Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars

 PC
User Score
7.1

Mixed or average reviews- based on 170 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 102 out of 170
  2. Mixed: 35 out of 170
  3. Negative: 33 out of 170
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  1. jjhalberd
    Aug 25, 2016
    4
    Good points: No major bugs, good voice acting.
    Bad points: Not very exciting, poor combat mechanics. No desire to play more after finishing one game.
    War-gaming definitely tossed some money at this game with all of the name brand voice actors. Unfortunately, they didn't have the foresight to hire experienced game designers as the game is just very lackluster outside of the voice    Good points: No major bugs, good voice acting.
    Bad points: Not very exciting, poor combat mechanics. No desire to play more after finishing one game.

    War-gaming definitely tossed some money at this game with all of the name brand voice actors.
    Unfortunately, they didn't have the foresight to hire experienced game designers as the game is
    just very lackluster outside of the voice acting.

    I was surprised that the priced at the game at $29.99 nstead of $39.99. but in retrospect,
    this just shows that the producers don't have faith in the game themselves. I recommend
    picking this up at $5-$10. At $30, it's still not worth it. Put your money towards Galciv3, Endless space
    and Stellaris instead.    … Expand
  2. oleogamah555
    Aug 27, 2016
    3
    The game looks good, but everything else about it I did not like. They did not consider all the little features of the first two MOO games that made the game fun. Like, if you conquer a planet you don't have any chance to steal technology. Also the new spying system is cumbersome and specific to planets which turns it into a big micromanagement chore later in the game.

    Also the Tactical    The game looks good, but everything else about it I did not like. They did not consider all the little features of the first two MOO games that made the game fun. Like, if you conquer a planet you don't have any chance to steal technology. Also the new spying system is cumbersome and specific to planets which turns it into a big micromanagement chore later in the game.

    Also the Tactical RTS is not really tactical. You can tell your ships where to move but you do not have complete control on how they attack or use their special abilities. This was NGD Studio's first time make a 4X game so they tried to copy features found in Civ 5 and other modern 4X games and implement them in their own special way. They have starlanes, which I did not mind, but the navigation between waypoints is cumbersome and clunky.

    As a comparison, if you played the new Doom game, the designers at id software did a good job capturing the original gameplay and then building new, modern features on top it. But in this MOO reboot they threw out a lot of the old features that worked in the first two MOOs and replaced them with their own interpretation of how the modern 4X gameplay should work, much of it borrowed from Civ 5. And the results are inconsistent and do not work well together in this case.

    Basically this is a 4X game to play if you do not care about balance or consistency in good gameplay mechanics. I found the game very annoying to play and could not bear more than 12 hours on it.    … Expand
  3. CrazyCot
    Aug 25, 2016
    4
    I want to love this game, I really do, but it has some problems that need to be corrected or I see this going into my pile of 4x games that were only touched once or twice and never seen again. I am going to start off with that I do like and why followed by the big issues and what they need to do to correct this.

    1. Sound! Omg, I was smiling from ear to ear when I realized the music for    I want to love this game, I really do, but it has some problems that need to be corrected or I see this going into my pile of 4x games that were only touched once or twice and never seen again. I am going to start off with that I do like and why followed by the big issues and what they need to do to correct this.

    1. Sound! Omg, I was smiling from ear to ear when I realized the music for the colony ship landing was the same from the original.

    2. Graphics are great and their attention to detail just amazes me, like having the ship’s path curve AROUND the star. The races are detailed and beautifully rendered.

    3. The UI is clean and unobtrusive. This is great because you get the whole galaxy as your backdrop.

    4. I love the colony manager and how they display your information, it is a great take on the MoO 2 mananger with a modern UI.

    I have enjoyed playing, but I can say the same for the countless MoO clones. Sadly like them I see this getting played for a bit until the combat becomes so bland I don't pick it up ever again, usually two to three games.

