Review by Oliver Lan

Name:         Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares
Publisher:    Microprose
Format:       CD
Type:         Strategy

Requires:

O/S:          DOS 5.0+
Processor:    486-100+
RAM:          8Mb+ (16Mb for Windows 95)
Graphics:     SVGA
CD-Rom:       X2
Soundcard:    All major cards supported

Tested on:

O/S:          Windows 95
Processor:    Pentium 120
RAM:          32Mb
Graphics:     Matrox Millennium 2Mb WRAM
CD-ROM:       Quad speed
Soundcard:    SB AWE32
Controls:     Mouse

Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares

Now, I think that the developers must have been having a bit of a joke with this one. I mean, Master of Orion was bad enough, but it has to be said that the sequel has the silliest initials I've ever seen in a game: MOO2BAA. However, such farmyard translations aside, it remains that Master of Orion II is an excellent game.

You are the Emperor of what you hope will become a vast, galaxy spanning empire. Your race (which you can choose from a few, or even design your own) has just developed FTL (faster than light) travel and is now setting about colonising the galaxy. Of course, you're not alone , and you're in active competition with several other races. Your task? Simple - to become... MASTER OF ORION! Oh, and after that you have to conquer the entire galaxy, but that's another matter.

In fact, there are three ways to win. One, conquer everyone else (the traditional way). Two, rather cunningly, when the galaxy is almost fully settled there will be a vote to choose a single ruler (to avoid war). If you win it, you win. And Three, the most highly scoring (probably 'cos it's in the subtitle) - find a way to cross into the dimension of the incredibly advanced Antarans and destroy them. Quite simple really. Oh, and as for Orion, that's just a very nice, rich, lush world, that's unfortunately guarded by a big robot ship type thing called (fittingly) the Guardian.

Of course, in one of Microprose's strategy games, these aims are all achieved through careful resource management, with expansion being the key. Most people, though, just don't seem to appreciate such 'in yer space' colonisation. And others are just damned aggressive. So although there are extensive diplomacy options, you're going to end up fighting eventually.

The Best Defence

...is an enormous Class X hard multi-phased shield.

(er, Oli... - Ed.)

Er, OK... er, and yes, you're going to need it, when you go to war. You start off able to build ships of four sizes, from the tiny 'frigate' up to the reasonable 'battleship', armed only with the odd laser and nuclear missile. These are not good. You improve your 'stuff' through (naturally) research, which also gets you buildings and other things. Advances in physics bring weapons of awesome power, up to the (Death Star weapon) Stellar Converter (and don't say who's she). To go with that, you can research also the ability to make bigger and better ships, the Titan class and eventually the Doom Star.

These are better, basically because they're bigger. Yes, size is everything in MOO2, at least where ships are concerned, because on the ship design screen (yes, you do this yourself) you get to stuff your ships as full as you can with the latest technology, before sending them for 'field testing' in one of your neighbour's systems. And that's not all, because although size is so important, sometimes small is beautiful. Miniaturisation takes effect every time you research a certain area (e.g. physics, chemistry, force fields), and makes everything to date (i.e. the old technology) smaller. This means you can now have 10 laser cannons in your ship when you could previously only have 5, and is a very clever mechanism that makes research (even when you're researching 'future technologies') always important. It unfortunately means you're forever updating your ship designs, but hey, an Emperor's work is never done.

Combat itself (unless you've chosen Strategic [read: boring] combat, in which case it's all done for you) takes place with a top down, 2D, turn based system. You guide your ships individually, blowing your opponents into outer... er, out of the sk... er, well, up. Yes, OK, it is turn based, but I think this is well in keeping with the feel of a strategy game - you wouldn't want your galactic conquests to depend upon your reactions and co-ordination, would you? The tactical combat gives you control of everything, and in case you can't be bothered, you can get the computer to run combat for you. There's even a handy speed mode (not in the manual, BTW, to activate it you press 'z' on the keyboard during your turn).

But of course, it's not all about fighting. It's a strategy game, and that means lots of... well... other bits.

The Other Bits

(I'm not even going to try to come up with a silly comment for that one.)

Yes, I mean, this is a Microprose strategy game, after all. Cynics may say 'so it's just Civilisation all over again', and yes, you might say that. Like other Master... games (the prequel and Master of Magic), MOO2 is a sort of Civ, with a twist, in this case being that you're in space, with a galactic rather than global empire.

