Why I buy this one ?
- , not just military and economic consequences.
- Slick and intuitive interface makes navigation and gameplay a snap for novice players.
- Complete campaigns to satisfy would-be galactic conquerors.
- Robust Multiplayer lets 8 players slug it out for galactic domination.
- Manage policies dealing with freedom and oppression, slavery, and racial tolerance. Will your civilization thrive better as an oppressive tyranny, a free republic, a unified theocracy, or something in-between?

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What our customer's say!

"Master of Orion 3", Pretty much the same as the original MOO that I bought. However it has no controls over ships that I can find. I build SCOUTs and can not seperate them from Defensive Fleets to send them to Scout any Planets. I can not tell FLEETs to go anywhere. VERY VERY poor command structure built into this game.

"Too much simulation, too little interaction", The so-called 4X games may not be my forté, but I can't see how MOO3 really fits into the category of "game". You need a great deal of patience and a desire to drop interactivity in exchange for thoroughness of simulation.

Oh, you can do everything in this game. You can terraform. You can conduct diplomacy, invade other planets, build ships and raise armies, conduct research, bomb another people into molecular components. But somehow, none of that is fun here. The graphical interface - what makes a game a game - is so minimal it just takes away the fun. There are too many options to set (tax rate, spending on various sectors, intent of AI governors) and too many discrete possibilities within them.

Consider Dark Reign 2, which is an RTS and not quite as grand as most 4X games. You can discretely set your units to scout, seek and destroy, or hold their ground. In MOO3, you have a continuum of 1 to 100. This invites ridiculous levels of fine tuning.

Combat is... about as exciting as playing my Atari 800.

To be fair, it's more expansive than Gal Civ I in terms of what one can do, but just not as enjoyable to play. Okay, I really didn't enjoy either that much, but Gal Civ at least makes you feel like you're not some bored intergalactic bureaucrat.

"Best Half-Finished Game -- Great for Single Player Gaming", Masters of Orion III is the best half-finished game ever produced. Some will tell you that MOO II was better, but that is only true for multiplayer gaming. As a single-player game, MOO II was a complete bore. MOO III, on the other hand, is a hugely interesting single player game.

Unfortunately, the project was too ambitious for its budget and MOO III was rushed into production only half finished. The result is a great gaming concept, hugely complex and endlessly mod-able, tied to a buggy and now unsupported implementation.

The gamer willing to mine the internet for fan-created fixes, mods and guides (the documentation is also lousy) will be rewarded with a turn-based 4x gaming experience still unsurpassed in 2008. MOO III was the first great "macro-management" game, and the world is still waiting for the second.

Warning: don't buy the Mac version. The Mac port is less buggy than the Windows release, but far too many of the player-created fixes are Windows-only.

I loved this game and played it for hundreds of hours. If a finished version were ever released, I'd buy it in a minute.



"ALMOST hits the mark...", All in all, a good effort at a follow-up to Master of Orion II (MOO II), with a few problems that, if addressed, would make it nearly perfect.

Rather than go into too much detail, let me say simply that while I like the game, the following are my main complaints:

* I miss the old turn-based combat--Perhaps an option between real-time and turn-based combat is in order, maybe even the ability to switch during combat. In automated combat, it would be good to have options like "all-out, with no retreat," and to have ships actively seek the enemy instead of just sitting on screen until combat time runs out if no enemy ships are immediately within view.

* More control over build ques without having to micro-manage is essential. There is some of this now, but it would be good to be able to assign things like, "build ships until I say stop," with alerts every ten or twenty turns to see if you want to switch. Micro-managing takes forever, while auto-build doesn't give quite enough control. There needs to be a happy medium.

* When another empire surrenders to yours in a war, you get nothing of importance except an end to the war. One should be able to require surrender of all or a portion of enemy planets to your empire's control. You should also be able to demand surrender through the diplomacy screen.

I hope (but doubt) that there will be a Master of Orion IV, in which these issues are addressed.

"Time", It takes allot of time to play this game. If you select a large galaxy with many races expect up to or over 1000 turns easy.

Love it though.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"Frustration to the max", Yeah, I'm a little late in writting a review for this game (about three years). I decided to write one now, because i bought this game the day it came out, and just within these past few months (of 2006) i actually figured out how the game actually works. It definitely has a high learning curve, i must of had 300 or so hours in playing this game before i was even a novice at it. To say it's complicated is a serious understatement. There's so many settings and buttons that it reminds me of one of those purposly complicated chain of machines and gadgets they use to do simple things like open doors for fun. Just when you think you have it figured out, something happens that makes you throw a drink across the room and shout "Why the $%%# is it doing that???". The main weakness in the game is the manual i think, it simply doesnt do a good job of explaining how the game actually works. Only about 40% of the features and interactions are explained in it. You're basically on your own to figure out everything else, which leads to a mountain of questions. Heck, it took me about two years of playing the game on and off before i actually figured out how to create a task force. Other questions still haunt me, with no answers to be found. Can you disband a ground force unit? Do they actually cost maintenance like the manual says....? Anyone?

