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
The three dimensions were great. The nature of both the galactic map and the system display were great, and a definite plus over the flat universe of MOO. In addition, Ascendancy systems had the realism of containing multiple planets, although I found that the nature of these planets did not depend on the star type.

The races were, for the most part, quite novel, and my only complaint is that we humans didn't show up.

Weapon balance was, for the most part, very good. Although late-technology weapons were far better than earlier ones (and so they should be!), new advances did not necessarily make older ones obsolete. Nothing, for instance, ever exceeded the range of the plasmatron, a weapon you can get your hands on while still pretty early in the game.

The variety of technologies was, although not spectacular, decent. In contrast to MOO, which mostly offered improvements on a small set of technologies, Ascendancy research provides whole new tools and abilities. I don't think that I have seen any game with as many planetwide projects possible; there were I believe three or four completely different types.

One of the nicest bits was that most aspects of the game were not statistic-based. Battles and advances were decided not on the basis of rolling dies, but depended almost entirely on your actions (of course, there are exceptions; the technology you get from ruins is completely random, and planets are mostly evaluated based on their Three Statistics).

The Bad
The same thing nobody else liked about the game: the computer opponents.

It's a pity that the same effort which went into the rest of the game could not go into the computer code; the algorithms were far too simple, almost as if they had been quickly added to the rest of the game. Diplomatic reactions were far too simple as compared, say, to MOO, and a noticeable bug is that your allies never seem to expect you to honor your alliances.

Combat code, the other foundation of the game, was equally shaky. The enemy ships were clearly following a certain specific set of checks, which I could probably copy out here to high accuracy if it were not against the rules to give out cheats (and knowing how the computer will react to anything is, essentially, the ultimate cheat). Let's just say that I found any number of tricks which pretty much ensured military superiority, even when the enemy had the superior force. One remark I will make is that the game code is very offense-oriented; unlike in MOO where sometimes the other player will seem to "see" what you are trying to do and take evasive action. I have yet to see an Ascendancy ship retreat.

What else? Well, there are a few obvious bugs elsewhere (e.g., in the building code); it seems that they spent almost no time debugging. A tight deadline, perhaps? Another complaint is the complete randomization of the xenoarchaeological code; a race can get a valuable technology (say, large-scale construction or lush growth bombs) early in the game and have a decided advantage over the others.

The Bottom Line
Excellent game at first, and very replayable, but expect to master it quickly.

The Good
This game does take a little effort (but not too much) to get into but, boy, does it pay off! The graphics are still very crisp and attractive and even rival that of certain brand new strategy games - for a 13 year old game, that's not bad at all!

But there's also the incredibly orchestric music which remains so recognisable and easily trumps the pseudo-modern beat music you find in far too many new games.

The game itself is highly addictive, with the search for new suitable planets while expanding your army being a constant drive to expand. The strategy side isn't too complex yet it's surprisingly deep.

The combat is lots of fun too with the explosions still feeling really sweet. Blowing up alien ships has to be one of the most fun elements of Ascendancy.

The Bad
Well, I have to agree with the biggest criticisms that the game has received in the past.

First of all, the AI isn't that great. There has been a patch that improves it but the original unpatched game saw the AI really badly manage planets. Every planet you captured, you had to completely rebuild from scratch. The AI never posed a real challenge.

The second problem with the game is that some might find the macromanagement tedious after you've captured 50 planets. Maintaining such a large amount of planets means a lot of work and nearly every day you have to create several buildings, start constructing a new ship, etc. My advice is: stick to smaller universes with fewer aliens to compete with. The moment you tackle a large universe, you're doomed to give up out of boredom.

The Bottom Line
This really is a different take on Master of Orion. The difference is that you have much better control over combat and have to maintain planets on a much smaller level. You constantly have to research more, upgrade buildings, build better ships, explore new solar systems, colonize new planets.

This game can really suck you in. 13 years old yet when I played it recently in Dosbox, I couldn't tear myself away from the screen until I had vanquished my opponents! My entire day went up in smoke, something which for me, few modern games are capable of achieving.