Rating: 
Summary: Emphasizes Tactics, but Weak in Diplomacy & Multiplayer
Review: Master of Orion II is a title offering a rich experience in very particular areas, emphasizing technological and military aspects of the creation of a galactic empire over elements that require more more character interaction and development. It is a strategy game in the purest sense of the genre, and therefore learning its intricacies and more subtle features can be of paramount importance in a long game or campaign. In Master of Orion II, you direct the construction of a galactic empire. In this turn-based game, you guide your colonies, command your space fleets, and dictate which technologies your scientists will research. You can win the game in one of three ways: crushing all the other civilizations in the galaxy, building up the technology and military might to crush the powerful Antarians, or gaining enough allies to vote you galactic ruler at a council meeting. Master of Orion II has no storyline of its own. While the conquests and trials your empire faces in each game could be considered a story that you generate, events that alter the course of galactic history are frequently random and unpredictable. No story elements, characters, or mission goals persist from one game to the next. This is in direct contrast to strategy games with a rich, evolving storyline, such as Blizzard Entertainment's spectacular game Starcraft, which prove that utilizing deep characters and missions that link together does not preclude a focus on strategy in gameplay. Storyline aside, Master of Orion II has an interesting and powerful interface. You are given complete control over almost every aspect of your colonies, and assign crews of workers to either farm, research, or work on the construction of the colony's project. Levels of progress in the different areas are represented graphically; players of Civilization II will find this interface very familiar. However, its simple look belies the potential for automation that can be employed. Up to seven or so build orders can be queued for each particular colony, allowing you to monitor areas of greater activity without worrying about lesser colonies for long periods of time. When your empire grows gigantic, you can chose to allow a "colony advisor" to decide what to build and produce, saving you the large amounts of time that would be required to check each colony individually, again and again. Another enjoyable interface, starship design, was an element pioneered by the Master of Orion series, and still provides one of the keys to success in the game. You design your own starships, choosing what hull design, weapons, computers, shields, systems, and special devices are to be incorporated in each ship. You are limited by the amount of space inside the hull, and should keep the production cost in mind when designing huge, powerful battle cruisers. There are even more subtle factors to take into account: you can modify the firing arcs of each weapon, choose how many reloads of each type of torpedo your ship can carry and how many can be fired in each salvo, and even chose special modifications to existing weapons, increasing their power, accuracy, firing rate, durability, or other qualities. Perhaps the best interface in the game, the ship design screen takes what could have been a dauntingly complex task and makes it intuitive and convenient by providing information about each option's function and cost on-screen. The research interface is visually interesting, but annoying. You chose which technology to work on, and the amount of research required is shown. What is not shown is what the technologies do, making it absolutely necessary to look each technology up in the manual every time you want to research anything (until you get them all memorized). Diplomacy is a weaker area, where your interactions are constrained to a highly limited set of commands. Besides declaring war and a few basic agreements, there is next to nothing you can do in cooperation with any of the other civilizations. Soon you will wish you could coordinate attacks, interact with more than one other civilization on the same project, or make more complex deals and demands. More or less, you take on the galaxy alone. Multi-player capabilities, a strong point in many games, are remarkably poor in Master of Orion II. Being a turn-based game, there is the fundamental constraint that every player in the game must wait for the slowest player to finish his/her turn before moving on. Worse still, space battles happen in between turns, in sequence, so everyone must wait for every player to complete every space combat before moving on. Because space battles can last over 10 minutes if large in scale, or longer if you use an attrition-based battle plan, the wait can be utterly unbearable. Additionally, while you are executing your turn, there is no chat feature. You are isolated until you finish your turn, and even then your communications are limited. Whoever is done with their turn sees a dialogue box, where everyone can type and everyone can see what you type. So much for secrecy... your opponents can see everything you say as easily as your allies. In a two player game, it is even worse. As soon as the second player ends his turn, the next turn begins, so there is practically NO time to talk at all. Between the long waits and the isolation, it is clear that Master of Orion II is not a viable multi-player game. Master of Orion II is an interesting game, and may be ideal if you wish to focus on a few aspects of empire building (colony management, ship design, and space combat) while ignoring nearly everything else. Overall, however, it is possible to get tired of the repetitive gameplay and long time periods in between big battles. Because multiplayer games are next to impossible, and diplomacy with the computer is so limited, expect play to have a solataire-type feel to it. Ruling an empire is a lonely job.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the best turn based space strategies ever
Review: MOO2. Play a race of your choosing (or making), and conquer the galaxy by vote, military might, or by being a hero (defeating the evil enemy that hates everyone). A great tech tree and good flexibility in ship design and colony building. The game has great strengths in its interface(s) and the many choices you can make during play. It does devolve into a bit of a tech fest, and there is little emphasis on diplomacy, but an all around good builder game.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best turn based space strategies ever
Review: MOO2. Play a race of your choosing (or making), and conquer the galaxy by vote, military might, or by being a hero (defeating the evil enemy that hates everyone). A great tech tree and good flexibility in ship design and colony building. The game has great strengths in its interface(s) and the many choices you can make during play. It does devolve into a bit of a tech fest, and there is little emphasis on diplomacy, but an all around good builder game.
