actions of other races in a very under the table spies and cloak-and-dagger kind of way.

It's turn-based, each turn is about 10 years, allowing enough time for you to justify a planet being able to develop without it seeming a little daft.

The graphics are beautiful in their design, compared to today's standards they're rubbish, but really well drawn and your scientists move in a two frame animation, which I always find quite funny.

The thing that makes this game great is game play, for a space-strat-sim it's got something for everyone:

Science, a very deep research tree with benefits that actually have an impact when you get them. You can beat the game using science and your mind instead of brute force.

Terraforming, Genetic manipulation, Chemical weapons, Mass-destruction or BFGs that would make Doom pee itself.

The micromanaging of planets is fantastic, certain buildings will give you bonuses and certain races will have innate benefits you can take advantage of. You divvy out your possible working masses on each planet in to three piles:

1: Farmers
2: Workers
3 Scientists
A simple system that really makes it easy to get on with running the galaxy at large.

Building, buildings that benefit your people anything from theatres to hospitals can be built and most of them have upgrades; every little helps. You are able to customize ships, the way they look, what the fire power is even what kind of soldiers are onboard.

The ship builder is detailed, fun and easy to use, build the kind of ship you want, make 'Death Stars' that can destroy an entire planet, (but be warned destroying entire planets can really piss of those bug-eyed ETs) All ships have there place in the game, with the Deathstars (correctly equipped) being the be all and end all.

Fight, blow planets up (really cool animation for this), attack ships, take over planets and enslave the people, bombard planets and start afresh with your own people. Genocide is, at least in MOO2, kind of cool.

The fight system is based on a grid in a 2D plane, the space version is really fun to use, cool animations, little missile that takes a few turns to reach your target it's all about tactics and tactics are rewarded (which is always nice) . There is a 'calculate battle' button, which when your going through the universe taking over each system, ironically systematically, is really useful. The planetside version of this I will get to in a minute.

Peace is an option, you could always just make peace with everyone and become head of the council, thus winning. I really like that this was an option truly a open-minded game indeed. Really at odds with when it was made.

This game still has a great online community, even to this day. It's great fun if you have a home LAN network; even if you don't there is a hot seating mode. One computer can equal loads of fun.

The Bad
It is really hard to say what I DON'T like about MOO2 because I love it so much.

But, nothing is perfect (except maybe me). Most of the time your in for the long haul, and sometimes the AI creates a cascade of events which means that you are alone against an intergalactic superpower. Which as you can probably imagine is really annoying.

The planetside battles are really badly designed, it's nothing like the space combat and you have no control over the battles. It's all automated and often you watch your simple townsfolk in there own 16bit world, with there little poking sticks; getting beaten from afar by aliens in suits with big guns. This is really frustrating, especially when your spaceships are far out powering theirs. Who cares who can benchpress more, when you have a gun that can blow up a planet?

The diplomatic relations AI is a bit rubbish. And stupid. Ask it something enough and you'll find it'll do one of two things:

1. Do what you ask.
   
2. Declare War.

Now when all you've been asking is for sub-terrainian farm technology you start to ask yourself 'why?'. Which is almost unforgivable until your beating them to death with there own flux-capacitor and they are begging for peace and offering up there own mother to placate you.

This is however a really nice moment.

One thing that really really got on my nerves was the Antares, aliens from another dimension that would randomly attack random systems and decimate the planet and then fly back to their own home world (going to there dimension and killing them is a way of beating the game -not an easy feat I can tell you), if they happen to be attacking a system your just developing and it's not protected by your entire fleet you might as well give that planet up because it's back to the drawing board. This is a really annoying game mechanic that punishes those you don't get the fast engine tech early. Which is mean because I think that food is more important on developing worlds because rocket fuel doesn't feed babies. At least not yet.

The Bottom Line
Master of Orion 2 is at the end of it a game that has never left my hard drive, something which I've always thought as an achievement for a good game. MOO2 is a game I still play, I still enjoy and occasionally brings me something new that I never expected, something that is missing from the games of today.

This is a game for the ages, if you don't own it already; you're mad.