Started off as an interesting, sparsely populated game that was easy, reasonably balanced, but lacked complex AI and dynamic content.

Since its inception, the AI has grown far more complex. There's a great deal more content, some good and some immediately repealed. There was progress, in the traditional two steps forward, one step back format. It had promise.

Now, it's so unbelievable variable and poorly organized that I can't really handle it or recommend the game or its future trajectory. Bugs that were "fixed" reappear in future patches. Completely oscillating design changes appear on a patch by patch basis that suggest there is not so much a plan as a "hope this works" mentality. I've spent many hours on this, and I can honestly say I enjoyed the first version far more than the last. A half year in, and the game feels less finished and polished than the beta started with.

Maybe they will recover and launch to acclaim and wide-eyed optimism. I no longer wait for that day.

The game is very pretty. It is polished visually, but that is about all it does better than previous games.

Early game is fun when turns are short. Turn time increases at an alarming rate as you grow, if you want to keep your empire as productive as possible. It's similar to MoO2 in that respect, but MoO CTS is even worse in this area. A few examples:

• You must manage all your colonies one at a time; with a 5 long queue; which can only be accessed in each separate colony. Almost the same as MoO2 (which had a 7 slot queue).
  
• Pollution works as in MoO2; reduces production. However, the system is different in that you need to manually manage the pollution with clean-up projects. Not fun with large empires.
  
• Population movement between colonies is done 1 at a time by building tranports. A very time consuming process, but necessary as colonies don't grow unless supported by population influx. Fine in small empires; not in large.
  
• Each colony must manage food separately (cannot send food to other colonies), and production output per worker is variable (more production for first worker), so population management is much more complex than in MoO2 where you simply set enough on food; all on production/research depending on richness.
  It might sound fun, and it can be in small empires. It does however not scale for large empires; where you have multiple colonies growing every turn requiring you to check each and every one of them, if that colonist is doing what he should be doing.
  
• Between turns, you must watch all visible enemy ships moving and fighting one at a time instead of all simultaneously, increasing turn time even more.

Diplomacy and Espionage are arguably not as important as in previous MoOs; largly because of the changed research system.
Research is linear much like in Civ 5 with a few techs where you must choose between 2-3 different options ('choice techs').
The only techs that can change hands (via diplomacy or espionage) are the 'choice techs'. This means you can never advance your research by spying, and you can also never catch up in research by trading.


The reason for this review is that it's becoming more and more apparent, that they are creating the game for those that like the game as is; pointing to steam reviews being mostly positive, so everything is fine in their eyes. The problems listed above are non-issues to them.

Only buy this game if you like it for what it is now. Don't expect it to change.

The more you played Master of Orion I and II, the more this game will disappoint you. It's basically a MoO 2 reskin with less features. And it has the feel and look of an iPad-game to boot.

If you never played the originals and you'd like a basic 4X-game, this could certainly be the game for you. Just don't expect a tactic-laden, deep experience. MoO 4 (this game is the fourth in the series) is the 4X version of a cup of noodles. Easily digested, decent enough but not something you'll remember for very long.

I've been waiting patiently to write this and I may revise this upon the game being completed, but I doubt it.

When I heard they were remaking this game I was so stoked. Michael Dorn and Mark Hamill are doing voices as well, that's awesome! Bought into the early access and played the game, thought it was good. Beautiful, great sound and all my favorite races were back. The problem is each time I play it I find I'm less and less interested. The game seems to forgo deeper strategy for a glossy polish that simply makes the replayability slip and fall on it's ♥♥♥.

The combat is kinda fun, but I found myself simming through battles more and more. The only time I can remember doing that in Moo 2 was near the end and I had a gross number of doom stars and didn't want to watch every stellar converter animation tear my opponent apart. My choices don't feel like they matter in combat, and you know who will win by the difficulty bar before it begins.

The colony managment is a little better, but growth based off food supply doesn't seem to make much sense. Does having an abundance of food make my population sexually agressive? No freighters either so forget about colonizing that terrible radiated world that happens to have gems on it using food farmed somewhere else...

