can’t begin to impress upon you the importance of patience when playing this game. If you’re new to the series, or relatively unfamiliar with strategy games in general, the impulse to throw up your hands in exasperation will be nearly irrepressible. The Orion series’ bread and butter is based on the notion that you’re going to enjoy tweaking every little nuance of your planets’ operations. There is a lot of AI help available, but if you want to get really anal, you can turn it off. I tried that, and was overwhelmed within a couple of turns.

Sure, the gameplay is incredibly deep, but I wanted more emphasis on the military aspects of the game. The ship-building section is great, but figuring out which ships are the best in a certain situation is hard to get a handle on, and the deployment of your fleet is clumsy and often frustrating. When I wanted to see each vessel’s individual stats, I couldn’t; and when I wanted to mix and match different parts of my fleet, I was handcuffed by an awkward grouping system. Many fans of the Orion series have been salivating for years as this title neared release, and they won’t be disappointed – but this certainly isn’t a game for the uninitiated.  

ANDREW REINER   7 When you take into consideration that you’ll spend a significant amount of time intricately dissecting extraterrestrial harvesting patterns; I think it’s safe to say that Master of Orion III has just enough geek credibility to turn the heads of the most loyal of Star Trek fans and scare off anyone who doesn’t get weak in the knees when they hear a woman speaking in Klingon. Seriously people, if you don’t have your head buried in long-lost Dr. Who scripts for at least three hours of your day, most of the material in this game will leave you petrified with fear. Not fear as in, "Oh, my God! It’s scary!", but more along the lines of, "Oh, my God! I had no idea that geeks could, like, be this geeky!" It’s a towering accomplishment in terms of the wealth of information and options, but also a sign that man has gone way too far