Well, I'm a big fan of (late) Microprose, and I played this game with friends a while ago. When I found out it was to become available on Steam, I definitely wanted it, though I already knew a bit what to expect, even if my memories turned out not to be completely accurate.

First of all, this game is widely known and referred to as the game who brought Microprose to its doom, in 2003, after an otherwise successful existence.

The game has some good points, however, they don't compensate for serious (I mean SERIOUS) flaws. So I'll skip to the cons first, then to the pros.

1. Beloved features gone. You can't anymore:
   
   • Refit ships (very frustrating, and, worst, it was promised back then in a up to come update or expansion).
     
   • Create your own race (the customization is limited to slightly modifying existing template races, while key components can't be touched, like GRAVITY OF THE HOMEWORLD, and what comes with it regarding battle.
     
   • Have decent number of spies.
2. Though good looking, the poor interface is rather unfriendly when it comes to finding specific things.
   
   • Accessing a specific colony is troublesome. For example, you no longer have a clear list of existing colonies. (If you do, well, it's well hidden, and I haven't found it yet). So, every single time, you either need to:
     
     • A, scroll on the galactic map, go to the system, open the system, then open the colony.
       
     • B, from the news report, if something noteworthy happened, you get a direct link. However, quite early in the game, your news report can be flooded by more or less relevant stuff, like a remote colony having set up a statue near a government building in a remote colony (and that is rather frequent).
       
     • C, you can put criterias in the known planets list to only list your existing planets, somehow converting that feature into somewhat like a status report of all your colonies. I heard there is a way from that list to access the depicted colonies, but I've yet to find out how.
     You can cope with it when you get 10 or so, but definitely not when you got 150 or so.
3. Same can be said about the financial report, research menues, spy menue, etc...
   
4. Speaking about the colonies
   
   • you get a lot of useless information, like the specific sub sections in the colony interface (there are 10 or so, and all but 4 are meaningless, for example, a tab reminding you what your main race likes for planets regarding proximity to the sun, gravity, biodiversity, etc... It would be useful in a create a new colony window, but definitely not in an existing colony window, and worst when it's a conquered colony not housing your main race).
     
   • UI key functions are sometimes well hidden (for example, when you learn on the news that a specific system is having unrest in a specific colony, you need to access that specific colony (read above), then open the "Demographic" tab, then go to the unrest subtab), while useless features are to the front (the race desirability tab, as mentioned above).
     
   • Despite all this, you lack obvious feature, like granting imperial fund to a specific colony who's in financial difficulties or in a crucial tactical position and require extensive funds for a quick growth, or to siphon the funds of a rich colony about to be destroyed or conquered. This said, the overall economics is broken.
5. The game is meant for you to macromanage a huge empire. However, it takes quite some time for your tiny civilization to reach such a proportion requiring macromanagement.
   
6. The incompetent AI
   
   • The game is designed for the AI to play it for you, and you'd only need to overlook it from time to time. However, you just can't do that, has it's very inefficient. For exemple, when designing a (supposed to be) static starbase, it will waste crucial space to fit in engines to make it move as fast as system ships (!). Or, when leaving the AI run colonies, it won't make up its mind, and will continuously zone and improve a colony in a way, to, couple turns latter, destroy everything, rezone and rebuild, all of it in a loop.
     
   • The AI sometimes acts apparently randomly. For example, sometimes, when left unwatched, it will focus on overbuilding industrial facilities in a colony already lacking mineral resources in a empire already lacking mineral resources, and, if you try to fix it, like by converting some of those industrial zones into mining areas, but leave the AI on, it will latter destroy those mines to set up farms. Also, the AI set ups zone with little regards to the specifics of the regions. For example, on a specific planet, setting up farms in rocky mountains while setting up mines in fertile naturally irrigated plains, and setting up labs and large government centers in canyons.
     
   • The AI also disregard things blatantly lacking, like a whole system without a single local government area, military area or recreational area, while, on neighboring systems, concentrating several large military bases on every single planets, or setting up large governmental areas on all of them, with none in other system. (Note: You impire needs an "Imperial seat of government" and each system needs a "System seat of government", but each colony inside a planet does not need a government (though it might help regarding unrest), and more than one governmental zone on a single planet is just, as the recreational zones is cheaper and has a best effect on unrest than reddundant governmental structures while also having an "area of effect" on neighboring small colonies in the same or adjacent system).
     
   • The AI (yours or the enemies') sometimes seems to perform better than you do, but that's given it has some hidden bonuses. For example, when zoning, you are limited to a strict 2 zones per regions (planets having a number of regions ranging from 2 to 16, I think) the AI commonly gets an extra zone per planet, whit it typically sets on the first or last region of the planet. In other words, it gets a bonus between 6.25% and 20%, which is more notable on tiny planets.