Rating: 
Summary: Others Come and Go...this one stays.
Review: Still, after 2 years, the best game you can play. Best played with a G3 Mac, there is enough variation to keep me coming back, long after other games have been removed from my hard drive for lack of interest!
Rating:
Summary: Pushing Four Years Old, and Still the Best
Review: The fact that MOO II is "still the best" conquer the galaxy game, of course, tells me that somebody needs to get on the stick. The cartoony graphics are annoying, and the entire gaming field has moved *way* beyond this level. Still, it's not just extremely playable, it's extremely enjoyable. I played it again this weekend.
By the way, if you ever want proof that graphics aren't everything, check out "Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain", which was the sequal to the original "Pax Imperia" (the standard-setting conquer the galaxy game a generation back) and which came out shortly after MOO II. Pax proved to be a beautiful game (so much so that I swore I'd never play the cartoony MOO II again), but with some of the most awful gameplay I've ever seen (so awful I haven't played it all the way through since the very first time). There's just no comparison.
Rating:
Summary: Pushing Four Years Old, and Still the Best
Review: The fact that MOO II is "still the best" conquer the galaxy game, of course, tells me that somebody needs to get on the stick. The cartoony graphics are annoying, and the entire gaming field has moved *way* beyond this level. Still, it's not just extremely playable, it's extremely playable. I played it again this weekend. By the way, if you ever want proof that graphics aren't everything, check out Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain, which was the sequal to the original Pax Imperia (the standard-setting conquer the galaxy game one "generation" back) and which came out just not long after MOO II. Pax proved to be a *beautiful* game (so much so that I swore I'd never play the cartoony MOO II again), with some of the most awful gameplay I've ever seen (so awful I haven't played it since the very first time all the way through). There's just no comparison.
Rating:
Summary: Pushing Four Years Old, and Still the Best
Review: The fact that MOO II is "still the best" conquer the galaxy game, of course, tells me that somebody needs to get on the stick. The cartoony graphics are annoying, and the entire gaming field has moved *way* beyond this level. Still, it's not just extremely playable, it's extremely playable. I played it again this weekend. By the way, if you ever want proof that graphics aren't everything, check out Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain, which was the sequal to the original Pax Imperia (the standard-setting conquer the galaxy game one "generation" back) and which came out just not long after MOO II. Pax proved to be a *beautiful* game (so much so that I swore I'd never play the cartoony MOO II again), with some of the most awful gameplay I've ever seen (so awful I haven't played it since the very first time all the way through). There's just no comparison.
Rating: 
Summary: Unusually poor for MacSoft...
Review: The good thing about this game is that the gameplay is all its cracked up to be. The ship designing, AI, options, and research were very good. The only major things disapointments in the gameplay are the cruddy video clips, poor dimplomacy, and dated graphics. However, the interface is pathetic. It is slow, clumsy, and annoying. One turn, on a top of the line computer, can take 3 seconds. That may seem like little, but the average construction time for a ship is 75 turns. It also pops up these annoying dialog boxes from time to time, changes screen resolution for every different screen, and requires far too many clicks to do the simplest of tasks. It is also very unstable. it took me four tries to install it right, as there is no documentaion for installation. The game also crashes about every five minutes. I will not even mention the lack of support for moer than one game, the almost non-existant multiplayer (25 tries and I still ant get it to work), the rediculus number of startup screens, or any of its other major problems. All things considered, ... I would recomend a different game. Alpha Centauri, Starcraft, or something like that. While the gameplay is good, it is not worth the time it takes to actually play, as you will have to restart continuosly, if you can even get it to work.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Game
Review: The original Master of Orion (MOO) was a master piece and set the standard for the spaceploitation genre. Its sequel Master of Orion II continued this tradition. It improved most areas of gameplay and made use of better and more powerful graphics. Some neat features of the game include: Ship to ship combat that allows for boardings and captures. The ability to conquer opposing races and incorporate them into your empire rather than simply killing them. Planet management is pretty straightforward and uses a production que so you can set a planet to produce several items in succession and not have to constantly manage it. One thing that did bother me about the game has always been its fleet limits. In the original game you could build massive fleets of thousands of vessels now you are limited to much smaller numbers. Also any ship under the size of a battleship is basically useless. In the orginal MOO you could buld 10,000 small ships and use them to counter 50 massive ones. In MOO II you simply can't build enough smaller vessels to use the swarm approach, the capital ships rule the battlefield. Planetary defenses can only be so big and can't stand up to a heavy fleet on their own. Still these "shortcomings" do not detract from gameplay, which I always found to be quick and effecient, no real bugs (after the patch). I've owned this game for two years now and still believe it sets the standard for space based war and strategy. No game produced since has improved upon on it or sadly really equaled it.
Rating:
Summary: Cool interactive empire building concepts
Review: There are about eight species you can chose from including humans or you can make up your own species. I like the graphics especially when you talk to other races or your own advisors. Remember to save it though and make sure you've save it before you quit or you'll have an unpleasant surprise waiting for you when you get back.
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