verry good and if at all it improve's on the first instalement with: better graphic's better GUI and the continuation of the first one. go make yourself a favor and buy it in the I+II pack tho because that pack is the best deal.

Not only was this a fantastic game, but it has aged surprisingly gracefully - it's still very playable and enjoyable even today! Entertaining, one-more-turnish... why am I only giving this four stars?

Well, brilliant but flagrant MoO rip-off Galactic Civilizations II has pretty much everything MoOII has, but more! Better graphics, more engaging AI, more fun ship design. All that's missing are the hero characters (specialists?).

So get Galactic Civilizations II today, the pinnacle of the 4X space strategy game, and if you feel like it, also pick up MoOII to see where it started. (Well, MoO is where it started... oh, you know what I mean!)

One of the must have strategy classics.

Graphics and AI are still quite good, and if you manage to do a game with friends the experience triumphs the Civilization series easily.

Sadly this was the last one of the Orion series (NO Orion 3 never happened, Microsoft Excel is more fun than that, also has similar gameplay).

Without a doubt, this is the best space/sci-fi 4X game ever made. Incredibly deep with so many different variations for races and ships built that you will never play the same game twice. Tons of different heroes that can be either ship captains or planet governors. This game has it all.

Make no mistake, this game is fairly old, and its graphics are seriously dated. However Do not let this put you off, This is one of the finest strategy games ever written. This is the game by which all other games in this genre are judged, and in my opinion none have yet to take its crown.

Please Note, that you should not be tempted to buy master of Orion 3. This is a terrible game, and brings nothing but shame to its predecessors. For those of you unfortunate enough to have purchased number 3, have faith, and buy this game, you will not regret it.

I played this game so many years ago (Win 95...). When I had a chance to play it again on the latest HW and OS, I decided to test it.

It is still awesome game. Once you will understand the "economy model" you won't stop challenging your fortune and strategy/tactical skills.

You might think how can MoO series go any further when the first one is actually so great. Now here you go, MoO2 is definitely a step forward. It not only provides better graphic, it also picks up what MoO left off, and further define the 4X genre. From then on, the elements in MoO and MoO2 almost appear in every single 4X game. Don't let the graphic and age trick you. It is still a wonderful game as it was.

Noted that the Master of Orion 1+2 should be a better choice than this. You get another great game (MoO) by just adding a very tiny amount of coins.

Master of Orion series is, perhaps the most influential series of games in the 4x gender of all times. These games set the pace and the form for almost all of the 4x games that would follow its release. Games like Sword of the Stars, Galactic Civilization and many others find their inspiration in this epic saga, now behold the legend.

The game is set in the Orion sector of the galaxy, where several alien races (including humans) fight for supremacy over the ancient remains of the Orion civilization and, of course, for the supreme power over the entire quadrant. You may choose any of theses races to play and beggin your quest for power with their cannon traits or you may customize their advantages and disadvantages to your liking.

The galaxy is randomly generated at the size you want and you beggin with only one planet, your homeworld. Send your scouts to nearby stars and colonize the planets you find, gathering resources and building industries to raise your armada. The game has a great tech tree, with several branches in each area of research. No race has the same tech tree the other has in any game, so trading techs with other empires is common place.

The diplomacy is rich and very complete. You can offer non-agression treaties, alliance, cease fire, trade agreements, and much more. The game also have characters that you may hire to lead your fleets and manage your colonies, giving great bonuses in what they do. A good admiral may better the performance of your fighters; a scientific director will increase the science output of one of your colonies and so on. The game is an anachronic epic. If you're in search for an excelent 4x space game, go no further, Master of Orion 2 is an epic greater than it's age. I keep this game installed at all times.

Long before the time in which the game starts, two extremely powerful races, known as the Orions and the Antarans, fought a war that devastated most of the galaxy. The Orions won and, rather than exterminate the Antarans, imprisoned them in a "pocket dimension". The Orions then departed from the galaxy, but left behind a very powerful robotic warship, the Guardian, to protect their homeworld. Whoever beats the Guardian gets military technologies which players cannot research for themselves and the opportunity to colonize the Orions' homeworld, which is usually the best planet in the galaxy in all respects.

Some time after the start of a game, the Antarans, breaking out of the prison dimension to which the Orions banished them, begin sending increasingly powerful fleets against players' colonies, simply to destroy rather than to invade. The only way to stop the Antarans' campaign of terror is to carry the battle to their home universe through a Dimensional Portal.

