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I've been playing this game for about three days now, and I think I can sum it up pretty well:
By this time with MOO1/2, I was having lots of fun, but with MOO3 I feel like someone's pulled some sort blindfold over my eyes, keeping all the interesting things away from me. Instead, it's been replaced with some droning radio voice from afar, telling me about ledgers, sitreps, budgets, and an endless stream of technology improvements that mean absolutely nothing to me.
High points? First, the viceroy AI seems to be pretty good at selecting what you want to do with a planet, and I like the fact that the AI won't let you run your empire into the ground too easily by mismanaging your budgets and priorities. Second, I like the star lane concept. Last, I like the concept (but not the execution) of the sitrep.
Low points? Where to start?
Macromanagement is one thing, but I feel like I have very little to do with my empire at all! Add something to a queue here, adjust a slider there, hit the "turn" button, and repeat ad nauseam. Things have been made too abstracted. The menu depth required to get to common functions like build queues is ridiculous.
Spies are far too powerful in offense, not nearly enough in defense. Why bother having leaders at all when they get assassinated within five or ten turns?
The galaxy map graphics actually seem a step down from MOO2, if you ask me. What was wrong with the old 2D map such that it required replacement? Or if it had to be replaced, why was it replaced with something that looks so bad?
And combat! The real-time decision was a great one, but the ships are so tiny it's kind of pointless to even have them onscreen. They might as well be dots. The 2D sprite graphics of MOO2 battles seem lush by comparison. Weapons effects are nice, though.
Diplomacy is a mess! After sixty turns of building up to an alliance, that same race suddenly (and inexplicably) declares war on me, only to cancel it two or three turns later. Then they start the whole process over again. Why bother forming alliances when they are so casually discarded?
How about refitting my older ships? Since tech advances come in such torrents, it's kind of stupid to not allow refitting. After all, by the time a ship is produced it's invariably five or ten levels out of date.
Lastly, the UI...bland, boring, and not the most intuitive layout I've ever seen. The text is too big, the use of whitespace is poor. There's simultaneously too much and too little info on just about every screen. Too much extraneous info, too little important info.
I am thoroughly and totally disappointed, the more so because I have been anticipating this game since the day it was announced. I can't understand for the life of my why QS made the design decisions that they did, because it seems they did absolutely no research on what made MOO1/2 fun to play and instead focused on "we're going to remove micromanagement and build a galaxy-wide business simulator". Congrats, guys...you succeeded. Now all you have to do is make the AI press the "turn" button and I can sit back and watch the game play all by itself. Oh what fun.
If you want an outstanding turn-based 4x space strategy game that allows you to get into the game, have interesting combat, and feel like you actually matter to your empire, I strongly suggest that you check out Space Empire IV Gold from Shrapnel Games. The computer AI isn't the best (mostly because it's predictable, not because it's stupid), but it's engaging. Tech advances actually mean something. Refitting is allowed. Combat is well executed (but turn-based). Best of all, it's well under the $50 pricetag of MOO3.
I'm returning my copy of MOO3 today. Perhaps in five or six months they'll have patched it to the point where it's interesting, but I doubt it. There's too much wrong here for patches to fix. I've now been greatly disappointed by my last two biggest anticipations: Civ3 and MOO3. What is it with folks who can't understand why the prior game was a success? Did QS even bother doing any polling, research, or studies of MOO1/2 players to find out what they liked and didn't like? It sure doesn't seem so.
And don't hand me the old "we wanted to start fresh" mantra. If you wanted to do that, don't call it MOO. It would've saved us all a lot of trouble, and allowed someone else to truly make good use of the name.
By this time with MOO1/2, I was having lots of fun, but with MOO3 I feel like someone's pulled some sort blindfold over my eyes, keeping all the interesting things away from me. Instead, it's been replaced with some droning radio voice from afar, telling me about ledgers, sitreps, budgets, and an endless stream of technology improvements that mean absolutely nothing to me.
High points? First, the viceroy AI seems to be pretty good at selecting what you want to do with a planet, and I like the fact that the AI won't let you run your empire into the ground too easily by mismanaging your budgets and priorities. Second, I like the star lane concept. Last, I like the concept (but not the execution) of the sitrep.
Low points? Where to start?
Macromanagement is one thing, but I feel like I have very little to do with my empire at all! Add something to a queue here, adjust a slider there, hit the "turn" button, and repeat ad nauseam. Things have been made too abstracted. The menu depth required to get to common functions like build queues is ridiculous.
Spies are far too powerful in offense, not nearly enough in defense. Why bother having leaders at all when they get assassinated within five or ten turns?
The galaxy map graphics actually seem a step down from MOO2, if you ask me. What was wrong with the old 2D map such that it required replacement? Or if it had to be replaced, why was it replaced with something that looks so bad?
And combat! The real-time decision was a great one, but the ships are so tiny it's kind of pointless to even have them onscreen. They might as well be dots. The 2D sprite graphics of MOO2 battles seem lush by comparison. Weapons effects are nice, though.
Diplomacy is a mess! After sixty turns of building up to an alliance, that same race suddenly (and inexplicably) declares war on me, only to cancel it two or three turns later. Then they start the whole process over again. Why bother forming alliances when they are so casually discarded?
How about refitting my older ships? Since tech advances come in such torrents, it's kind of stupid to not allow refitting. After all, by the time a ship is produced it's invariably five or ten levels out of date.
Lastly, the UI...bland, boring, and not the most intuitive layout I've ever seen. The text is too big, the use of whitespace is poor. There's simultaneously too much and too little info on just about every screen. Too much extraneous info, too little important info.
I am thoroughly and totally disappointed, the more so because I have been anticipating this game since the day it was announced. I can't understand for the life of my why QS made the design decisions that they did, because it seems they did absolutely no research on what made MOO1/2 fun to play and instead focused on "we're going to remove micromanagement and build a galaxy-wide business simulator". Congrats, guys...you succeeded. Now all you have to do is make the AI press the "turn" button and I can sit back and watch the game play all by itself. Oh what fun.
If you want an outstanding turn-based 4x space strategy game that allows you to get into the game, have interesting combat, and feel like you actually matter to your empire, I strongly suggest that you check out Space Empire IV Gold from Shrapnel Games. The computer AI isn't the best (mostly because it's predictable, not because it's stupid), but it's engaging. Tech advances actually mean something. Refitting is allowed. Combat is well executed (but turn-based). Best of all, it's well under the $50 pricetag of MOO3.
I'm returning my copy of MOO3 today. Perhaps in five or six months they'll have patched it to the point where it's interesting, but I doubt it. There's too much wrong here for patches to fix. I've now been greatly disappointed by my last two biggest anticipations: Civ3 and MOO3. What is it with folks who can't understand why the prior game was a success? Did QS even bother doing any polling, research, or studies of MOO1/2 players to find out what they liked and didn't like? It sure doesn't seem so.
And don't hand me the old "we wanted to start fresh" mantra. If you wanted to do that, don't call it MOO. It would've saved us all a lot of trouble, and allowed someone else to truly make good use of the name.
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