But this is no bad thing. Let's face it, Civilisation has a winning formula, and it would be hard for any of Microprose's strategy games to fail to be gripping. But these games, in dispensing with some of the complexities and subtleties of Civ. manage to concentrate on some of the more interesting facets of these games... by which I mean combat. Forget 'theory of gravity', in MOO2 the vast majority of things you research are add-ons to make your starships rock hard fighting machines. And when it comes down to it, what would you rather research: 'Refrigeration' or 'Death Star Construction'?

But this emphasis in no way detracts from the strategic nature of things. As with all these games, although you can opt for out and out fighting, if you're not developing your infrastructure and keeping up with research, you'll just fall behind. It's just a more dynamic version of the same, sort of a double chocolate fudge rather than just a plain vanilla Civilisation. The actual mechanics of the game are pretty similar - you have colonies (entire planets in this case) that you have to build up with buildings gained through research. The population is split between three jobs: farming, working, and science. You have to juggle these three around to your maximum benefit, whilst at the same time expanding and quite possibly war-making.

The general formula remains the same, but with each incarnation from Microprose, the interface improves. Firstly, the graphics (as you might expect) are in smart hi-res, and for once might even edge past being 'functional' into 'quite nice looking, actually'. The main improvements, though, are in the interface itself. It's always been a problem with these games that as you expand, there's just too much information to handle. MOO2 goes several steps further to help with this. There are now more ways to control your colonies through summary screens listing them all at once, and more options to avoid having to wait around at the beginning or end of your turn. All turn events are now listed at once, rather than (as in Civ) going through every colony one by one (and cheering every time). You know, like the way when you suddenly got a 'We Love the King Day' and every one of your hundred colonies celebrates - well, not only will MOO2 not do anything like that, you can even turn off turn summary events all together, or have serious ones only, and so on. Perhaps the best improvement, though, is the way the building itself actually works. There's now a queue of up to six or seven items, which turns out to be extremely useful when you know exactly what you want to build. Furthermore, the auto-build, where the computer chooses what buildings to produce, is far more intelligent than in previous games, and can also be over-ridden - for example, you can choose to build a battleship, then when that's done the auto-build will just kick in again. As for the turn-summary list you get, it will tell you exactly what the auto-build has chosen to build each time. Add to that the repeat-build option (great for building large fleets) and you get a really fluid system. It's really refreshing to see a sequel where the developers have really taken care of the finer details - undoubtedly those players must have suggested. There's also a flash multiplayer mode, and although as you can imagine it takes ages (not one to do over a modem), it of course adds a new dimension to the game - you get much more attached to your galactic civilisation than you do, say, a Command & Conquer base, so taking the multi-player experience to a whole new level of satisfaction.

OK, it's not perfect. There are a few annoying niggles with ship designs that just create unnecessary work for you - for example, ship orders in the queue aren't updated when the ship design is, even if the ship's name doesn't change (so that Panther Battleship your building could actually be out of date when built). Although you can refit ships to update their designs once built, this is another major source of irritation - there's no way to simply 'refit to current design specs' - you have to manually recreate the design yourself. And that's not fun when you've got a 50 strong fleet and then research Hyper-Advanced Physics II (which doesn't do anything on it's own, but miniaturises everything else). Also, although the colony summary screen is nice, it doesn't let you change what you're building very easily, except for on an individual colony basis. A way to build things in many places at once with a single click would also be useful.

But this is all in the realms of IWBNI (It Would Be Nice If...). You honestly don't find any of these problems getting in the way, and the gameplay remains as addictive as all these games seem to be. I don't know how Microprose do it, but every one seems to be a winner. You just can't tear yourself away, and even when you do, you find yourself secretly plotting your enemies' downfalls as you do anything else. You are supreme. You are the Emperor. You will not be questioned. Then someone accidentally bumps into you in a corridor and you can't help yourself but cry out 'How dare you! Do you know who I am? I am the MASTER OF ORION!' (Ok, Oli, now you've really lost it -Ed) Er, all right, maybe not. Let's just say it's quite good, then, shall we?

The verdict: Utterly, utterly compulsive.

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Rating: 9/10 (Classic - Must Buy!)
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