Despite the game's name, conquering the Orion star system does not automatically win the game. There are three routes to victory: conquer all opponents; be elected as the supreme leader of the galaxy; or make a successful assault against the Antaran homeworld. To be elected, a player needs two-thirds of the total votes, and each empire's votes are based on the population under its control

Star systems have at most five colonizable planets, and a few have none. Players can colonize all types of planets although gas giants and asteroids require the planet construction technology. Colonizable planets vary in several ways, making some more desirable than others:

Population capacity, which on most planets can be improved by terraforming. "Toxic" planets cannot be terraformed.

Ease of growing food, which is important for the reasons described below. At the start of the game most planets are incapable of supporting agriculture, but terraforming can remedy this, except on "toxic" planets.

Very rare "splinter colonies", which automatically join the empire that discovers them and acquire its racial advantages and disadvantages.

Sometimes other features that increase or decrease productivity in one or more of farming, industry, research and cashflow.

The most desirable systems are usually guarded by space monsters, much less powerful than Orion's Guardian but still a severe challenge in the early game, when fleets are small and low-tech

Without food, a colony will starve to death. If an empire as a whole has a food surplus, it can prevent starvation by sending food in freighters, which are produced (in groups of five) like any other ship and require a small amount of upkeep when in use. However, just one hostile warship of any size can blockade an entire system, preventing the delivery of food.

Each player can change each of its colony's output by moving colonists between farming, industry and research, except that natives can only farm. All normal colonists pay a standard tax to the imperial treasury and in emergencies one can set a higher tax rate, but this reduces industrial output. A player can use surplus money to accelerate industrial production at specified colonies, but not to increase agricultural or research output.

Maintaining buildings costs money and so does running an excessively large fleet. Ships of different sizes require different numbers of "command points". These are provided by orbital bases, which are major construction projects for small colonies. This severely limits the size of empires' fleets in the early game, where one can have only one frigate (smallest type of ship) per starbase or one battleship (largest type of ship in the early game) per 4 starbases without having to "buy" command points, which is very expensive.

Research, usually followed by construction of appropriate buildings, can improve all types of productivity including cashflow and command points, and can also reduce or eliminate pollution, which otherwise is a serious constraint on industrial output in the early game.

Falling behind in technology is likely to be fatal. There are eight research areas, each divided into several levels, each of which contains one to four technologies. To research a higher-level technology, one must first have researched the previous level. "Creative" races get all the technologies at a particular level by completing one research project at that level; most races must choose only one technology from each level; "uncreative" races get no choice and the game software randomly selects a technology for them at each level. Players can also acquire technologies by exchange or diplomatic threats, spying, hiring colonial leaders or ship commanders with knowledge of certain tech, planetary conquest, or capturing and dismantling enemy ships, random events and just by stumbling upon it in a derelict craft orbiting a newly discovered planet.

All weapons and some other combat-related components benefit from miniaturization, in which further advances in the technology area that provides them will reduce the size and production cost of these components. Miniaturization also makes available modifications for most weapons, which usually entail a significant increase in their cost and size but can greatly improve their effectiveness in the right situations

Master of Orion II provides a wide range of diplomatic negotiations: gifts of money or technology or even all the colonies in a star system; opportunities to demand such concessions from other players; technology trades; trade, non-aggression and alliance treaties. The diplomacy menu, called "Races" in the game, also enables the player to allocate spies between defensive duties and spying or sabotage against other empires, and to check opponents' technological progress and diplomatic relationships

The designs of colony ships, outpost ships and troop transports are fixed.These three ship types will be destroyed instantly if they travel without an escort and are attacked by anything, even the weakest combat ship.

Colony ships, outpost ships, troop transports and warships benefit from technology advances which increase the travel range and speed of all of an empire's ships free of charge.

Players can design warships, provided they choose the "tactical combat" option in game set-up. One can design a maximum of 5 classes at a time, but can have an indefinite number of classes in operation. Players can also refit ships to take advantage of technology improvements which do not provide free upgrades

Ships can travel to any star system within their range, unlike games such as Space Empires or Master of Orion III where interstellar travel is possible only or mainly via "wormholes" and it is possible to set up easily-defended choke points.

