Lord of Rigel

Game is a lot of fun. Watch out picking a large galaxy, because, even with pretty decent recent processor and video, it slows down to a snails pace. But the game is fun, tech tree is fun and fairly realistic for a Sci Fi Game. Thanks to developers for developing and working on this game, even adding new features now! You do not see that a lot.

Interesting that this game should be the first I have ever reviewed, but by the number of reviews, it seems like this game didn't sell well. And that's a real shame. In a nut shell, of all the games that have tried (a pretty much impossible task) to carry on the spirit of Master of Orion 2 (MoO2), this game comes by far the closest. And I have played a LOT of games (thousands) over the decades. Oh ya, and 4x games are among my favorite. If you like 4x space games, you will probably like this one. I hope you try this game. I know of only two that are absolutely better, and one of them is the original MoO2. What follows are more details for those of you that like that sort of thing... and for the developer, because there are some things that could be changed that would make this game quite a bit better in all honesty. Just be warned, some of them are kinda picky. laugh

The Good -
The game is fun. It plays quite a lot like the original MoO2, especially the research. And it has the added bonus of being able to see what comes next... kind of. For the most part is seems to play faster in some ways than the original also. I reached the end of the normal part of the tech tree by around turn 200. In the original that would never happen. Of course that was many more hours into the game than 200 turns would have been in the original too. In fact on a gigantic map (HUGE MISTAKE!!!!) I won the game by conquest (all races present include Regelan and Arcturan) on turn 254. The only way to win that fast in the original is by galactic vote.

It really does play more like MoO2 than any of the others, and yes, I am familiar with most (if not all of them). One or two others come kinda close, but this feel more like the real deal to me than the others.
The graphics are easy on the eyes. And let's face it, inferno planets look AWESOME! One little thing though. The graphic used for Gaia planets should replace that used for Terran, and be replaced with something a lot more green. (probably just my opinion...)
The inclusion of advanced colonization! Yay! I don't think the original had it, but many have since. It is a great addition. However, it is so late in the tech tree that by then you are far more likely to be in conquest mode as opposed to expand as fast as possible mode. So please consider moving it up in the tree a bit.
Tech for dealing with toxic planets!! Another yay for sure! In the original it was the only planet you couldn't improve, and it seemed sort of left out. But, once again... too late in the tech tree, or rather, too time consuming to be actually useful given how late in the tech tree it is. To build an advanced terraformer on a toxic planet takes 2000 industry. Even with all of the buildings in place (takes many turns) it could easily take another 10 - 20 turns to build. Then, after that, it takes 20 turns (no way to speed up either) to reach barren. Then the whole process of terraforming starts again. This tech is at the very end of the tech tree, so in terms of turns, almost the end of the game. The first toxic planet I dealt with had 1 turn to go to reach barren when the game ended.

The not so good (maybe bad to some or neutral to others...)
The music. It is not consistent at all. Some of it is OK, while some just ... isn't. And one particular phrase might just sit there and play over and over (and over and ...)
It's nice that freighters are now auto built into the game, but it's a real shame that we can't move colonists around any more. That is really useful when you have older colonies at max population and new colonies that could really benefit from a couple more workers (double or triple industrial output at the beginning to speed up making basic buildings)
Taking out neither the Regelens nor the Arcturans gives any real in game reward. In fact, I couldn't even see how to use their worlds after I took them. In auto, the computer will bomb them, which reduces them to an astroid. In manual combat, it just sits there after you destroy their fleet and base. If I can't use the planet, at least have some tech you get that's not part of the regular tech tree... some awesome unique weapon or similar. Think the Orion Special from MoO2. grin
The AI is really bad. It expands well, but it doesn't build aggressively, nor does it make decent armadas. In my game the Terrans had several hundred ships... almost all frigates. And I know they could build bigger ships because they had some starbases built. I know that AI in a 4x is almost never that good, but my play through on medium (average is it? every game calls it something different) was far easier than some are even played on easy.

