For all their hard work, Master of Orion 3 remains flawed, and will only ever be truly enjoyed by a fringe within a fringe. But this is not the part where I say that they turned it into an unsung classic. Even the basic "vanilla" patch (limited to bugfixes only) changes the experience substantially. A few of these fans, however, got over their shock and released a mildly confusing collection of unofficial patches in an effort to redeem it. Lots of drama behind the scenes followed by a shrug from Infogrames meant it was released far too early, given a few cursory patches, and left to die at the hands of furious fans. Leave them to it for long enough and the aliens all drown. If you're having trouble imagining it, it's a bit like if Firaxis had decided to give soldiers in XCOM the ability to act without orders, but instead of shooting aliens all they did was fiddle with themselves and cry. There's a fair bit of truth to the common refrain that you can just click 'end turn' a few hundred times and win without doing anything. Except for the lovely designs of the aliens, it's appearance is featureless. Your shipyards are utterly consumed with the desire to fill the universe with useless transport ships. Vital components of (rather ugly) combat failed to work at all. Rival empires send regular streams of erratic and self-contradictory messages, until you learn they can be completely ignored as they seldom actually do anything. The interface is an overwrought clickfest - and locked at a resolution of 800圆00, which was already quite backwards by 2003 and a genuine obstacle when standard maps feature hundreds of star systems. The highly anticipated sequel to the two most beloved space 4X games ever is a maddening exercise in battling your own empire's broken AI for hours, only to discover that you've already overcome your only real opposition.
Infogrames released Master of Orion 3 in early 2003, following a long and troubled development period by Quicksilver Software. Master of Orion 3 is one of the most important 4X games ever made. Cast it away into the pit of 1 star reviews, the lair of the Thumbdown, to be spoken of only with frothing hatred and contempt. Oh, sure, there are divisive games, but once the consensus has been reached that a game is bad, that's it.
Games are either good or the worst thing to ever happen.
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