Master of Orion 2

April 29, 2002

Price: $10 (Jewel case)

Some games do not seem to be any fun at all. They do not excite you in a visceral sense, offer little in the way of thrills, and are annoying to a fault. And yet they torment you until three in the morning when you finally manage to pull yourself away from them. Master of Orion 2 (MOO2) is one such game.

The first Master of Orion (MOO) was released in 1992, a considerable retooling of Star Lords, the game SimTex originally pitched to MicroProse. While the space-empire game had been done before, never before had it been done to appeal to a mass audience--rather than a small group of "war-gamers" obsessed with maps and hexagons (often referred to as "grognards," a Napoleonic term for "dweebs").

MOO brought a streamlined interface where players could set their empire's tax and research levels with convenient sliders and govern colonies in a screen not unlike that of Sid Meier's Civilization (and later SimTex's own Master of Magic), which were comfortable and familiar to players. Games of this type are often referred to as "4X," meaning to "explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate"--though less Machiavellian players can succeed just as often at them. Indeed, the heavy handed grognard definition belies the true draw of these games for many players: building.

Whether it is finding the perfect solar system or planet for a colony, or creating the most wondrous starship in the galaxy, MOO offered nearly unlimited possibilities for creation.

Released in 1996, MOO2 refined its predecessor in the usual areas of interface, graphics, and sound (now possessing a dramatic and sweeping instrumental score), but most importantly, made the choices players made in building their empire more important, namely by increasing the diversity of species and decreasing the number of ships players are allowed to build.

A medium sized map. Settings for research,
production, and the economy are availible on the right

Even before the game begins, there are choices to be made, such as: selecting the technology level at the start of the game, whether planets tend to be arable or better used for mining, or even the size of the galaxy. A small galaxy inhabited by many species tends to be less friendly than a large galaxy with few.

After setting those parameters, players are left to choose a species or even create one of their own by selecting from a plethora of corresponding bonuses and hindrances consisting of biological adaptations (a species from a low gravity world is weaker in combat and less productive on normal to high gravity worlds, while a species from a high gravity world is nearly impervious to physical harm, and especially tolerant species can ignore pollution or subsist by eating rocks) or even specialized types of government (democratic societies have bonuses to commerce and research, but are more susceptible to enemy spies, while a "unification" government shares a hive-mind that does not allow for spies). Each choice has an associated number of plusses or minuses attached to it, allowing players to balance out their species to an acceptable limit, though players can take on additional hindrances to boost their score rating should they prove victorious despite them.

While "exterminate" might get top billing in the "4X" heading there are several routes to victory besides conquering the planets of other species. Every so often, especially in times of relative peace, a galactic council meets to elect a leader. A diplomatic victory can be achieved if a player wins the vote, with each species getting a number of votes relative to their power--naturally, this tends to punish military aggressors who failed to complete their conquests. The final method is to build a trans-dimensional portal and defeat the Antarans (who make sporadic raids into normal space, threatening to destroy colonies), an ancient species that was imprisoned there by the Orions.

The relations screen is used for conversing with
other players and in the use of spies

All that is left of the Orions, themselves, is their home world which is the great wildcard of the game. Not only is it the most perfect planet, granting bonuses to a colony's agriculture, production, and research--the ruins there provide the key to unlocking several technologies that players are otherwise restricted from discovering (not to mention a free starship and a heroic pilot). However, the Orion system is protected by a powerful Guardian that might destroy half a fleet or more before a player manages to escape--should he or she stumble upon it unaware. That is about the extent of MOO2's back story though the upcoming MOO3 will be fleshing it out to some degree (borrowing heavily from Babylon 5, it would seem).

The one aspect of MOO2 that really stands out, however, is the starship creation. By choosing to undertake various research "trees" (meaning that technologies get more precise and potent the further they diverge from each other), nearly infinite possibilities for playing intergalactic "rock, paper, scissors" emerge. Ships loaded with the largest "disrupter" cannons money can buy might be useless against an enemy that launches swarms of nimble fighter craft--while a ship with rapid-firing "mass-driver" cannons and point-defense "phasors" might pick them off with ease.

There is a multi-player feature, where gamers can compete in MOO2 online via the Total Entertainment Network (TEN), though a game of this nature takes a prohibitive amount of time for most players to bother with (as each player has to wait for the other person's turn to end before they can take theirs) and tends towards unintuitive yet crafty "cheese" type methods of obtaining victory; meaning that novices through no fault of their own stand little chance of competing against someone determined to win.

Ships equipped with phasors do well against other
spacecraft, not so vs. shielded planetary missile bases

MOO2 is not a fun game in the traditional sense. But it is certainly an intriguing one that will keep you playing for hours on end. Being that every game is different, boredom seldom sets in (though most players do tend to favor using the same species repeatedly) and when it does, a month or so later, you can start it up and it feels like a fresh game again.

As a long time fan of the first Master of Orion, I had been trying to track down a copy of the sequel for quite a while, scouring the internet for a used copy. I was pleasantly surprised one day when I saw it selling in Jewel case form in the bargain bin of a computer mega-chain store, having been re-released by Hasbro Interactive. Get this game. The fact that MOO2 is not included as a standard component of every computer sold is a tragedy--or something equally hyperbolic.

by Richard Leader

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