1996′s Master Of Orion 2 is still heralded as one of the finest 4X games ever made, and cetainly it’s one that I still find myself playing a game of every so often. This is a modern reboot of that series.
Right off the bat, it’s far more Civ 5 than the MoO I’m accustomed to. From the diplomacy menu to the scales of production units, everything’s gone a bit Sid Meier. Not a bad thing as Civ 5 is a fantastic 4X game, but I already own it and don’t need another Space Flavour version.
One thing I do not like at all is the change to exploration. In MoO2, you can visit any star in range of your engines- as you develop new technology, this range grows. In the reboot, you navigate by way of starlanes, which greatly restricts how you explore. It feels more like a galaxy-themed dungeon crawler this way and there’s a lot of nonsensical bottlenecks where two stars right next to each other aren’t connected directly but by a convoluted chain of starlanes. It’s very restricting in a game about the expanses of space.
Fin or Bin:
It’s a shame the humans went from Space Richard O’Brien to Generic White Space Man, but my race was always the Klackons and they look REAL cool now. It’s got all the same one-more-turn addictiveness as any good 4X game, but I’ll probably Finish this one game and then put it to bed.
Recommended To:
People have said its relative simplicity lends it well to 4X newbies. I strongly disagree- the tutorial is horrendously bad and it left me more confused than I would have been if I’d just started playing. If you’re familiar with Civ, there’s enough bleed-through that you might enjoy this too.
(Steam)