Master of Orion II :
Battle at Antares
Mega Cruel game #4
Type of game
An apology for capitalism disguised as a space conquest game. Spoiler alert: to win, it's best to crush everyone who crosses your path. Just like in real life, ultimately.
Release date on our machines
December 1996 in Europe, ten thousand years later than on Antares. Or earlier? I never understood anything about space-time in the universe, sorry.
Developer
SimTex, Inc., quickly swallowed up by MicroProse after releasing a mere five games!
publisher
MicroProse Software, Inc. was acquired by Hasbro shortly thereafter, then by Infogrames, before being more or less revived in 2019.
Master of Orion II : available on GOG.com (1 + 2), on Steam (1 + 2 too), and on Zoom Platform (guess what, 1 + 2 !).
One fine day, my cousin Walter Valise's parents invited us over for dinner. Or rather, my mother and stepfather crashed at their place. It doesn't matter now how it happened, even though it was extremely rude at the time. We often went there, but I knew I would still be in for a few surprises, and Croustibat breaded fish instead of the usual supermarket generic brand (a detail of the utmost importance). Very quickly, Walter indicates that I should follow him up the stairs to his basement bedroom, as he always did when I arrived. On his computer screen was displayed a map representing a section of some galaxy, in which each star had one or more planets, on which colonies could be established, where populations could thrive, where each individual could be given a job, and where bacteria could multiply on their skin...
Supraluminic breaded fish
No, it pretty much stops at people's jobs, and that's already pretty good. Master of Orion II had just revealed itself to my little eyes, eager for knowledge about hyperdrive reactors and terraforming uninhabitable worlds. Good old cousin, always at the cutting edge of the best video games. How would I have managed without him? Very little in this area. In all other areas of life? I'd rather not answer that.
Gameplay xXXXL
Even though I thought it was great to have so many options to activate, research to conduct, ships to build, and so on, I never really understood much about the multitude of possibilities and improvements that abound in this game. I clicked around randomly, hoping that something would work. And there I was, blissfully immersed in a 4X game, a title combining exploration, expansion, exploitation, and extermination. Hey, it works in French too—I'd never tried that before. The term apparently originated in a review of the first Master of Orion in 1993, by the way. It can be applied to quite a few types of games, even though it's mainly used to define turn-based strategy. I'll stop there before I reach my personal Godwin point, start talking about Metroidvania, and get myself all worked up. So, I'll pick up where I was, clicking everywhere and praying to trigger a good action.
Unsurprisingly, I struggled quite a bit to finish a game, even in the less complicated mode, but I didn't mind. I loved starting over with a new race of fascinating creatures or hideous beasts, in a new randomly generated galaxy. The replayability was almost infinite, with ever-changing interactions with other civilizations competing to discover the ultimate planet (a sandbox game, as it's called, in addition to 4X, yeah). Well, in reality, I almost always played as the same ones, namely the Mrrshan, anthropomorphic Iberian lynxes crossed with pumas, which I found extremely handsome. I didn't plan anything based on the specific characteristics of this species, which favors space offensive and espionage. I built lots of defensive cannons and never recruited a single spy.
I loved the Trilarians too, but I got beaten even more badly with them. Especially against the Psilons. I quickly understood why, with their overpowered research ability that validated three technologies at once instead of just one. Bastards! Well, I played as the Psillons after that! And I finally won! With their fake sympathetic attitude! And yes, I found the secret location of the ultimate planet, protected by a disgusting, ultra-strong creature. Just once. Yeah. I found this game too hard, too complex, too subtle, sorry.
I remember that Walter and I used to make fun of our subjects' faces. However, the graphics were quite interesting compared to the average at the time, no disrespect to Civilization II, which is the same age. Almost every stellar nation has its own ship designs, same goes for the three types of individuals assigned to running the colonies: workers, farmers, and scientists. And that makes for a lot of cute sprites to draw. On the other hand, it might have been better not to animate the different individuals you encounter at all. Everyone looks like they're suffering from the worst generalized tendonitis in the universe. Not a single elbow or knee bends. Oh, humans exist too, by the way. Walter always chose them, I didn't really understand why, but he was better than me, so I didn't criticize. And if the emperor of the aforementioned nation looks a bit like Patrick Stewart, no doubt intentionally, the cheerful scientist who announces the success of a research project... well, it's totally Sean Connery!
In space, nobody's got a decent face.
What is our brave Ramirez from Highlander doing here, dressed in an old 1950s teacher's blouse? I don't know, but it made me laugh. Of all the management games that fascinated me, Master of Orion II had the strongest identity, in my opinion (it's neck and neck with Colonization, but hey, that one is likely to be canceled soon, and rightly so). Maybe it's also because I didn't know Caesar III or Anno 1602... and I heard about their good reputation afterwards, but without hovering my cursor over them. At least it was a change from SimCity. The space theme, combined with the slightly wonky but endearing art direction, the somewhat messy interface, and the almost supernatural depth of the gameplay... it all added up to an explosive mix of oppression and wonder.