Supposidly, the game has a lot of automation features that make it easier for you. Unfortunatly, these never work the way you want them too. I cant count how many times i've been in the thick of a war, only to find that all my colonies are building scouts and colony ships rather than warships. Great, the enemy is pounding away at our borders, but i got 30 colony ships in reserve, thanks a lot. I'd like to say that the "Planetary AI" feature does some things right, but it really doesnt. Instead of setting an compromised, steady financial setting it usually likes to just run the colony into the ground for a few turns, then do nothing at all for a few turns to fix the damage.

The fix, of course, is to simply turn all the automation off and do everything by yourself. Which....can be quite a task when you're controling 30 or 40 worlds. A single turn can take upwards of around 20 minutes like this (usually it takes about 600+ to win the game). It's kind of sad that this is all the game is about when it comes down to it. About 80% of your time is simply going to be spent on getting your colonies to do what you want them too, when supposidly it's supposed to be done for you.

Of course...all this frustration has to be leading to something really good right??? Nope. The battles systems is....pretty basic. There really is no room for strategy, brute force always wins. The Ground combat system is laughably simple, yet confusing as to how it works.

Which leads me to my next rant: Taking Planets from enemys. This....is extremely difficult. Invading a system, and destroying and local fleets, and planetary defences is actually the easy part of invading. The hard part is what to do next. Do you want to just destroy the colony on the planet? Or do you want to invade the planet and control it yourself?

Well...if you want to choose the wisest path and just nuke the colony, you got yet another headache in store for you. It's basically darn near impossible to do so. It can (and does) take about 30-40 turns of orbital bombardment to destroy a colony (as opposed to the one or two in MOO2). The only time effiecent method is to invade with ground forces and take the colony for yourself. This leads to yet another series of headaches. For one, the ground battle system is kind of a masterpiece in that it is both idiotically simple, and complicated at the same time. You get to choose from about 20 different battle tactics on how you're going to assault the planet, without any explanation at all on the benifits or weaknesses of any of them. Basically it's just a matter of guessing and hoping for luck. If you do conquer the planet, you're in control of all the alien race there. This isnt so great because the AI isnt very picky in choosing planets, so you usually end up with a real dump (yet another planet you have to manually control), with a population thats useless to you. You cant really create things like colony ships there, because they'll create ones of their race, not yours. So on top of the mountain of frustrations you have already, you get another: Somehow finding a way to keep your entire empire populated by your original race for simplicity's sake.

I'll stop before i get to far into this, rest assured i could write pages more of the headaches you have to deal with, but you get the idea. The only other thing i want to mention is the interface really is a terrible design. The first thing i learned in my freshman VB class was to make the interface user friendly (number 1 priority), these designers had a whole different agenda. I wont go into many details but let me ask you this: When you go to File, then Save As then click a file, it asks if you want to overwrite the file. As an industry standard, which side of the little menu is "OK" and "Cancel" on? "Ok" is on the left. Of course, the designers of MOO3 just felt the need to be different, and cause tons and tons of frustration for people who blindly think that clicking on the left button saves the game.

All in all, i play the game because I "Want" to like it....not really because i do.

"Master of Obstacles...", If you've played the original or part 2 of Master of Orion (MOO) then you have an appreciation for all that this game could have been. MOO 3 is not the same game as found in its ancestors. Too much has been layered over and too much has been relegated to the closet.

The basic premise of guiding your civilization through various science fiction phases of development is still here - but in a much more complex, confusing, and over-bearing manner. Sure there are ways to automate many things - but what fun is a simulation game if the simulator is simulating it? And if you attempt to micromanage everything yourself (which I HAVE to do in such a game) then the cumbersome and often clumsy interface and mannerisms of MOO 3 become apparent.

Graphics & Sound:
- The music and sound were nothing to write home about. Adequate but not impressive. Which is unfortunate in a sci-fi game where so many elements and moods could have been introduced: so many alien sounds could have been but aren't.
- The graphics, in my opinion, were quite good. The game doesn't need overly complex graphics to succeed but the visuals in this game, when appropriate, were quite satisfying. There is a good look to the alien races and management screens.

Gameplay:
- the interface is clumsy and cumbersome: the tools you need to use are buried in the management menus and pull-downs. Exploring and experimenting with various buttons, levers, whistles, and yo-yo's consumes an insane amount of time. The game fails to incorporate the important and minor stuff into one easily-accessed package.
- Developing your civilization can be very rewarding in a game like this: but MOO 3, because of its clumsy interface and very confusing research trees, fails to give you a sense of accomplishment. Researching some new stellar technology is nothing more than getting an "okay it's done, what do you want next?" prompt.