The bad -
The biggest disappointment is the real time combat. There isn't enough control to really take advantage of the fact that it is real time, and of course, this is also the biggest departure from the game it wants to be like. It also isn't that great when lots of ships are involved. It just creeps along. So I just used auto 99% of the time, which was mostly ok except...

Unpredictable behavior with auto combat. Sometimes most of the enemy would escape (hint: yes! put warp inhibitors on your ships once you have them!), and worse, sometimes it would destroy colonies that had no defenses. Suggestion - never bomb a planet during the auto phase, always only bomb when asked after auto combat is over.

The worst (I hope the developer sees this, and I know it has been mentioned before)
Aside from the disappointing combat, by far my biggest gripe is the auto distribution of workers. Don't get me wrong, if you are a casual player I doubt you will notice. But if you play like I do, it will drive you crazy. The issue? No matter what setting you use, there will always be at least as many farmers as any other group. And that's with it set to either industry focus or research focus. I recall getting a tech that cuts in half the amount of food you need. An awesome tech to be sure. But it didn't cut the number of farmers in half, it doubled the excess food I sold every turn. That's silly. Yes it generates money, but putting the farmers to work in industry setting your colony to make trade goods will produce a lot more money. Not to mention how much research you miss out on. Please make some more adjustments.

Wow, a few mouthfulls. Now just go buy it already! Or at least download the demo...

I really want to upvote this because it does have a nice laid back vibe to the whole game compared to other 4X's. But there is a significant problem. Towards the mid game other empires I have contact with just spam outpost ships and for whatever reason I'm not a computer programmer but it completely takes up the game's processing time and then turn eats up real time it should not take me 16 mins to do a single turn. If people are having the same issue and have found solutions please let me know because currently this is a ridiculous and unreasonable timesink for me.

Lord of Rigel is a total frustration. Endless bugs. Horrible Design and hardly playable. All the hard work of testing, thinking and endless Bug-reporting is done by the paying customers instead by the Dev. And after sacrificing many hours to thoughtfully explane some of the bugs in detail, often the Dev twisted my words and made excuses instead of fixing the bugs.
It also has countless Design choices not making sense and giving a complete frustration instead of happiness. The answer from the Dev was only a stubborn: ''We are not going to change this.'' allthough me and others asked him to put more meaning and commom sense to his game. Others and me had no other choice than uninstalling and forgetting this game after the frustration was not bearable any more.

In my opinion is Lord of Rigel also not suitable for children because there is Transsexual perverted content hidden in the game. In the Diplomatic screen you have to suffer the view of a male man with male nose, male face but with boobs, hair and a boddyexpression of a woman. I personally and probably most other people feel disgusted about this. I wrote a comment and expressed my honest opinion in a factual reasonable and respectful way about this. I honestly expressed that I don't like a game being abused for pushing the perverted sexual Trans-Gender-Agenda in the mind of innocent children. It is my constitutional right to express my opinion about this. And this my opinion was regarding the content of this game, NOT something else.

Yet the Dev did ban me permanently from the Lord of Rigel Discussions instead to answer and explane me in a reasonable way why they do this. In order to ban me, he hipocrital fabricated the excuse of so called ''hatespeech''. This was very unprofessional. Becaus it was a lie. To express my honest opinion about the content of his game is my right, and to express the fact that I don't like a particular content of his game, this is NOT hatespeech. He has no right to obligate me to like every aspect of his game.

After I regretet to waste money and time for this game and the way I was treated from the Dev after investing dozens of hours to help him finding bugs and improving his game. For this game was a frustrating experience and I will ask a refund.

PS:
Ace, it is very pathetic and unprofessional that you publish here lies about me. I did NOT commit so called ''hatespeech.'' The real problem here is, you cannot handle constructive criticism.

Instead to answer an honest opinion in a reasonable way you had choosen to ban me under the disguise of ''hatespeech''. Instead to engage in a reasonable respectful conversation you had choosen to ignore several of my bug reports or to make fun of them. Instead to take my honest opinion about particular content of your game to your heart and think about it, you had choosen to frame my constructive criticism as so called ''hatespeech'' in order to fabricate an excuse to ban me. Instead to fix many of the bugs you had choosen to close the thread where I had invested countless hours to report your endless bugs.

