When comparing Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars vs Star Walk 2, the Slant community recommends Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars for most people. In the question“What are the best 4X space games on PC?” Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars is ranked 12th while Star Walk 2 is ranked 13th. The most important reason people chose Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars is:
The game is very well designed from a UI standpoint. The layout is far better than any other Master of Orion game. There was some transparency problems in beta, but the design is well thought out. Strangely the voice over work is very good. Rare to see outside of some AAA games.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Wonderful polish
The game is very well designed from a UI standpoint. The layout is far better than any other Master of Orion game. There was some transparency problems in beta, but the design is well thought out.
Strangely the voice over work is very good. Rare to see outside of some AAA games.
Pro Feels like a living, breathing world
From the moment the player colonizes a planet, they can see people moving around that planet when managing resource production. While managing people is not as detailed as to micro-manage every person in a planet, the player can still put groups of them to work on a certain job (food production, research, infrastructure) and the impact is palpable.
Pro Great voice acting
While not directly related to gameplay, this is still one of the things that can push a game to new levels.
The ensemble cast of voice actors for Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars is top notch, surpassing even most AAA games.
Besides talent like Nolan North and Troy Baker, who are pretty popular in game-related voice acting nowadays, there are also actors of the caliber of Mark Hamill, Michael Dorn, John de Lancie and Alan Tudyk.
Pro Displays different parts of the light spectrum
Instead of only displaying what would be visible to the human eye, Star Walk displays gamma ray, x ray, h-alpha, infrared, microwave, and radio.
Pro Users can choose which objects are displayed
Users can toggle which features are activated, such as constellation description or satellite display.
Pro 3D view of stars up close
Just tap on a star and see what it looks like from a closer perspective.
Pro Identifies satellites
For 99 cents, satellites can be tapped for identification. This app contains information on over 9000 satellites.
Pro Contains information about all the planets
Star Walk 2 attempts to give users a comprehensive view of all the things that are currently happening in space, this includes events at other planets. For instance, it displays the angle of rotation around the sun, sunrise, sunset, and length of day on that particular planet.
Pro Adds illustrations over feed from camera
Instead of just displaying a feed of what the sky should look like when the device is aimed in different directions, Sky Walk paints stars, constellations, and satellites over real time images taken from the device's camera.
Cons
Con Simplistic battle system
The battle system is one of the things that made a departure from previous titles in the series. It's not turn-based anymore and it feels like it takes a backseat to diplomacy and deterrence.
Con A lot of stuff didn't convert well from previous games
Holdovers from previous installments of this game have become obsolete. A lot of the neat tech toys and racial abilities have been rendered useless or downright crippling with new game mechanics. Systems are very hard to hold as large empires are very hard to defend against without huge tech advances that come in late game, all ships have unlimited range. This leads the player to rely on very tight borders and lucky system finds. Expanding isn't currently viable. So this all leads to the major problem: there's really only one way to play. To be successful you need to ignore your racial abilities and stick to the only strategy allowed.
A lot of the ship tech was kept, but tactical combat is very different, and almost pointless. In MoO2 there were neat little tricks you could pull to take ships intact or out maneuver slow ships when you couldn't out gun them. Tactical combat in the new game isn't really working. It's now really just is whomever has the bigger gun wins. It plays out combat like a CIV combat clone. There are some tricks you can do with missiles and augmented engines, but that's about it.
Spying is greatly improved, you have more control over what's going on with your spies - however currently it really feels overpowered.
Diplomacy is a bit of a mess. In the open beta it doesn't really work and there are buggy problems with it too (like you can't declare war on someone unless they want to meet with you).
Con Unstable for many users
Many people who have this app complain that it crashes within seconds of starting.
Con Outdated data base
2016 and 2017 are not in data base. Can't view anything discovered after 2015. Comets like johnson can't be found.