Master of Orion II
Publisher: MicroProse
Release Date: 1996
Review Date: January 1997
Operating System: Windows 95
Rating (1-10): 8
This long-awaited sequel from MicroProse is currently at the top of the strategy game charts. It plays like a mixture of Master of Magic and the original Master of Orion, with SimCity-like colony management, rather than the five categories of generic resource-spending that the original Orion used. The graphics, of course, are much improved, but the game is incredibly resource-hungry, requiring 70MB of hard drive, PLUS a high-speed CD-ROM and 8MB RAM!

Major additions include:

  1. MOM-like colony management, with "build queues" to schedule a whole sequence of production projects,
  2. actual planetary systems, instead of point stars,
  3. freighter fleets which must be maintained at appropriate levels to shuttle resources from planet to planet,
  4. spies as a production military unit,
  5. the ability to capture another race's planet and assimilate its population, without having to kill everyone off,
  6. a group play option.
Orion still doesn't bother to create a realistic 3D galaxy, and the race dynamics are only slightly better than in the original Orion.
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Changes last made on: Mon, Nov 20, 2000