Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars

This is basically a graphically enhanced reboot of the classic MOO 1 and 2 games of the 1990s. The current version of the game has proven stable with no crashes in nearly 300 hours of gameplay. You have a choice of ten races to play in the base game, each with their own traits, strengths and weaknesses. I have discovered through play that the races are not too well balanced - Meklar and Klackon are probably the strongest, with Mrsshan being the weakest - although knowing this can help to make games more interesting by using it as a handicapping system...
Multiplayer also works fairly well, and was stable for the two games I played. Space battles always use the auto-resolve option in multiplayer, presumably to save time since they can be lengthy endeavours. I found myself using auto-resolve in single player games for the battles most of the time anyway, so this wasn't an issue for me.
Ship designs can be modified using the blueprint editor, or even scrapped entirely. Colony management is very similar to the 90s games, with colonists being assigned to either research, farming food or production projects. You can set a per colonist tax rate for your empire, and use the game currency to rush builds in order to complete them in 1 turn. Terraforming projects are the exception, as these cannot be purchased in order to rush complete them.
There are 5 possible paths to victory in each game. The first 4 are Conquest, Technological, Economic, and Diplomatic. The fifth is simply to have the highest score after a set number of turns (default is 500).
Diplomacy with other races is fairly basic but serves it's purpose. You can set up embassies, trade treaties, research treaties, non aggression pacts, alliances and so forth. You can also build a spy centre and then train spies either to sabotage or steal from other players, or for use in counter-espionage to protect yourself from enemy spy activity.
The game also has workshop support. I haven't tried any of the mods yet, but some of them do come highly recommended.
Overall this is definitely a worthwhile purchase for anyone who enjoys 4x space strategy games. 9/10

It's an OK 4x game. My biggest critiques are:
1. Movement is way to slow, you can only ever move your units one jump space even if you have the best engines in the game, which means it takes FOREVER to move units across the map.
2. It's too easy to make every planet a fortress and makes it very slow to conquer your enemy.
3. You basically want to colonize every planet and build every building, which gets boring.
4. Diplomacy is meh, basically you have trade treaties with everyone except maybe one person who you hate.
That being said, it's still pretty fun to explore, conquer, design ships and build armadas. It's fun, but it definitely gets old and doesn't offer a lot of replay value IMO. I would buy it again on sale and if you do play it make sure to play on a small map with more AIs than normal to keep the action alive, on big maps things are too spread out to ever get interesting.

Master of Orion... game speaks for itself. Only issue is the game really slows down after about 300 - 350 turns, and becomes progressively slower as you go on. Developers programming issue. Course they will never fix it.

Bought it at release and wasn't too thrilled. Tried it 8 years later again together with 5x, UCP and tactical mods. Boy, what a difference! Modders made the game work as intended and more. Devs could have made a ton of money with dlcs, if they had fixed their initial mess themselves. Well, probably the publisher's fault.
With those mods this game is a jewel. Just make sure you follow the installation instructions. It isn't hard by any means, just know that clicking on "subscribe" ain't enough.

The game is not perfect but it's an enjoyable modern update of Moo 2. I think it got lost in a sea of games but if you're reading this review of Master of Orion then it's likely a game that you will enjoy.

TLDR: WIth 5X + UCP + tactical mods, one of most enjoyable 4X space strategy around, even though bit casual experience.
I am often careful of reboots of old games I liked (MoO2 in this case) as they are usually far below the original. In case of MoO:CotS I must applaud the result. Imho they managed very well and game is well playable and enjoyable. I am often not into Eyecandies but whole gameplay is kinda less serious sci-fi "cinematic" experience. I actually like each race models and voiceacting, same as the cinematic mode for battles.
Strategic and tactical formulas are bit simple - eventually leading to universal preferred strategies (eg. early there is no point use other than missile weapons and so on) but overall all research, economy, diplomatic and spy options + ship designs and tactical combat are more than servicable.
The base game has visible unbalance in races and few things, same as few annoying bugs - this all is addressed by great UCP and 5X Mods. Add Tactical over it that rebalance weapons and AI utilization of those and you have in hand very good game.
All things considered I have same if not better fun with MoO than Stellaris - sure it lacks Stellaris complexity in almost everything and one thing I miss are end game crisis (in MoO you simply snowball and know you won at some point, there is really nothing that shape the galaxy later on - in this Stellaris is way better) But what does, it does quite good. I like building my empire in the light tone and repetitive GNN jokes.
Combat if played tactically is quite decent, reward mostly good ship design vs enemy but position ships around or hide small torpedo frigates behind shielding titan to attack at right moments (or kite around with your long range missile launchers:p works well and is fun - but in particular on easier difficulties you can just turn on cinematic mode and let AI make space debrish show for you. With unique models and animations per race it is quite impressive.
All in all MoO quickly became member of my top 4X Space games - the other two are Sins of the solar Empire and Stellaris. Comparing pure fun, I would even say MoO is winner (and also do not need 200+ USD DLCs to had its intended content:p until Sins 2 will be out (and hopefuly it will be total blast forming genre for next decade) and with named mods I highly suggest give MoO chance if you are fan of originals or not, you should not be disapointed.

A fantastic 4X game that goes a bit beyond "Civilization, But In Space." If you like Stellaris, but wish the games didn't take nearly as long and weren't nearly as complicated, give Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars a go.

I've played through it several times as-is and enjoyed it, but the game really comes into its own with the addition of two extremely popular mods in the workshop (5X Patch and the accompanying Code Update). All told, I've very much enjoyed my time in the game and I'm looking forward to trying out a few more things before I move on to other games. Recommend!