play itself". PC Gamer 57/100 PC Game World 74/100 Pelit 84% by Niko Nirvi, who later strongly recanted, calling the game "brain-dead" and lamenting that he'd rated it as though the AI was working. Criticism Although highly anticipated and much lauded by some gaming publications, Master of Orion III was only a moderate seller and not the breakout hit that the previous games had been. This is generally attributed to an unwieldy and cumbersome user interface, poor space battle AI, a number of software bugs that caused the game to crash and were never fixed (save for the two patches that addressed a few of the worst bugs, Infogrames provided no support following the game's release), the suppression of many popular features of the previous games (such as genocide and refitting of obsolete space ships) combined with the absence of many of the promised new features (such as racial ethos systems and colonization of moons and asteroids, as opposed to the player being limited to planets), and lack of micromanagement or the general character and charm of the predecessors. One significant problem was poor enemy AI (although subsequent community-created unofficial patches made small improvements). None of the original development team was involved in the production. References External links Unofficial bugfixes and enhancements Unofficial game info and mods 2003 video games 4X video games Infogrames games MacOS games Quicksilver Software games Space opera video games Turn-based strategy video games Video games about extraterrestrial life Video games developed in the United States Video game sequels Video games with voxel graphics Windows games Multiplayer and single-player video games