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MOO actually looks well, nice planets, very cool *.bik movies, realtively good ships' pics. But most of atempts to find something good in the gameplay fail. The first thing that looks wrong is clicks and hostile interface.
The clicks. Most of reviewers wrote, that player do not do anything except pressing "End of turn", but I completely disagree with them. The player performs a lot of needless clicks, and i'm going to explain where.
The worst clickable thing is "task forse"In Moo2 everything was good. You have ships you can move each ship separately. But Moo3 is to "wise" to allow this. For example you want to send colony ship. You can not simple send the ship when it's completed. You must perform 8 needless clicks:
1. Click the star
2. Click "new task forse"
3. Click and select dropdowns of task and size (4 clicks).
4. Add the colony ship (using auto build to awoid 2 more needless clicks).
5. Confirm.
Also you must wait for a next turn. I have no idea why can't I simply send the single ship. If you know, please explain me.
Other click-stuff is queue. To set planetary queues you need.
1. Guess where the queue is located (it took 40 minutes for me to understand that the queue is in the economy screen
2. Click economy, click military queue, and click planetary queue.
3. Set production spending in planetary and military.
Also you sholud remember, that you can not add or remove queue items with a single click as in Moo2.
OK, you bought the new PC mouse with extremeky good click rate. But your troubles are still serious. You have no real documentation to the game (no good manual, no info in the encyclopedia, no tutorial). The first thing that you ask is : "How to change DEA build speed?". If you understood this by yourself you are genious. After this you'll ask "How to add the spaceport to the region?" or "How to add upgrade to the mining DEA?" or "How to vote the bill imideatly?". After hour of search in fansites you realize, that you can not do the simpliest things.
But hostile interface is not the only problem. Look at the techs. Yes, in real life president can not tell scientist what exactly must be developed next. But Moo3 isn't real life simulator, it's a strategy game. Gameplay is more important than realism.
MOOving on... You succeded to perform a lot of clicks to create the attack combat task and started the batlle. WTF, what the small strange ship that fire each other over the rectangular grid? Why do these ship look ugly a little?
The AI appears to be OK, but if you give planetary management to the AI you can not select AI style. You want one planet with military AI and other with scientific AI, but you get the same ****.
Finally i ask myself why the game is so ugly. And i know the answer. The game developers did not want to make a good game. They simply desired to make more money. They knew, that fans will buy the game anyway, and not-fans will not buy it or will use warez version. So they did the bad game with long-term purpose. They thought that after bad MoO3 more hopes will be on MoO4. And the greedy developers will make more money. When Elementalgames unc. coded their game "Space Rabger", they did not have a task "earn more money". They desired to make a great game and they managed to do this. It must be an example for the Moo developers. When Malfador developed SpaceEmpires they knew, that nobody will buy bad game. And Moo developers must learn from it.
P.S: Waiting for MOO4.
The clicks. Most of reviewers wrote, that player do not do anything except pressing "End of turn", but I completely disagree with them. The player performs a lot of needless clicks, and i'm going to explain where.
The worst clickable thing is "task forse"In Moo2 everything was good. You have ships you can move each ship separately. But Moo3 is to "wise" to allow this. For example you want to send colony ship. You can not simple send the ship when it's completed. You must perform 8 needless clicks:
1. Click the star
2. Click "new task forse"
3. Click and select dropdowns of task and size (4 clicks).
4. Add the colony ship (using auto build to awoid 2 more needless clicks).
5. Confirm.
Also you must wait for a next turn. I have no idea why can't I simply send the single ship. If you know, please explain me.
Other click-stuff is queue. To set planetary queues you need.
1. Guess where the queue is located (it took 40 minutes for me to understand that the queue is in the economy screen
2. Click economy, click military queue, and click planetary queue.
3. Set production spending in planetary and military.
Also you sholud remember, that you can not add or remove queue items with a single click as in Moo2.
OK, you bought the new PC mouse with extremeky good click rate. But your troubles are still serious. You have no real documentation to the game (no good manual, no info in the encyclopedia, no tutorial). The first thing that you ask is : "How to change DEA build speed?". If you understood this by yourself you are genious. After this you'll ask "How to add the spaceport to the region?" or "How to add upgrade to the mining DEA?" or "How to vote the bill imideatly?". After hour of search in fansites you realize, that you can not do the simpliest things.
But hostile interface is not the only problem. Look at the techs. Yes, in real life president can not tell scientist what exactly must be developed next. But Moo3 isn't real life simulator, it's a strategy game. Gameplay is more important than realism.
MOOving on... You succeded to perform a lot of clicks to create the attack combat task and started the batlle. WTF, what the small strange ship that fire each other over the rectangular grid? Why do these ship look ugly a little?
The AI appears to be OK, but if you give planetary management to the AI you can not select AI style. You want one planet with military AI and other with scientific AI, but you get the same ****.
Finally i ask myself why the game is so ugly. And i know the answer. The game developers did not want to make a good game. They simply desired to make more money. They knew, that fans will buy the game anyway, and not-fans will not buy it or will use warez version. So they did the bad game with long-term purpose. They thought that after bad MoO3 more hopes will be on MoO4. And the greedy developers will make more money. When Elementalgames unc. coded their game "Space Rabger", they did not have a task "earn more money". They desired to make a great game and they managed to do this. It must be an example for the Moo developers. When Malfador developed SpaceEmpires they knew, that nobody will buy bad game. And Moo developers must learn from it.
P.S: Waiting for MOO4.
MoO3 was pretty much doomed from the moment QS took over (though some credit has to be given to the incredibly bad mismanagement that lead to the downfall of Microprose). How many titles had this company relesed in the marketplace prior to landing this contract.... ZERO!
As for the chances of a MoO4, don't bet the farm on it. Any game that jumps the shark within the first week of it's release isn't going to inspire many corporate types to lay out good money on a wrecked franchise.
On the bighter side, as P.T. Barnum said "There's a sucker born evey minute!". Just look at Battlecrusier 3000!
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