Performance:
- if your PC meets the requirements on the box you shouldn't have any problems. I tried the game on two differently configured systems (mid-range and high-end) and had no problems.
- if you have performance issues turn down the various sound or graphic options in game; also check for video card & sound driver updates for your system; and finally disable any background programs like virus scanners before running

2 Stars for potential, the rest were lost for not realizing the potential!
== Take care

"Excellent game despite many flaws", Master of Orion 3 is a huge 4X space empires game which despite numerous flaws and a harsh learning curve is an excellent game. Read on if you want to learn more about it.

After playing my first 100 turns of Master of Orion 3, I disliked it. After 200 turns, I was ready to toss it in the trash. After 300 turns, I started to understand and enjoy it. After 400 turns, I was hooked.

The game suffers from a poor interface, which makes for a steep learning curve. A few of the most useful screens are hidden behind other less useful screens (Fleets overview is hidden behind ship design, for example). In the space combat scheduler, you can't see details of your fleets, so you somehow have to remember in which of the 20 battles scheduled for this turn you have troops for planetary assaults. There is no way to see which of your planets have deployed ground troops other than to examine them all one by one. There is no way to see what is queued up for construction in the second and third priority boxes on your planets other than to examine them all one by one. Alien empires threaten you on the diplomacy screen, but you have no idea what the action was for which they are threatening you. There are many other examples where this game would have profited greatly from better interface design.

The game has a very non-intuitive game system, which makes the learning curve even steeper. When your planets build starships, they go into your Reserves after which they can be deployed instantly in any star system where you have built a Mobilization Center, even if that star system is on the other side of the galaxy. After a transport fleet drops its ground troops, it automatically disbands. There is no way to transfer ships between fleets or to transfer mobilized ground troops from a planet to a transport fleet. When fleets or armies are disbanded, they go back into your reserves after a delay of about 5-10 turns, during which time they are unavailable. Oddly enough, all of this works fairly well from a playability standpoint once you get used to it. The need to wait for disbanded troop transport ships to reappear in your reserves in particular has a limiting effect on any empire's ability to swiftly overwhelm another.

This is not a game for anyone who *must* be able to micro-manage planetary development and ship/army production. It's simply impractical once you have more than a handful of planets. Once you have hundreds of planets, you will be grateful to allow the AI to handle everything, while occasionally tweaking ship production. The AI generally does a fine job with planetary development, which is necessary since there are hundreds of items which can be built. It's somewhat brain-dead when it comes to ship production, however: the AI will happily build nothing but point-defense or troop transport ships and utterly neglect your attack ship capability if you allow it. So you have to learn how to manipulate the AI into building what you need through the control of your active ship designs, while you occasionally re-work the construction queues on a few of your most productive or strategic planets to build some ships that the AI hasn't gotten around to queueing up yet. When you have hundreds of planets you will be grateful to have the AI running your production despite often struggling to keep it on the right track.

Despite the criticisms, I love the game. If you play in a large galaxy, the scope is huge, you can end up controlling hundreds of planets and ships, and a single game can last practically forever if you set the victory conditions to sole survivor. There are two other victory conditions you can set which can make for a short or medium length game: become president of the Orion Senate or gain control of all 5 of the "Antaran X" technologies. Despite many flaws, the diplomacy with the computer controlled empires is better than most games that I have played. In addition to the many agreements which can be made bilaterally between empires, some or all empires will belong to the Orion Senate which can pass laws affecting all its members such as bans on the use of certain types of weapons, trade embargos against specific empires, declaration of galactic holidays, declarations of war, and inviting or expelling members. Initially a computer controlled empire called the New Orions has the presidency and enough votes to have complete control of the Orion Senate, but as the other member empires prosper they can eventually gain enough votes to take control away from the New Orions and even expel them from the senate. And none of my criticisms about the AI apply to how well it does for the computer empires, all of whom are worthy adversaries.

"Serendipity", I liked MOO2 but wasn't a really committed player. MOO2 frequently locked up in W2000 which made 100+ turns kinda painful.

Overall it was fun. On to MOO3.

Up to recently, I had heard LOTS of bad press about how the developer messed up MOO3 and changed into some particularly bad.

I avoided the game until it dropped into the bargin bin range ($5.00). I just got the game last week from an Amazon seller and wow. The game is fun.

If you like the grand strategy of MOO2 it is here. Things are definitely different from MOO2 but given a chance they are not bad. If you havn't played MOO2 and want a game of grand strategy with some tatical combat, you ought to try MOO3.

"Masters of Orion 3", Someone managed to take a fun simple game and create a monster.
There are some screnes that pop up from one screne, but when you close them you are not back where you started from. This makes several things in the game rather tedious.
Also you can no longer create your own race without starting with one of the game races. There is no way to set up a unique race that lives in any atmosphere, because someone thought you shouldn't be able to.
The game has some good ideas, but poor execution makes it rather less fun to play than the previous versions.