(Continues in the comments section, begin with the oldest comments...)

Okay, I don't care what anyone else thinks: I LOVE THIS GAME

I have a really extensive background in 4x games. I played MOO2 a ton, unbelievable amounts of Civ and Alpha Centauri, Space Empires 3-5, Stellaris, Sword of the Stars, etc etc etc. Common to all is the concept of building an empire, but few ask "How do we simulate building an empire?" On the one hand, you have games where the concept is abstracted behind mechanisms that make the games fun to play. On the other, you have 4x games that simulate, and strive to be closer to reality. Of those latter, usually the game makes you feel more like a General who really has his hooks tight in the rest of society, because battles are easy to simulate and exciting to play.

MOO3 is different. It's the only game where I actually FEEL like I'm running an empire. The idea is, you set goals and targets, and your governors try to accomplish them. A micromanager will have a hard time letting go in MOO 3 because the entire UI is set up to discourage it. Rather than slotting in each component yourself, auto-generate and tweak the result. Rather than building each building yourself, set up building plans that work for you, and let your governors work out the details. If you really need something built, take that extra long turn and go to all your planets, ordering each one to build the ships you want. For the rest of the time, sit back and let the troop ships pile up. You'll end up needing them anyway.

I'm skipping over the cons of this game, granted, but there's plenty of that in the other reviews. Most of the gripes people have with MOO3 can be solved simply by reading the manual or clicking through the UI. The game does not hide its depth (something I really appreciate in games, by the way), so if you don't like to study up on a game's systems and learn by failing, this game is just not for you. One reviewer complained that engines are required on orbital platforms. He must not have seen that you can edit the max speed of the drives. By downgrading them to the T0 versions and setting the speed to 1 (not zero!), they don't take up any room at all and impart no movement, and if you keep editing your current designs you don't have to set it over and over again. MOO3 The game comes with a PDF copy of the manual, it's at the top level of the game's folder. Read it!!!! The story, by the way, is fantastic.
The old Strategy Guide (remember those?) is also a great resource, with some very helpful drill-down tables (PM me for a link).

I got this game when it first came out and I've never been quite able to shake it. My favorite experience in the game is ground combat. The planet's surface is presented in a cyllindrical projection and you can see the progress as your troops battle their way across. You get voiced-over updates on the progress as well, and can select from many tactics for your troops to use if you so desire. These are the kind of nice touches that I'm really puzzled to hear reviewers call "unneccessary" or "extraneous".

I also really enjoy the research system. Most people seem really put off by the lack of control over which specific techs you get. This means you really need to keep an eye on the notifications you get in the SitRep at the beginning of the turn. Research won't stop and wait for you, like it does in Stellaris. Imagine yourself as a ruler of a huge nation, and begin each turn by listening to the updates from your advisors. Contradictory information, unexpected results, unplanned occurrences, and deviations from the plan are as much part of life for a ruler as architecting a grand strategic vision. This game is the only one I've ever seen actually try to reflect that.

No, MOO3 isn't the greatest game ever. It's an extremely unique game, but that doesn't make it great. I love the game, had a blast replaying it, and hope my thoughts can help someone on the fence try it out or give it a second look.

By the way, there are fan-made patches out there that some say make the game a lot better. I plan to try them out eventually.

Horribly flawed and failed successor to two of the greatest turn-based strategy games of 1990's. The developers' ambitions and designs far exceeded their abilities and funding.

The user interface is busy and cumbersome with no clear calls to action and a good deal of information with no purpose. The interface fights the user at every step. It is far from obvious as to how one should navigate or even return to previously visited screens. Despite the numerous switches, toggles, and other interface elements, feedback is abysmal. For example, when designing a new ship, the game might tell the player the design is invalid, but it doesn't indicate why, or how to correct the flaw.

Behind the horrific UI are abysmal systems that attempt to remove the player from actually playing the game - by design!

The AI is beyond horrible. It is not uncommon for AI players to play with such a degree of passivity that it feels like there are no AI players at all, and the game turns into some strange space-solitaire.

While it promised a trade off of losing some features from the previous two games in exchange for existing new features and systems, it only made good on half the bargain: removing beloved features, but not introducing anything of significance to replace them.

I bought this game on its original release day, and again with the Master of Orion reboot.

Save your time for play something worth your time, instead.

I first experienced this game after I returned from a failed trip to leave the nest back in 2003. It was supposed to release in November 2002 in time for the holidays, when my father actually pre-ordered two copies, but instead was severely pushed back to FINALLY release at the beginning of February 2003.

To put it mildly, the game was a disappointment to the franchise. Years later it remains 'the game that should not exist' for all who really loved the genre. Infogrames had ambitions to make a Master Of Magic reboot after this project was finished. Unfortunately for them, and perhaps FORTUNATELY for so many of us, the company went bankrupt a couple months after Orion 3 released.