    1. Combat - The combat is real time and I have no direct fire control of my ships. Sure I can get into tactical mode where I tell them where to go and who to shoot but that does no good if I cannot control the weapons. I don’t want a real time combat, I wanted MoO turn based ship combat. Sure you could get bogged down in MoO 2 space combat if your fleets got really big at the end game but that is why you had AUTO. In MoO 2 you could make some really nuanced ships, and special variants, in this because of the ship combat AI you are forced to make brute force ships.

    2. Research - I love MoO 1’s research, you could play multiple games and get different techs each time. I only ever saw Hand Phasers once out of countless games. This made research unique and you were always checking in on the other races to find out what they got that you didn’t. Here I find myself making strange and unintelligible choices. Why must I choose between fusion bombs and fusion beams? This doesn’t make any sense, all it does is make an optimal research path that min maxers will figure out and share, it does not add variety.

    3. Range - There is no range mechanic. In the first MoO games you were limited by how far your fuel cells would let you go. A scout now however can go all over the galaxy and find everything and everyone. So instead of a gradual expansion moving forward and meeting aliens, you are thrust straight away into contact and have to start shoring up your solar systems at the Starlane warp points so you can at least hold on to some of your colonizable planets.

    4. It has been brought to my attention the 500 turn limit can be turned off. It is the Excellence victory condition in the Advanced Options menu. These options need to be labeled better. I am testing a game with the turn limit turned off. (update) I got far too bored and just stopped playing.

    5. Star lanes - These don't belong in a MoO game at all! Part of the tactics were worrying if commiting your fleet was going to leave you open at home. You could pick where and when to attack, now you just walk right into bottleneck after bottleneck after bottleneck. These need to go NOW. I had an anomoly pop up near my homeworld in my first game and I thought, ok without a star lane it must take a while to get to it right? Nope, one turn, one turn for a distance the same distance as the star lane going to the next star system. That star lane took FOUR turns. This makes no sense. These need to go.

    If you haven't purchased it already I suggest waiting. I would rather play MoO 1 or 2 before touching this one again.    … Expand
  4. jfrankie
    Aug 25, 2016
    3
    If the first two Master of orion were food, they would like the perfect hamburgers, big, fat, and full of juicy flavor.
    They were a bit buggy at first, but hey, I like my burgers medium rare!
    Thus, I was really looking forward to this new one. But instead of giving me a juicy burger, the new developers decided to go all veggie on me and gave me a tofu patty that has absolutely no    If the first two Master of orion were food, they would like the perfect hamburgers, big, fat, and full of juicy flavor.
    They were a bit buggy at first, but hey, I like my burgers medium rare!

    Thus, I was really looking forward to this new one. But instead of giving me a juicy burger,
    the new developers decided to go all veggie on me and gave me a tofu patty that has absolutely no flavor.
    Everything about the new game is bland. Graphics is ok, but unexciting. Gameplay, meh.
    What happened to all in the interesting decisions from the first two games? And the combat, omg!!!
    The combat which is the core, which is the big juicy patty of the old games has becoming a
    frigging tofu. Bleh!    … Expand
  5. yosa1
    Sep 7, 2016
    1
    I gave this game a try only because I kind of liked sorcerer king rivals so why not grab something that seems so popular, generally I find these 4x(coined) games to be a hit the turn button more than any semblance of game.

    Well despite my biased opinion, I did like the voice acting, cut scenes, graphics and general ambiance,the setting and sound tracks were immersive. My first huge    I gave this game a try only because I kind of liked sorcerer king rivals so why not grab something that seems so popular, generally I find these 4x(coined) games to be a hit the turn button more than any semblance of game.

    Well despite my biased opinion, I did like the voice acting, cut scenes, graphics and general ambiance,the setting and sound tracks were immersive.

    My first huge gripe is the tech tree, its a disorienting mess of upgrades, structures,ship hulls and weapons jammed into some drug induced order that kicks logic in the balls; its not the first game that I have tried that did this badly so I rolled with it.Then after two hundred or so turns and not really having done anything but watch the tech bar grow and my planet get more people, I saw that I was actually playing(to steal a term that keeps popping up in browser games) a slower and much prettier cow clicker.

