Below are user reviews of Master of Orion III and on the right are links to professionally written reviews.
The summary of review scores shows the distribution of scores given by the professional reviewers for Master of Orion III.
Column height indicates the number of reviews with a score within the range shown at the bottom of the column.
Higher scores (columns further towards the right) are better.
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User Reviews (1 - 11 of 121)
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Sad Disappointment
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 1 / 2
Date: July 16, 2007
Author: Amazon User
Moo 2 was such a well done game, when this initally came out my buddies and I were extremely excited. I expected Moo 2 with my playable races better AI perhaps unique tech tree and overall better graphics. I was sadly disappointed, the graphics was the only thing going for this game the rest was a totally and utter failure.
They completely changed the dynamics of the game and ruined everything about it, MOO 2 is one of my all time favorites though after this title Masters of Orion will never have the same aura. The developer truly ruined one of the best strategy games ever made.
What a Letdown
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 33 / 42
Date: June 01, 2004
Author: Amazon User
Nothing like MOO2. This game is clunky, takes forever, and is, to be blunt, terribly boring. There are some good ideas, but they got too complicated with everything, and it's not fun to play. The only way I'd recommend trying this game is if you can get it extremely cheap (try eBay). My guess? You'll play it once or twice, and give up. UGH.
Very pretty, but wholy unfair game
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 17 / 19
Date: August 13, 2004
Author: Amazon User
Being a MOO fan, I was stoked when Moo2 came out. I bought it, played it, and fell in love with it.
Then Moo 3 comes out. "AWSOME! I'M THERE!" was my thinking. Ohh would I ever be disappointed! The micromanagment that I so enjoyed from Moo2 is gone. The AI builds EVERYTHING now, and it's such a klunky interface (albeit a very pretty one) that it litterally took me TWO DAYS to figure out how to design and build custom ships.
Now add in that the stupid AI always builds things that are not going to help you advance. The game MIGHT have been playable if there was a way to disable the AI. But you cann't. You can override it, but that's it.
Now take into account the fact that the game makers decided to remove what was one of my favorite items, the combats between vast numbers of ships. Which would not have been so bad if they had done it to ALL. But the people who now inhabit the planet Orion (namely the "new orions") can have hundreds of tiny tiny ships (about the size of a single person fighter craft) in combat, while you are limited to 60 ships of any size, and you will soon find it virtually impossible to reach orion!
Then consider how long it now takes to build ships of any decent size. In moo2 it might very well take as many turns to build a powerfull ship on a poor planet. But it would only take like 10 turns on a ultra rich planet with all the upgrades (core waste dump, deep core mines, automated factories, etc...)
And it's hard to get the most out of your planets because now you need to control the type of industrial buildings that get built on the planet, and each planet has multiple regions of various types. Ok, that would work if sufficent information was given about the various types of regions. Sure a fertile area is best for an agricultural building, but what about "hard scrabble"? Only about one in three or four types are intuitive.
Now add in the horrible system with which your relations with other races are managed, and the fact that each parent race has 3-4 "child" races, which means that you could potentiall have multiple "Klackon" or multiple "Psilon" type races in the game.
And finally add a users manual that really doesn't help much. Don't get me wrong. I love a manual with a story. I absolutely ADORE the Homeworld 1 manual beause of the story of the people from Karak. But the manual for Homeworld is only 1/2 story and 1/2 manual. The MOO3 manual is about 90% story. Which again would not be TOO bad if it was Story up front and manual in back or the other way around. But it's not. Moo3's manual is Story + little but of manual + story + little bit of manual, etc... so if you are not absolutely ENTHRALED by the story (which I was not), you wind up not being able to read the manual!
Over all, I have to say that QuickSilver really did a HUGE Dis-service to the game's name sake. My honest recomendation to ANYONE who wants to look into getting this game: SAVE YOUR MONEY! This Game MIGHT be worth GIVING AWAY, but I would not pay $5.00US for it.
Don't buy it
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 2 / 4
Date: June 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User
If I could give it zero stars I would, this has been rehashed by many reviewers. The most recent (6/6/03) patch still doesn't solve the game's fundamental problems of playability and lack of "fun." Don't buy this game.
So where are all the old reviews?
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 2 / 6
Date: June 21, 2003
Author: Amazon User
To sum them up, this game[...]....
The graphics are outdated, it has lots of bugs and even worse a great deal of inconvenient features (that could have been so much better or already have been better in previous MoO incarnations). Gameplay is very clumsy and its also visually unattractive. Your influence as player is decidedly limited compared to MoO2. You can usually achieve good enough results by just letting the AI handle everything and just clicking the turn button.
Especially if you liked MoO2 a lot you will be sorely disappointed by MoO3 since they didn not improve but reinvent the wheel, and it ended up with a flat tyre, and I want to warn everybody not to waste their money on this like I did. And if you don't know MoO2, get that one instead, its cheaper and most people like it better...
B-O-R-I-N-G
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 4 / 5
Date: June 30, 2003
Author: Amazon User
What a complete waste of time and money. Even with the patch applied, this game is terrible. It's boring, the AI stinks, the graphics are terrible, and the fun parts of the game have been abstracted (particularly the space combat) while the boring parts of the game, including economic management, have been expanded on. It makes no sense. It's as though they were intentionally trying to make the game boring and dull. If I was on the design team for this game, I'd be ashamed.
One and a half stars. That speaks for itself. Do not buy this game.
Disappointing
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 1 / 2
Date: September 11, 2003
Author: Amazon User
Dont waste your money, just get a mod for orion 2
So much potential, too much frustration
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 1 / 2
Date: February 19, 2004
Author: Amazon User
Like most MOO fans I started with the original game and when its sequel was introduced, I quickly snapped it up. As you would expect, the interface had changed, but for the better and after a little bit of experimenting, I was conquering another galaxy (most of the time).
For years I awaited MOO3 and when I bought it, I couldn't wait to load it up and start playing. The new features looked so appealing and there was so much potential. And, again, I was prepared to learn a new interface, but then I started to play MOO3 and that's when it hit me -- whoever designed this game didn't understand how to play MOO! The interface has become terribly cumbersome and many functions that should be intuitive have been made, or so it seems, needlessly complex.
After trying to understand this game for two solid weeks I had to admit defeat and the game remains silent. So much potential, but just too much frustration trying to play it.
If you're trying to decide what to do based on these mixed reviews, understand this: even those giving this game higher marks have warned you there's a steep learning curve. Ultimately, it's just not worth the aggravation. You have been warned . . .
a waste of time and money
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 2 / 3
Date: April 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User
...P>The interface is desperatly slow and dumb, you'll find lots of bugs, and since you can't focus on everything, whenever you come near the end of the game, basically you don't control anything anymore...so where is the fun of being in charge if your role is reduced to clicking the "next turn" button ?
waste of time and money
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 2 / 3
Date: April 21, 2003
Author: Amazon User
This game is a comlete waste of time and money. After playing for some time I have come to the conclusion the designers and programers could have better spent thier time doing something else like installing software on a 286.
I'm going back to playing Master of Orion II!
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