Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares was released in the US 25 years ago on this date, November 22, 1996. I am still waiting for a better space strategy game.
While I had briefly tried it at a friend's place beforehand, my own journey with MoO II really only started in 1998, if I remember correctly, and a bit unusually with the Mac version. I still remember putting the CD into the clunky external 2x (I think) drive and how processing the turns actually took time, sometimes more than a minute, with the 68040 Mac we had back then. The combat was a bit sluggish, too.
None of that mattered, however, because the game just sucked me in, and I played it for months, over and over again. I remember thinking about my then ongoing game at school instead of concentrating on the teaching; I even wrote some MoO fiction. :D (I was twelve. And it was bad, and luckily it's been lost since.)
While my addiction has since considerably lessened, I still play it at least once a year... and when I do, it's never just one game, it's complete all-consuming addiction for at least two to three days. As I said in some other thread, it's my desert island game, the one game I've played more than any other, and can't see myself ever not playing.
Happy birthday, old friend. I love you.
...let's end with some random screenshots I googled for the occasion!
All the races. These are supposedly balanced but somehow races like the Elerians or Mrrshan never seem to get anything done and end up being galactic shitrags, while the Sakkra and Klackons are almost always dangerous opponents.
When I was young, I always played the Psilons or created a custom Creative race. I've since been cured of that tendency. :D
The galactic map. This shows a summary of how your empire is doing and serves as the main UI of the game. But, most importantly!, the background music on this screen is just so good. I can hear it in my head as I'm writing this.
The colony management screen. MoO 1 didn't have one, I think they copied this from Civilization. It's one of the weaker points of the game, IMO; you can only have one of each building per colony, and there's no limit to the number of buildings, so every colony will eventually end up having every building. It could do with some, dare I say it, diversity.
Breakthrough! Unless your race is creative, you can usually only focus on researching one technology at a time; it's either Class I shields or the Mass Driver, not both. There are 8 categories of tech, such as biology, engineering, and sociology.
Diplomacy is pretty good in this game; not quite as good as, say, SMAC, but you can still get a lot of things done using it, and the other races behave in a believeable way, meaning that there's usually a reason for what they're doing. (Unless they have the Erratic trait, of course.) Each race also has their own theme song, like in SC II, and some of them are excellent.
You can design your own ships. Not much to say about this one except it works and there are plenty of weapons and other technologies to choose from as the game progresses. I usually just slap reinforced hull and the best beam weapons I have and call it a day. Maybe a battle scanner if my guys suck at shooting.
Of course you also get to play with the ships you design. Here is a battle versus some Antarans. (The Antarans live on a planet called Antares inside its own pocket dimension; beating them there is one way to win the game.) Combat can be pretty exciting when two somewhat equally powerful fleets meet, but usually it tends to be quite the one-sided affair.
Here is an image of a ground battle. It's really undercooked and can barely be called a system.
Oh yeah, there is the space dragon as well! He'll ruin your day if he comes visiting early on, but is piss easy to take out for an advanced civilization.
Anyway. What are some of your memories of MoO II? How does it compare to its prequel, its sequel (I've only barely tried them myself) or other space strategies? I might post some more of my own recollections later if I can think of something worth writing.
edit. Typos, missing words, formatting, missing image, etc.
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