    This highlights a general design flaw in these sorts of games, the whole game play takes place between your last turn and some distant turn far down the line, then do it again. In a game like Stardrive the developer employed time system were by a turn would be 5 seconds, so the game would progress rts style albeit the tech tree in that game was simpler and made more sense.

    This game is a bore fest, its not very interactive, build something, research a tech, send a ship to explore then wait 20 turns to do it again. There are numerous over sites in the ui and presentation of menus as well as aspects that should have been included such as a tabbed list of structure on the selected planet,
    control scheme needs some work and the tech tree/buildings available are chaotic and full of bloat.    … Expand
  6. allliefreemore
    Aug 26, 2016
    2
    Unlike a lot of buyers I've never played Master of Orion 1 or 2 before so I came in
    with very little expectations. I am a Civ player and I have really enjoyed Civ 4 and Civ 5.
    (Civ 5 I liked even before the expansions!) I bought this game to pass the time away before Civ6 comes out. I like how the mechanics between this game and Civ5 are very similar so it's very easy for me to pick    Unlike a lot of buyers I've never played Master of Orion 1 or 2 before so I came in
    with very little expectations. I am a Civ player and I have really enjoyed Civ 4 and Civ 5.
    (Civ 5 I liked even before the expansions!) I bought this game to pass the time away
    before Civ6 comes out.

    I like how the mechanics between this game and Civ5 are very similar so it's
    very easy for me to pick up UI-wise. Graphics is pretty like Civ5, but the alien
    character art is even cheezier than Civ's and some of the advisors are VERY annoying!
    Luckily, you can turn them off, so I would still give the overall presentation of the
    game a 8/10.

    But good graphics by itself does not make a good game, especially a good strategy
    game. After 6 hours of gameplay, I feel more frustrated than satisfied.

    Empire management:
    My new colonies keep starving and its very tedious to keep them fed. There's a lot of unnecessary micromanagement and trying to have even a moderately sized empire is very painful mid-late game with
    lots of pointless clicking around.

    Combat:
    I cannot get my ships to attack a specific ship. Instead, they just sort of glob-attack randomly the enemy which turns the entire fighting experience into a mindless click-attack. So I mostly just
    auto-resolve combat. I think the developer should have just used an abstract combat like Civ
    rather than this pseudo-rts which is time-consuming to play, but not every satisfying.

    Diplomacy:
    The game COMPLETELY FAILS for me here. Perhaps, I haven't play enough to master
    the optimal build paths for new colonies, and maybe other people who like RTS's will like
    the combat, but this game has the absolute worst, and most mind boggling AI interactions
    ever. For example; my fleet often gets randomly attacked by AI who I have friendly or neutral
    relationships with. This is almost excusable as just bad AI, but this is the first game I ever
    played where getting attacked is not an act of war! This is just not bad programming, but
    REALLY POOR GAME DESIGN and really incomphrensible. This completely breaks the immersion
    factor for me.

    Hopefully, in the future the devs will release more add-ons which makes the game enjoyable,
    like how Civ 5 has really grown with expansions, but as of right now, I cannot recommend
    this game.    … Expand
  7. psycros
    Aug 30, 2016
    3
    This game exemplifies EVERYTHING that's wrong with game design today.

    Game-crippling bugs that have been reported for nearly six months have gone totally unaddressed. The most telling example? The in-game bug reporting tool limits you to 18 characters for the title of the bug report. How's that for irony? This MOO has all the depth of a typical phone game. I guess they were too    This game exemplifies EVERYTHING that's wrong with game design today.

    Game-crippling bugs that have been reported for nearly six months have gone totally unaddressed. The most telling example? The in-game bug reporting tool limits you to 18 characters for the title of the bug report. How's that for irony?

    This MOO has all the depth of a typical phone game. I guess they were too busying preparing not one but TWO launch day DLCs, one of which puts an entire playable race behind a paywall. Doubly hilarious, that race is really just a reskinned version of the humans.

