Alexey_Polyansk

Interstellar space is a good game and could be recommended to all 4x fans. It goes at great length to become a true MOO incarnation and succeeds at mostly all directions - AI, user interface, tactical combat, etc. Graphics can hardly be called great but it's quality and look and feel are consistent across the game, so that's OK. The game introduces some nice new features like cultural points similar to Civilization and some not so nice like "infrastructure level" - hopefully developers will get rid of the latter (or downplay them) in the future.

As of 1Q’20 “MOO: Conquer the stars” (2016) has a Metacritic score of 74 and if one sorts our Metacritic scores in brackets like this 90+ - highly recommended for all audience/ genre standard setting masterpiece 80-89 – must buy for genre fans; others may like the game as well 70-79 – genre fans may enjoy this; not recommended for others Below 70 – pre-release builds 74 is a reasonable estimate of MOO (2016) playability. 74, provided you play it with community designed 5X -The Ultimate balance mod (UBM), unofficial code patch (UCP) and the mod making 5X UBM and UCP compatible (all are listed as “top rated all the time” in Steam workshop. Otherwise, the game hardly deserves above 70 mark and should be skipped entirely in favor of Endless Space 2 or Stellaris. Pros: 1. Brand equity. Whilst MOO (2016) per se neither adds to it (like MOO2 did in 1996), nor destroys one (like MOO3 in 2003) seeing the same races and familiar interface adds value to the game 2. Lore. Nothing in comparison with Warhammer, but Sergei Lukyanenko’s trilogy “Dream Lane” and Mass Effect game series races clearly inspired by MOO help to enjoy playing 3. Gorgeous concept art for races and ships. Just look at the pdf enclosed; the game retained some of it Cons: 1. Developers dumped support for the game in 2017. Community fixed major bugs and issues in above listed mods, so they’re must have 2. User interface, in particular planet management and research tree screens resembles MOO2 one, but developers made it uglier and less convenient. E.g. the [original?] art team skipped work on some assets, so combination of poor and high quality images on the same screen makes the overall picture look even worse; MOO2 800x600 planet management screen was able to fit 10 planet lines whilst MOO (2016) can barely fit 8 on 2560x1440 3. Tactical space battles lost their allure after transition to real time, both in terms of battle strategies and graphics quality 4. Events design, diplomacy/espionage and heroes systems stayed on 1996 level Overall the game would be much better received were publisher and developers (WG Labs/NGD Studios) just took MOO2 patched to 1.50 version and made it run natively in Win10 with 2K/4K screen resolutions.