Tech tree seems really streamlined. By that I mean it's pretty boring. Different weapons don't "feel" different. They get a little blastier as you go, a little more green or blue, but nothing substantial enough to make a mark on your memory like some of the weapons in Moo 2.

Maybe that's not fair, this is a good 4x game, but every person who has played Moo 2 will have their opinion colored by their previous experiences with that game. Maybe they shouldn't have called it Master of Orion. The biggest problem with this game is I've already forgotten I own it and likely won't pick it up again. In contrast, if I'm flipping through my old CD book looking at old titles and find my copy of Moo 2. I usually spend that evening ignoring my wife and conquering the galaxy. I just don't see the staying power that title enjoyed.

So congrats, you cashed in on my nostalgia and made a decent game, but I wouldn't expect people to be talking about in... wow has it really been 20 years? God I'm old.

I know this game is still in early access but they have a long way to go.

The bad:
1) Tactical combat is real time
2) You can't conquer a planet; all you can do is bomb it.
3) No colony governors; No Heroes
4) Ship don't earn XP
5) Fleet management is very limited

I like the game from old.. and one thing I have had issues with is the AI Builds too fast gets
to advanced and at least for me creams me after a number of turn.. The cloning doesnt
increase fast enough for expand quickly and the doesnt matter what race... Plus you have
to keep balance in your colonies.. stavation, toxions, research.. so I do feel there isnt an
approprrate balance. I hope the developers do make some changes.

I really like this game up until patches 46.4.X. This is when the game began to crash for me regularly, as in every 20 minutes or less. Before if I was playing a hugh game and was in it all days it might crash and I could understand that to a point. But now all the fun is gone as I have to contiunely redo truns as it blows up so fequently.

All I got from support was don't run Defrag, yeah let I would and check the game cache.

As I stated before I have been playing this game for some time, and yes I checked the game cache after the first support ticket. Since then I have also tried running the game on 2 other computer with the same results.

After all this I think this game is not worth anyones time as they have not even made and effort to discuss or fix for sometime.

Master of Orion has the chances to eventually become a good game, but it is currently useless on Macs: e.g. it can freeze your laptop every time you view a particular planet in a way that you have to reboot the system. It's also relatively slow when it comes to loading times and FPS could bea lot more impressive.

The concept and the idea to revive the legendary game is great though. It's a shame poor engineering makes Master of Orion unplayable. I hope the bugs will be fixed and the performance improved before the final release.

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.

Currently not impressed. At this current time the developer refuses to tell buyers if there will be tactical combat for multiplayer games or even custom races allowed in multiplayer. Worse, if your friend buys the game off a different retailer they cannot play with you, both have to use the same source (Steam/GOG). Granted tactical combat is just pathetic, you have very limited control and the maps will have nebulae and asteroids at random times with no relation to the system you are fighting in.

For a game out of beta and into its fourth Early Access it is dreadfully buggy to the point the developers had to remove features they could not get to work. Their AI skills are so pathetic that the pirate faction in this game whose tech never improves will completely befuddle the AI opponents.

The Technology tree is very unimaginative with a number of higher tier technologies that cost more to use than lower tier with similar or actually lower reward. The ship customization is so constrained as to remove much of the flavor long time players of MOO2 associate with the title. Then to top it off with a tactical combat engine that makes it near impossible to determine what you are fighting and how well your designs really are. Oh, may of the weapon modifications still don't work but the developer will never tell you which as even they don't know.

However the worst feature of the game is galaxy generation. While you can set your own random seed you will find a galaxy generator that cannot even offer real balanced starting conditions when told to do so. Even in huge galaxies you are just as likely to start one star system away from an opponent or six. Worse, it is almost guaranteed that two or more opponents will share adjacent systems at start instantly eliminating those AI opponents as effective.

tl;dr This not WarGamings best effort, while better than World of Warplanes its evident the programming team they hired out of Argentina has neither skill nor discipline in bringing such a storied franchise to life properly