Master of Orion

- Never played MoO 3, so I can't comment there
- Galactic Civilizations 2 - Stardock's games are almost too in depth sometimes. With Civ games at least you have a basis (history) to work with, but here you're pretty much learning everything from scratch. Doesn't really bother me that much, but man I do not really need to customize as much stuff as you can in this game.
- Sins of a Solar Empire - Not quite as badass as its name, sadly. It's like playing an RTS game that lasts as long as a Civ one. You have economy, research, scouting, huge battles with motherships as 'hero' units, etc. It also takes ages to 'win' because the computer doesn't concede when it's beaten and destroying stuff can be slow going. It's a Stardock game, so again it takes a while to get your bearings and the learning curve is steep.


Ogre Battle

Call me crazy but I actually enjoyed the style of Tactics Ogre, FFT, etc more than the original. I've tried a lot, but I can't seem to actually stay interested in playing it again, even though I've never seen most of the endings. Meanwhile, I've played the others many times through (despite FFT being really linear and not really staying 'true' to that aspect).


Romancing Saga 3

I remember checking all the emu and ROM translation sites religiously hoping they would finish this game back in the day. I really enjoyed it, too.

The Saga Frontiers were a bit different, though. Very similar kind of combat idea, though wildly different game settings. I remember ending up frustrated with those games, thinking there was so much potential but feeling so lost at the same time. I'd keep going back to them to see if I could find what I was missing, but it never showed up. Really weird games.