They had wanted so very much to remove all of the micromanagement from the game and let the player focus on other aspects. They dumbed down the planetary screen to the extent that you had to be a master tactitian if you wanted to set up your colonies how /you/ wanted them as everything about the civilian infrastructure was constructed inside 'DEA's and you could only have two per planetary region. These regions consisted of the main planet plus however many moons the planet had, which could be larger than the main planet itself.

Ship designing was dumbed down to the extreme as well. Yes, you could design the perfect ship to fly around in, but unless it was part of a massive pack of 180 ships (10 task forces of 18 ships each) it wouldn't last very long whatsoever. You had to either design a metric crapton of ships to fit your needs, because if you wanted a Carrier Fleet, an Indirect Fire fleet, or even a Short-Range or Long-Range beam weapon fleet, you had to sit there and /KNOW/ what the heck design went into the CORE, what went into the ESCORT, and what went into the PERIMETER of the fleet to even get anywhere. In the end I simply cheated by making /ALL/ of my ship designs the RECONNAISANCE type so I wouldn't have to worry about the nonsense and have all 18 ships in the same fleet be the same thing.

Space combat...what the flying fruitcake was this supposed to even be? They went from having a rather informative combat system that Microprose had in Orion 2 and came up with a 2d map that LOOKED AND SOUNDED like one would expect from the DEFENDER ARCADE GAME! Oooooh, I am so excited to hear 'bloop, boop, beep, pew-pew-pew!' for my weapon firing...NOT! Don't even get me started about the fact that you had to resort to community patches (which I never did) to actually get the sensor detection arrays and cloaking technology to work as they should have!

Research. What the hell? They went from being able to actually CHOOSE what you were wanting to take in a field and returned to the implementation Microprose went with in Orion 1! There was absolutely nothing you could do to manipulate what you got, either, for it was ALL RANDOMIZED the instant you started the game!

Planetary assault was a complete disaster. Sure you had your planetary bombardment phase but even THAT was dumbed down to be complete overkill. I want to drop only a few bombs? Nope. You drop a full THIRD of your arsenel or nothing at all and just HOPE you didn't...oh, you wanted those planetary buildings intact? Well, too bad!

Ground assault is even MORE horrid. All you have is a few check boxes and a drop-down menu displaying your choices of how to attack the enemy, regardless of whether you are attacking or defending. The 'radio chatter' is restricted to merely four sets of lines spoken by the supposed head military unit leading this invasion, or a sudden female voice if you go into a stalemate for the turn. Yes, the invasions can go on for MANY TURNS and is won or lost when one or the other has colored in a 2d graph representing the globe regardless of whether there are any units left on the losing side.

The way they had the code set up for the BC count was beyond abysmal. I had an instance where I had either 2 billion or 2 trillion BC in the treasury...and after clicking the turn button suddenly went from a positive number to a NEGATIVE number of the same value. Suddenly I've gone from being the richest empire to a sudden game over screen because my empire ran out of money. Years later I find out the reason being they did not put the money into numerical terms but hexadecimal format. Way to go, geniuses!

You want to refit your ships to outfit them with the latest upgrades that you've obtained on the newer designs? NOPE! Once your ships are in the air, you're stuck with what you have until you scrap the entire fleet or the entire fleet gets destroyed! Have first generation scouts scouting the galaxy looking for new systems to explore? Well, they just got passed by with your fleet having generation six engines! Why are they still in service to begin with?

The developers had a very, very interesting and nasty way of getting rid of the races that just about everyone liked in the previous games. Alkari, MrrShan, Bulrathi, Darlok, and so many others... They were reduced to the status of minor civiliations through the supposed actions of the Antarans who were ruling the Orion system now. The real reason? Oh, that reason can be discovered by the little gems hidden in the in-game encyclopedia if you search hard enough for all the ''deleted by Rantz'' stuff. Turns out they got rid of them all for the simple fact they had a very distinct hatred toward anything Anthropomorphic, and would have even made the Sakkra extinct if the community hadn't stopped them. So they just made the Sakkra into nagas.

Also, who the hell came up with the idea of having innate racial hatred for other races? The three Saurian species do not get along with the three Icthy-type (aquatic) species to the point that it will /always/ come down to: First turn - Contact. Second turn - Sanctions. Third turn - War. It's the same way with the Ithkul toward EVERYONE.

The game can just play itself if you simply let it. However, do not even try to tell the game to ''start on turn 5,000'' unless you are willing to just sit at your computer for many, many hours while you /WAIT/ for turn 5,000 to come by. The game WILL play out EVERY...SINGLE....TURN until the game is either lost, won, or that specified turn has been reached. Also, the number of opponents that you choose to have going against you is over and above however many physical players are going to be in the game. You can have up to 16 AI players in your game...plus however many human players you can somehow manage to scrounge up to play this utter failure.

