Once I understood how to play this game, it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my gaming journey. I was a bit impatient starting out, kind of pushing random sliders, shrugging and clicking 'turn'. I would get slaughtered and humiliated by my opponents but something drew me in and kept me interested. I kept on starting the game over and trying to figure out what I should do to counter the anticipated onslaught of planet invaders and bullies I encountered in the previous game. It was an amazing experience to learn this game which defined a genre and a title in which I continue to bring up as 'all time classic' in 2012. Although I have on my rose colored glasses with a pinch of the old romanticizing the 'first of its kind', but it was a very good game. Ask anyone who sunk some real time into it. After the update which streamlined ship design system and production, MOO2 went from very pleasant to incredible. There were things I did to gain CLEAR advantages and I found it hard to play without these advantages. One, create a custom race and pick the face of the enemy you most fear, the CPU won't us that picture. Always choose to gain all research in a specific class, gaining one per advancement is SAD.Fast track to the time-warp displacer(or whatever it's called) and the interstellar converter. You will be able to kick BUTT in combat. I found it less satisfying to play without these options. Maybe I should try it again and cripple myself for more challenge. I also wanted SO BADLY to get this game to do multiplayer over some network. I tried EVERY thing possible to get it to work, NOTHING. Turns out it COULDN'T ever work because there was no implementation in the program, just labeled buttons that trolled me into clicking it over and over again through the years. Conclusions: There are bound to be games that come along that are of this caliber, and people should continue to work on such things. Coders should really dissect the nuances or what made this game fun, and expand on it for 2012. I think they're people with their nose to the grindstone trying to figure that out. I hope it's soon.
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