Ace honestly, your paying customers really don't deserve a treatment like this. Constructive criticism is a positive gift meant to help you to improve your game. But simply calling criticism ''hatespeech'' and to issue a lifelong ban for daring to dislike a particulare design of your game, this doesn't work.

And even here you don't stop to bully me by spreading lies about me and twisting the facts. In hipocrital manner you stated here: ''Reporting bugs or having issues with design decisions will not result in a ban'' This is another lie. Because this is exactly what I did: I reportet bugs and tried to communicate my issues with your design and some in my opinion ''perverted'' art in your game. I communicated my issues with your game in a very careful, respectful and honest way. But whatever opinion you don't like, you simnply call it ''hatespeech'' and shut the person up instead to give a reasonable answer to the topic.

Worthy effort but still very early release (as is reflected in the price). Fair number of bugs (didn't run into anything major) that developers quickly address. AI is not very aggressive so winning is not a major challenge. Functionality continues to be added. Graphics are average at best. Good balance that keeps you engaged until you have to take on Rigel and Arcturus.

Just finished up the tutorial game all the way to the end by crushing my opponent. Sofar I like it. It's slow, but I like it. I hope the devs will continue with the game.

Solid 4x game with some clever ideas. Well worth playing if you like this genre.

So I decided to give this indie space 4X game a go.

It plays very quick and is very playable and satisfying.

Yes it does have indie production values but the devs are super cool and responsive bringing out updates every few minutes...er...maybe not that frequently but it feels like it...

Anyway im super excited for this games future and hope that it does really well.

Its fun and playable.

Hi Steam Community

I played the game since very early access for more than 250 h and gonna give you my humble option about it.

• wonderful 4X game, which orients to Master of Orion II / MoO II
  
• the game itself is no clone, but an interpretation of MoO II game mechanics in this day and age
  
• mini dev team with great connection to the community and user feedback
  
• several different races with varying ways to play them
  
• custom races for players are supported
  
• to some degree customizable galaxy
  
• bang for bucks overall
  

• graphics (ingame events, portraits, the 3D graphics)
  
• pc performance, especially with larger galaxy seeds
  
• there are still bugs out there, but at least no game breaking bugs for my last plays
  
• the ai and the diplomacy with them is still limited (like in the original ;)
  
• only single player
  
[*]no turn based combat like the original

Master of Orion has a new successor.
Fans of the classic space 4X games will enjoy the legendary game system and the breath of fresh air it brings to the series. It's a bargain at the price of just a single DLC for a major 4X game. Updates are still being made, and I am sure this game will grow up to be a great successor. The developer is full of energy and motivation!

Lord of Rigel brings the MOO2 formula into the 21st century in a proper way. I played a very tense 3 hour game and enjoyed its attention to detail, visuals, and overall design concept. The AI seems competent (and punishing if you're looking for that). The UI looks fine, but could use a bit of graphical polish here and there. My only real issue is real time the space combat. It's a pausable real time system. However, I would really love to see the old turn based movement featured as a option. Master of Orion 2 really nailed that and it doesn't seem like Lord of Rigel is quite there yet.

Lord of Rigel is going in a great direction and looking forward to further development. 9/10

It's much more stable than wargames MOO remake. The slower pacing is not so bad.. once you have around a dozen colonys the temptation to go wild is strong..... Resist the urge or you will regret it. The two elder races will use you for lube if your not ready for 'em. Remember their tech may be maxed. I haven't found out myself for certain but I'm in no rush. Slower paced that MOO but thats not a bad thing!

Imagine if in Stellaris the War in Heaven could trigger in the very early game through AI actions and completely disable diplomacy, leaving everyone at war with everyone else, then one of the "Fallen Empires" camps your worlds with a massive fleet, and the other takes over your capital with mind control.