I guess I will just stop there with listing all of this game's utter failures. If you want to go ahead with this game anyway, feel free. Just don't expect to find any enjoyment out of this very, very sad title.

Do not be fooled by what all the negative people say. The game is in my opinion moo at it's best. It got a lot of negative publicity when it first came out because it was incomplete. As far as I can tell all the bugs have been fixed and it is a very deep and challenging game to play. Instead of commanding like five ships like in moo 2 you can command up to 150 apread across 10 task forces. The only problem I have is that the ships in tactical combat are really small and almost hard to see. The AI is a challenge and their are more races to choose from. Even the new remake of master of orion which I also own seems small and hallow like moo II. The colony management requires a brain yes and your AI will build crap ships if you let it. These can be taken care of by simply removing the crap ships you dont want built. You get way cooler techs in my opinion as well like fighter shields and armor. If you want just follow the brief tutorial and volia all is explained. Its called the masters notes. Don't take my word for it though I encourage you to try it for yourself and if you dont like it hell get a refund. You get a refund by going to "help" steam support and choosing the game you want refunded. If you have played less than 2 hours and owned the game less than 2 weeks it will give you your money back. The game IS time consuming. playing on a huge galaxy will take up to a month to win. The only other game that rivals in its epic scale is Distant Worlds Universe which I own the Disc Copy for and sadly has the flaw that the game becomes too ridiculous because it is all in RT and you will have to eventually automate a lot of features. I also remind you DWU costs 59.99$ where this does not. The combination of turn based/RT is perfect imo. The races migrate by simply hitting "migrate" on a planet instead of having to build stupid freighters and manually maoving the citizens. I was reading over some more of the negative reviews and will counter them. The Game is DEEP I mean really deep. even in early game if you want to play right you will can spend hours before you hit that turn button. One review claimed it was difficult to get out of the different and many window options there are. Here is how you get out of a winow. You hit the "ESC" key a problem Yyrkroon apparently had. An Aspect that no one addressed is the creation of ground forces. They do not auto generate. You build them from scratch., You can have an army of marines with psy ops and special forces attachments just like a real army. Also I bought and played the game when hero modders out there made the game as epic a babylon 5 sadly I dont think the mods will work. I call upon modders. something I have no idea to do to make the game great again. With mods you could have 1500 ships and 32 enemy races across 500 stars. That is the MOO III I remember. I correct myself you CAN get these mods the method of applying them though was beyond my limited expertise. The only game I ever modded was warhammer total war and there you just clicked on a mod and it worked.

While Masters of Orion 3 (MoO3) is not a perfect game in terms of its mechanics, it has a certain charm and humor to it that is lacking from many games. The efforts made to make the combat system work, the ability to customize ships, the cute and sometimes interesting tech descriptions, the variety of races, the hidden 3D galaxy map (It actually is 3D, you have to hit a certain key combo for it, I think it's page down?) give the game a charm. Are parts of it not polished to an ideal shine? Yeeeaahhh, but compared to a lot of newer games out there that are broken from day 1 and don't even approach being fixed when they're abandoned, MoO3 has a lot to offer.

And yes, I know, I have barely an hours, I actually owned a CD copy for like the past fifteen years and it's one of the few games I return to every half-year when other games I might play a match or two and then never pick it up again.

i dont really understant all the hate with this game

once you get past the ui that is clunky at times there is a deep immersive experience as you slowly plot your way to galactic domination

tech tree is extensive and very rewarding as you watch your ship sizes grow from specs on the screen to fielding 100+ ships approx 4x the size of earth

in order to complete the tech tree you need to steal or trade other peoples techs (every race gets unique techs)


if you can hadle a few hours of learning a very enjoyable experience

Yes this game is flawed...but it needs to be modified and it becomes perhaps the greatest in the series. THere are 3 basic flavors...a vanilla fix that keeps the game the same and fixes flaws....a Strawberry version that makes some minor modifications( and i highly recommend!) and a Tropical version that makes a massive overhaul to all systems. This game is tragic because of it's potential. THis is a complex and deep 4x game that once modified will be the best thing you have played. Small but extremely dedicated community .

I am a huge fan of the MOO series, but this game is a sack of turds... It honestly is the worst version of a management/idle game. The AI seems to be really arbitrary what it selects, no matter your funding or technology level, frequent RNG that sets you back 6-12 turns at a time, the graphics are worst than 2, and just... lacks a lot of love.

I appreciate the AI attempt to reduce the times spent on micro-management, but... it is a seriously failed attempt.

Absolutely awful. I put everything on auto and won by clicking next. About as much fun as playing an Excel spreadsheet.