In Master of Orion II, space combat occurs only within star systems, either over a planet one side is attacking or on the outskirts of a system, if one side is driving away the other's blockaders or trying to prevent an enemy buildup. If the defending side has warships and several colonies in a system, they automatically scramble to defend whichever colony is attacked. Limitations on the size of empires' fleets mean that most battles involve only a handful of ships on each side. Ships do not form stacks as in Master of Orion, but move and fire individually.

At the start of a game the gamer chooses whether all space combat should be "tactical" (controlled by the player) or "strategic" (controlled by the software), but choosing strategic combat prevents the gamer from designing his/her own ships. In tactical screen the gamer can use the "Auto"

This is a warning to all others: This game is so awesome, it will really consume hours apon hours of your time.

Also, it's even better when you play with/against real people - though singleplayer is still worth the money alone.

The game set the pace for space empire games. The only reason I give it 4 out of 5 is that its a bit dated now.

One thing I loved about the game is researching unlocks different parts for ships. So you can build up ships with whatever equipment you come up with. You didnt necessarily end up with yet another raygun/missile ship. You could stock your fleet with ships of different roles.

The difficulty in attacking planets is a bit fixed. There is only so many things you can put on a planet to defend it. Each of those only gets one installation, not many. So it was possible that your fleet would crest being able to take out any planet in the game. Getting there though was a long haul.

Customing your race out of the start was also a fun feature.

The mother of all 4x games.

Admittedly it is a bit dated compared to more recent titles but nonetheless is great fun with very workable fleet battle mechanics and diverse races to experience quite different strategies needed for winning.

Does have basic diplomacy and espionage as well as trading and a not so small science tree.

It also has a hotseat mode which is all too rare in todays games.

An even better game than the first Monster of Orion, MoO2 is still the standard for space-based 4x games. Custom races let you choose which perks and detriments your race will have, or you can choose one of the premade races. You build your empire by colonizing new planets, researching new technologies, and conquering other races.

Once you reach a certain technology level, the game really gets interesting. The Antareans, a very powerful alien race from another dimension, sends out scouting vessels to attack random colonies. You need to build up your defenses to stop them from wiping out your colonies. As the game progresses, their fleets get bigger and more powerful. At high enough tech levels, you can enter their dimension and take the fight to their homeworld.

Winning this fight against the Antareans is one way to win the game. You can also win by diplomatic means (the Galactic Council), or by conquering the entire galaxy by force.

If you like any type of 4X game, buy this game now. It's reputation as a classic in the genre is well earned.

If you can deal with the cheesy, older graphics, the gameplay is still solid and overall the game is still playing many years after the original release. Given the low price, there is nothing to lose if you like 4x space games.

An old classic, remade in dos box. Intuitive space strategy game that gives the player a complete experience.

If you can get past the dated graphics you will love this title.

For those that don't know, this is a classic game. It is very old and its graphics are quite dated. However the game play of this game is in my opinion and many others the best out there. This game set the standard for 4x (Expand Exterminate Explore Exploit) space games. The game is turn based and can be hot seated along with single player game modes. You can customize your own race or use one of the many in game ones. I would recommend this game to anyone who likes a turn based or even real time game that wants to sit down and have a good time for a few hours without realizing time has flown by that fast. The only downside to this game is that it has to be run from dos box, which is fine, but the screen resolution is not the greatest, however i believe there are solutions in the game tutor section to solve this.

The last and best Masters of Orion game (no, 3 doesn't count). Effectively the father of the 4X style of games. Choose from a number of different races or make your own, then conquer all of known space. Tons of fun!

This game is a classic game that should be in every gamers inventory! this game although graphics are outdated is the fore father to sci-fi turn based strat games! you are truly missing out on a wonderful game if you don't download this game right away!

Essentially the forefather of all the space 4X games, MOO2 is a shining example of how gameplay triumphs over graphics (actually the graphics is still very functional and nice to look at) after all those years. This is an important piece of gaming history that every true strategy gamer has to have in his collection !

In my opinion so is this the best turn based space empire strategy game up to date.

Do not let the age of the game fool you, this game WILL suck allot of your time and got replay value to play again whit different races or even you own custom race and got more then one way to victory.

Its hard to get more bang for you money that it offer for money per hour. When the game was released, me and my friends LOVED it and I still do.

So take your chance to play some "game history" that it still offers allot to this date.

A true classic played this game when it first came out and it still has things it can teach to the current 4x crowd. If your into 4x games at all this is still a must have if only to know where it all began.