So far this is a competent 4X game in the vein of MoO

I just got the game after I enjoyed the demo, the developer responds to players. big positive on that and it also got a few patches form the time I got it "Less then 24 hours ago" that's nice to see. I feel as my money was spent on a game that is loved, in a world full of greedy quick dollar games just to be forgotten months later. This is my type of game and if you are into games like MOO you will be into this one. For the price you get a nice game that is loved by the developers so I don't see how you could pass this one up.

This takes Master of Orion 2, remixes the playable civs from the game to spice things up a bit, adds some QoL tweaks and fiddled with some of the tech tree balance, and then throws in the looming threat of an impending Babylon 5-ish war between ideologically opposed precursor civilizations plopped somewhere on the map for you to bump into. This game is, ironically, closer to what I was hoping Stellaris would be than what Stellaris actually is.

Where MoO is more archetypical and, admittedly, somewhat basic in the depictions of their playable species, Lord of Rigel is a little more creative and clever, mashing together some concepts while reworking others. The Katraxi combine the feline martiality of the Mrrshan and the High-G bulk of the Bulrathi. The Selach combine the aquatic nature of the Trilarians and the mercantile expertise of the Gnolam into a more aesthetically pleasing cetacean package. The Ornithon combine the avian Alkari with the cybernetic Meklar in a way that makes perfect sense: low-G birdpeople adapting to their fragility utilizing augmetics. There's not a great deal of lore in the game proper but some of the concepts from the artbook/lorebook do trickle in if you know where to look. The Yalkai in particular are a very funny take on the idea of the Elerians, MoO's blue-skinned elvish space women. They're basically flower-starfish who telepathically vtube avatars of themselves into the minds of any other sapient species they interact with. And their avatars are designed to latch onto that society's standards of beauty and elegance and project it back to them, tweaked with other concepts and quirks on an individual basis. Their vtuber avatars just appear to be stylishly dapper blue-skinned women to the player because the player is a human! And yes, it is possible for the Yalkai to turn it off, just ask Turvari the Yalkai Exile. It's clear she has Opinions about this custom.


The game released in a bit of an unpolished state but the devs have been pretty responsive and quick to follow up on feedback. At the moment, I think it's quite good in spite of the optimization issues and bugs. Aside from those, though, my main gripe is that the real time nature of combat doesn't add a lot to the tactical side of things as such. I think the game suffers a bit from trying to translate MoO2-style combat to RTwP instead of leaning into the strengths of the format, in part because a lot of the depth of MoO2's combat system comes from micromanaging ship facings and giving specific targets to specific weapon groups. Which are all things you can do perfectly fine in a turn-based system, but which is cumbersome with the real-time tactical combat ui as is. In a real-time context, I do think trying to do maneuver-based broadside combat in the fashion of Total War Empire's naval battles or Rebel Galaxy would work better for a flat-plane ship battle RTS system, but that would require a serious overhaul to the combat system. As it stands, however, I enjoy the rest of the game enough that this doesn't bother me too much. As with many strategy games, if I'm not terribly interested in seeing how a battle plays out I can just brute force my way through wars by strength of industry and economy of scale. Or, put another way, tactics win battles but strategy wins games.

"Master of Orion with tweaks" is a niche within a niche to release a game in but the devs are clearly making the game they want to play and, to be honest, it's right up my alley too.

More of a MoO2 clone, than a MoO1. Still very good. After almost 11 hours into a game, I've eliminated everyone except 1 pacifist race on a tiny ultrapoor planet while I finish all the research tech. There's enough similarities that makes us think about MoO but there are some differences that make this game stand out. Give the demo a try.

I bought this game years back when it first appeared on steam because I am a sucker for anything 4X in space. As other older reviews said it was a hot mess, I did try a lot to like, the devs were very communicative and you have to admire a small team keeping on. So hadn't played in years, and noticed just recently this went to full deployment not early access. Just loaded it up and played some, and am very pleased with the experience. My biggest problem years ago was the manual combat being wonky, This has been fixed, It plays a lot like MMO 2 with a better interface without having to do herds of key strokes to see whats up on every planet one at a time. The current price point is well worth it if you like 4x in space games.