    Just play MOO2, possibly with some good mods.    … Expand
  8. Paulystan
    Sep 25, 2016
    2
    So I have been trying to get along with this game for the last few days and I have given up. It is really quite a lot of trash made to look pretty. Space lanes are terrible. Each race is basically given a little cluster of planets that no other player can get to until half way through the game. Once exploration ability gets that far, every player has developed their little section. It'sSo I have been trying to get along with this game for the last few days and I have given up. It is really quite a lot of trash made to look pretty. Space lanes are terrible. Each race is basically given a little cluster of planets that no other player can get to until half way through the game. Once exploration ability gets that far, every player has developed their little section. It's only possible to expand your empire by then attacking the player directly next to you. It's alike a game of galactic dominoes but with less strategy. Orion is located in one of the initial clusters so really the only empire that can grab it is the one who has it in their little cluster. Technology is pretty thin and not exciting at all. Development of planets is slow and boring. There don't appear to be leaders or those awesome little extras that appeared in MOO2. Another remake of an older game which looks and sounds pretty good but ends up being extremely poor. I will be getting my money back on this one.… Expand
  9. Wolfeye
    Jan 4, 2017
    2
    Well. I put this on my wishlist for Christmas, so I'd have time to play over the long break. I liked the originals, and thought maybe this game would let me play Mrrshans and actually win. Never happened at normal difficulty settings in the originals. Well, you can win with them now, but you won't beat the Antarans. Even on "Very Easy" level I wasn't able to design a fleet, at turn 500+Well. I put this on my wishlist for Christmas, so I'd have time to play over the long break. I liked the originals, and thought maybe this game would let me play Mrrshans and actually win. Never happened at normal difficulty settings in the originals. Well, you can win with them now, but you won't beat the Antarans. Even on "Very Easy" level I wasn't able to design a fleet, at turn 500+ that could best the Antarans. I had all the advanced tech you could want. For some reason though, you're limited to one Doom Star size ship in this game.

    Graphics are nice, but my machine isn't killer-fast. This game is SLOW. VERY slow. You sit around waiting for the AI players to finish. For ever.

    Sadly, they decided to do away with a turn based tactical system. That often made the diff in the originals. Now it's complete crap.

    I'm glad I didn't pay for this piece of junk.    … Expand
  10. g014n
    Aug 19, 2020
    4
    It's a genuinely bad game and that in itself is worth writing about.

    The only thing it has going for it is the looks, but other than that the gameplay feature set is shallow & poorly thought through, the AI is bad, for a strategy game it lacks any depth (it's a clciker more than about thinking, pondering decisions). I rarely regret purchases as I usually am more selective with what I    It's a genuinely bad game and that in itself is worth writing about.

    The only thing it has going for it is the looks, but other than that the gameplay feature set is shallow & poorly thought through, the AI is bad, for a strategy game it lacks any depth (it's a clciker more than about thinking, pondering decisions). I rarely regret purchases as I usually am more selective with what I buy, but there was a sci-fi dryspell at the time it was released, so I got it anyway. The problem is that it's not worth the time even if you get it at discount, frankly.    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

81
#81 Most Discussed PC Game of 2016
93
#93 Most Shared PC Game of 2016

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
74

Mixed or average reviews - based on 39 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 21 out of 39
  2. Mixed: 18 out of 39
  3. Negative: 0 out of 39
  1. Everyeye.it
    Nov 23, 2016
    78
    If you are among the (still?) large group of fans who have devoured the first two episodes of MicroProse series, you will be happy to discover familiar feelings, and you'll almost feel like you never stopped playing.
    Read full review
  2. CD-Action
    Nov 18, 2016
    75
    Maybe I was spoiled by Civilization, but Master of Orion struck me as scant in terms of bells and whistles. It also doesn’t look and doesn’t sound particularly good, but transparent rules, well-designed interface and variety of paths to victory make it a very reasonable proposal for the fans of classic 4X games. [11/2016, p.68]
  3. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Nov 5, 2016
    80
    Strategy for the masses, which does not come with anything new, but also does not fail in anything. Just a Civilization from space. [Issue #268]
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