​Something you could call positive anxiety; that kind of pleasantly repulsive emotion that I sought to feed on throughout my youth. Don't look for further explanation of this sentence, it would make everyone uncomfortable. Setting off to explore a star, discovering too late that it lies within the territory of a space amoeba that swallows up our little scout ship, returning to exterminate the beast with a fleet of forty cruisers to finally colonize the small planet in the system... which reveals its toxic atmosphere and resource-poor soil, yet is coveted by a much more powerful empire of purple dinosaurs that declares war on me, is priceless. I then seek support from rocks with a semblance of faces and molten lava as hemoglobin, which angers the dominion of blue-skinned beings resembling women (pretty, because the 90s + women in video games means pretty).
Them and the space T. rexes beat me up, and I end my day staring at the game over screen for several hours. Even if you have to grit your teeth to swallow the fact that you've wasted half a day of your life, there's no denying the obvious: Master of Orion II oozes charm, both on the screen displaying the galaxy and in the landscapes of the planets that we disfigure with our bases. It often feels like you're truly lost in space. The special magic that emanates from it seems to have disappeared from current titles, and for good. Take my word for it, I haven't tested anything like it since 2002, or even 1998 with, um... Star General. Well, as long as I believe in my own dishonesty... Let's shed a little tear that we'll then release into the void of space.
No one will hear you humming
Just like the visual atmosphere, the music immerses us in the cosmos with its soaring and unsettling vibes, depending on the actions we associate with it. We tremble with fear when we encounter a hostile alien race, we feel calm when we talk to kind-hearted beings, and relieved when we can finally equip our cruisers with overclocked positron cannons, or whatever else sounds very futuristic. Special mention goes to the tracks that accompany the player during exploration phases. That's when you really feel how scary space is! How many astronauts changed careers after playing Master of Orion II? Probably a lot. In my opinion, the various tracks on the soundtrack are the best way to convey information in the game. You know very well that you've offended this or that ambassador of a galactic empire when dark chords accompanied by heavy bass notes resonate in your ears. The text does the job too, of course. But my English skills at age eleven weren't very advanced yet. I knew how to say hello, “Sonic has passed Act 1,” and “Have you seen my cat?” One point for the obscure reference to Warriors of the Eternal Sun, if anyone gets it. I had to wait until Heroes of Might and Magic III to make any real progress. Unless I played Master of Orion II in French? Come to think of it, I think I did. Wow, I don't even have the excuse of language to justify my defeats. Some sounds made us laugh too, we had to let off some steam amid all the gloom. We had fun clicking on the sound effects volume control, because it produced a plaintive “Nooooo” every time. The kind of desperate moan a guy would let out when he dropped his phone in the toilet. Or when he broke his spacesuit on a rock on a planet with no atmosphere. We could spend several minutes doing this, giggling like small drains.
Playing overtime
Ahhh, those blessed days when my only problem was getting permission to hog the computer for four hours straight on the weekend to build and nurture my space empire... or get my ass kicked in thirty minutes by the game's AI. Master of Orion II perfectly crystallizes this shift between the quick, direct fun of earlier games (five minutes of Mr. Nutz here, ten minutes of Toejam & Earl there) and the long-term fascination of new genres; I couldn't really hang around on the PC for ten or fifteen minutes anymore. No, I had to free up large chunks of time to hope to make any progress in my game. I was still playing on my stepfather's desktop at the time. People came and went behind me without me noticing who they were, in the room that served as a bedroom, TV room, correction room for my mother, and therefore a piece of furniture to store a monstrous mess for the other. Luckily, the weather was nice outside, and a few friends and I still found time to play in the park below my house. It helped us put into perspective our condition as tiny specks of dust lost in the immensity of the galaxy. Nevertheless, even though I learned a lot from Walter, I never managed to fill the huge gaps in my knowledge of this game. Our few cooperative sessions brought back fond memories of playing together on his Super NES, trying to defeat Shredder in Turtles in Time, or not finishing last in a Top Gear race. Something we hadn't done in... wow, at least a year! The equivalent of three times the Precambrian era when you're eleven. But for once, he was showing me a game that offered multiplayer on the same computer. The only one I've ever seen running at his house, I think. And I have to say, that didn't stop me from exploiting a tiny portion of it. I didn't read a quarter of what the different technologies had to offer, and I almost skipped all the special characters you can recruit to boost your production or one of your fleets. And why, when I deigned to embark on the conquest of an enemy empire, did I fight the battle on automatic mode, then drop five thousand bombs on each planet?
I could have just sent in ground troops and pacified the area without having to rebuild everything. I ate too much Nutella and frozen generic brand burgers, which obviously stunted my brain development. My mother kept saying that instead of wasting my time playing video games, I had the potential to work hard and become an astrophysicist. Yeah, right! Start by feeding me real food before you blame the good folks at MicroProse, Westwood, and Blizzard! Okay, you can blame Blizzard today. But it's too easy to throw unrealistic goals at your kid without giving them the means to succeed. I know something about this, because I continue to do it to myself every day. For example, winning a game of Master of Orion II playing something other than the Psilons.
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