**UPDATE**
Two-thirds into first game and I am enjoying it immensely. I highly recommend Lords of Rigel if your into 4X space genre.

Developers are positive and responsive to issues presented to them. THANK YOU for your hard work!!

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Lords of Rigel has great potential to be a very good game once the bugs are worked out and some game improvements made. The start of the game was not an enjoyable experience, but now in mid game I am liking this game. In particular, space battles is a vast improvement over Master of Orion series of games.

I almost refunded Lords of Rigel at first, due to frustration at having to restart 5 times to get a galaxy setup suitable for game play, which doesn't leave the player in a desert of undesirable or NO habitable systems. Sorry to say, the galaxy generator is not player friendly, at least for the spiral galaxy which I selected. There are only two galaxy types to choose from; cluster and spiral. Where are the Elliptical, Oval, or Disk galaxies? These are the types I normally select for my play style in 4x space games.

There is no option to select which races to play against, all random.

The Empire screen has no scroll bar. If you have more than 4 systems you cannot see them on this screen.
The after turn summary events list also has no scroll bar, and you have to close each event individually. This gets tedious mid game when there are many things happening each turn.
There is a glitch in events list where ships/fleets are reported seen, by sensors or something, in sections of galaxy that hasn't been explored yet.

There is a glitch in ship design where all first design ships, with a selected optical or positronic computer so far, will revert back to the base electronic computer after the ship is saved and exit design screen then return to it. Save the new ship design a second time and it goes away.
There is no option to delete obsolete or unwanted ship designs while in ship design screen - Only at planet build list.
The automatic renaming of ship designs that are changed or updated, even when not built, is most annoying.
After designing a ship and saving, your automatically exited out of design screen.

I'd like to see an option to be able to rename systems and planets once they are controlled.
There is a slight lag when switching between screens and end turn.
The zoom in or out function, + and - buttons, has to be depressed multiple times (as in excessively), instead of just holding buttons down.

If you liked Master of Orion 2 you will like this game.
Lord of Rigel is a very good and faithful remake of MoO2 with its own twist on some things.

Bugs and annoyances. Examples:
- Multiple times choosing to autoresolve a battle results in total destruction of my fleet. Reload the game and play the battle manually doing essentially nothing but let my ships fire at will and I win with no damage to my fleet at all.
- Battle with fleets against planetary defenses that for some reason go on the full 10 minutes (5 min on double speed) despite the planetary defense being destroyed very quickly. Nothing you can do but wait while nothing happens.
- Battles are an annoying miss fest. I have had battles where only my point defense weapons could score a hit. I was the technology leader and took every to-hit improvement I could. The enemies have it worse presumably because they do not reliably choose to-hit improvements.
- When another faction violates your borders, the only options are ignore it or declare war.
- Torpedoes that say in their description that they always hit, miss most of the time
- Much that is poorly explained or not documented at all
- Factions that are so gimped that if they are in your game you will walk over them every time
- Spys that can create negative consequences every single turn (you were framed) and no way to do anything about it because your spy defense seems to have no power over Enemy A spying on Enemy B.

This could be an okay game (not good, but okay), but it annoys me too much to continue.

The ugliest game i have seen in last 10 years, graphically this game looks like games from 1990 :) mechanics are ok though very similar to MOO2 so thats why thumbs up.

The game is rough, with a worrying amount of lag just switching between menus, but the initial content is interesting. Very Master of Orion vibe, which, as a long-time fan, I do find interesting. But still needs a lot of work before considering this for a long-term play.

I like it so far it has a few bugs here and there but nothing major and is getting fixes.

It's like a mix between Moo2's economy with Sword in the Stars space monsters and tactical combat with a Babylon5 story and it thematically fits well.It has nice visuals with the galaxy map and ships,race pictures.