With the tagline, Conquer the Stars, Master of Orion holds the promise of a fantastic adventure in the galaxies. But when you launch the game, you wish the tagline was something different – something less promising. Master of Orion comes on the back of the popular 4X game, but it’s nothing compared to one of the most-loved strategy games of all time. It does feature some additions to give it a life of its own, like the shinning real-time combat and an impressive voice cast. But beyond these, there’s nothing to hook you to the game.

It’ll be unfair to spend the entire review comparing Master of Orion to the popular 4X game because the latter unarguably stands slightly taller. A better approach is to analyze the game on its terms, by its standards. Although recent Master of Orion’s releases pass across as uninspiring, we cannot forget why the original instalments at the turn of the century were a bomb. We had the galaxy that with an incalculable size, leaving room for our imagination to explore endlessly. But times have changed, and many games have moved on. That Master of Orion stays behind in this mundane structure and architecture makes it less satisfying.

The race customization feature is one of the undying positives of Master of Orion. You get to design the race you want, outside of the preset races in the game, both sets of races hardly exhibit uniqueness in terms of play, ability, and mechanics. Why you have to feed these robots or mechanical beings remains still a mystery.

“A straightforward gameplay”

Master of Orion offers straightforward gameplay, with even new players having no difficulty. You begin the game with a single homeworld, a colony ship, and two extra ships that serve the purpose of exploring nearby planets. The goal is to invade and colonize other planets in the galaxy. In total, you have six hostile planets ready to give you a hard time and seven normal planets.

You can colonize a planet by either defeating all opponents or winning the most votes upon a peaceful accord.  It’s therefore easy to understand why hostile planets require more sophisticated technology to defeat them. The next step after a victory is upgrading the planet and you can do that by terraforming, soil enrichment, and atmospheric terraforming.

“The voice acting was way cool, and other than that, nothing”

It was refreshing every time to listen to the star actors’ voice, with their charismatic display on the screen. You have the compelling character and demeanor of John de Lancie who serve as the human president; the intriguing Michael Dorn who serve as the flourishing narrator, and the weird Alan Tudyk as the scientist. Then you have the news anchors who hardly took their robotic selves off the screen, with their rather annoying narration of the events in the galaxy. 

As intimidating as these characters are, there’s hardly anything to suggest they run the affairs of the galaxy. They appear no better than figureheads, with no real leadership responsibility. You could have an ally breaking a truce for absolutely no reason, causing you great harm, and walking home with no consequences. For example, you could barricade your territory with a fleet, and have another fleet come blow that away at will, with no declaration of war.

The only consolation in such encounters is that you get to revel in enthralling combat. This is not just any type of combat, but one that required a high level of tactical display and precision. There’s a battle map from where you can control the battleships in your fleet. If you have the time, you can explore the ship designer feature that allows you to customize the load-outs of every ship before engaging in a battle. 

Now, this isn’t to suggest that Master of Orion’s combat is the best you’ll ever see. You’ll likely know many that beat it hands down. However, the technicality involved and skill-set required for victory make it highly engaging and riveting. You get the opportunities to create outstanding victories out of the most challenging of situations. There was a time I overpowered a group of cat aliens that threatened to invade my station with some weakly-assembled fleet.

“….a rinse-repeat strategy”

Aside from the tactical battle map, every other thing appears dry and uninspiring. Even the most recent installment looks the same way as the previous Master of Orion games. Yes, you have the chance to conquer all the planets in the galaxy, and build a formidable world. But Master of Orion doesn’t give you the chance to take it further. It has failed to jump on the train of new strategy games that have revolutionized the scene in recent years.  In all, I was able to dumb the train of normality and venture into some big and enterprising.

The gameplay of Master of Orion seems to employ a rinse-repeat strategy. The path is well laid-out, and even with your eyes closed, you’re not going to miss it. It starts with finding a new area that interests you. Then you get rid of the pirates that threaten your ambition. The next step, then, is establishing a brand new colony in the system. Finally, you develop the colony to become a habitable empire. When you’re done, you move on to the next system and do the same thing. Except you’re comfortable with repeating familiar patterns, then Master of Orion will be an exceptionally boring game to play, although not initially.

Our Verdict

It’s impossible to call Master of Orion a bad game because you can hardly pick out the things wrong with it. However, it’s hard to call it an excellent game because there’s nothing exceptional or remarkable about it. It’s built on the fairly successful 4X game structure but fails to properly expand the experience.