There could not be a more awesome 4X space game than MoO2 (and I'm aware that's not entirely objective). Unlimited replayability, back-stabbing AI, loads of technologies, race customisation and the best that Windows 95 graphics have to offer. It's by far the best of the series and I have found very little to match it, even after all these years.

Despite its age, Master of Orion II remains one of the best 4X Games ever developed. Although the graphics are out of date, the handling of the game itself could inspire many newer titles.

The Gamersgate version comes with DOS-Box and an executable, so you can start right away and don´t have to set up everything by yourself. However, you can play in windowed mode only, which is painful for the eyes if you keep a high resolution for your monitor. The Win95 startup file worked, at least in my case, only on an older computer with Win XP.

While I am rather fond of some other 4X games that have been developed since, especially Space Empires 4+5 (which are more detailed and complex) as well as Sword of the Stars (which is quicker and less complex), Master of Orion 2 is definitely one of the classics you should have played - must, if you're into the 4X genre. It pretty much sets the baseline for what a 4X game should have and be. It survived most potential competitors in LAN party playing schedules (figurative schedules, not actual ones) years after its great time had supposedly passed. Like others, I'd recommend to stay away from the third, and rather give this little gem a spin.

Got it packaged with MOO1 also. Runs in DOSBox 0.74 which on my system ran fine. You'll do yourself a favor if you read the included DOSBox documentation and/or search for some information online though.

You can go fullscreen with Alt+Enter as well.

Great game. The only negative is that the DOS box that it plays under isn't scaled to the display, so it's a little distracting at first.

I own every single boxed edition that were released for this game. And just in case my house burn i'm now getting this digital one :)

In my 25+ years of gaming, this is THE game i still keep playing again and again (and again...), although there are obviously a lot of others titles i also love. But MOO2 remain THE best to me.

It was so entertaining back then, so fresh, better than its big brother MOO1 (in all aspects) the founding father of the 4X genre - explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate (but true ancestor of 4X is still Reach for the Star in the 80s, and its various versions - made after MOO2, another great game you should try).

No 4X games to this day have even matched the fun, quality, complexity (and also user-friendly) of this game.

Despite the fact we had awsome titles after MOO2 release such as Imperium Galactica(s), Ascendancy, Pax Imperia, Galactic civilization(s), Space Empires, Sword of the Stars and so on (or more average/crap titles like Armada 2526 or Lost Empire Immortals), still NONE can beat MOO2, but all refer to it and many features of those games directly come from Master of Orion. In short, nothing new was made in 4X games since MOO2.

By the way, if you plan to buy MOO3 think twice as the 3rd version of this great franchise was poorly made and is way not as good as MOO1 or MOO2 and on many aspects is radically (badly) different.

Stardock has wish to make a MOO4 version (if they can get the right on the franchise) so i have high hopes for its future.

This game is an absolute classic! You start out as one of 13 races in a small corner of the galaxy and using a combination of colonisation, warfare, technology and diplomacy it's your job to turn your tiny civilisation into a galactic superpower. Sound familiar? that's because Moo2 was the game that really kick-started the sci-fi strategy genre back in the mid 90's! If you're a fan of strategy gaming and don't mind substance over style (this WAS released back in the 90's so obviously the graphics aren't going to be cutting edge) Moo2 will bring you hours of enjoyment.

MoO2: A nostalgic romp through space colonization.

This game embodies the old windows 95 era space exploration games, encountering a large variety of species in an auto-created universe (different each time: great replayability!). You have the openness to win the game through a variety of means, from diplomacy to crushing all other species under your fist and blowing up all their planets, or save the universe from the Antares assault.

The real star is the combat system: Make sure to turn on manual combat! Grid-based with angular considerations (your guns aren't on the back of your ships, unless you designed them that way!) turn-based based on engines of the ships, and leadership bonuses, it creates a very detailed but easy to learn combat system that is a pleasure to use to take over the universe.

It is a very fun game, and at this price, there is no excuse NOT to try it unless you just really hate the genre. MoO2 is easily the best of the three games, a far cry better than 3, don't let that game colour the decision for this one.

Great little 'retro' game. A very standard 'conquer the stars game', nowadays we get games that look better but they do not go a lot beyond what 'MoO' already acheived. And it's cheap too. A game worth having if you don't mind the simple graphics.