This is a game I have some history with. When it first came out, I ordered a copy and had it delivered to my door. Back in the day I believe I was still playing on an Athlon 64 x2 based PC, and I fell in love with this game. It made it all the more heartbreaking when I had to stop playing within the week due to technical issues in the game that were so bad, when it crashed I would have to restart my computer to get out of it. With this sour taste I walked away for years, and yet I could not deny the temptation to see if it was still worth playing when I saw the game join Steam as a free to play title.
But come November my group of gamers decided we were going to play together in the Extra Life marathon and the game was suggested.... so I installed and on the big event began one of the longest games I have played to date (competing with the Phantasy Star Online and Universe titles almost exclusively for time I sank into them). And while I did not finish the story line before ultimately a tech issue told me it was time to hang it up, what we have now is MILES ahead of what we once had and I have only one thing I really can say. Welcome to Starfleet, Captain.
Story: It is the year 2409 and the unbelievable has happened. Romulus is no more, having been shattered into nothing but an asteroid field. But where as the movies follow the event through a hole in time itself to send those who tried to rescue this world into the past, this time-line continues, and Romulan Empire is in the turmoil one would expect from such tragic events.
But the implications are farther reaching then this, as their eminent collapse will leave a power-vacuum in the galaxy and both nature and power abhor such things. The danger of war breaking out is very real. And it is in this setting you will be dropped.
How your story will begin will depend a lot, however on what faction you choose to play as, and you will have plenty of choice. From the war-like Klingon Empire to the relatively newcomers of the Dominion to the classic Federation, just about everyone can hold where you hail from, and from there you can choose what species you play (at least that makes sense within the faction), giving everyone a pretty unique way to begin, but ultimately every faction's story does come together for the main plot and arguably one of the best arcs I've seen in an MMO. To explain it is a bit of a disservice to plot-lovers but new discoveries will lead to whole new potential threats and opportunities or the galaxy to move forward. Enjoy the ride!
8/10
Graphics: I am not going to lie to you, Star Trek Online is an old game having launched in early 2010 and you can expect it to reflect this in it's rather simple look. Simply put, it looks like a game. It is clean, however, as you wander the various environments of the galaxy, from the corridors of a Romulan ship to the deserts of Vulcan to the well tailored grounds of Starfleet Academy, nothing is going to strike you as looking bad in any way. It just won't look impressive, especially by today's standards. People will also fall into this category as well, with each species standing out as you would expect from the various shows in the franchise but well on their own side of the uncanny valley. They will not look as good as they did in the shows.
But all that changes when you get in the captain's chair and pilot your ship. In deep space, everything is absolutely gorgeous. Without much beyond the deep black void of space itself to go against, the ships and lighting around them are given a ton of love and care, highlighting every customization you give them brilliantly, even the ever-important tags to name the ship where it fits the universe. (It was entertaining as hell in my case to run around in a small gun-boat with the "U.S.S. Blade of Change" on the side of it.)
And the space battles carry the look from the shows perfectly too as phasers, torpedoes, and any other weapon you can imagine will launch explode and attempt to destroy their target. It's an awesome spectacle that speaks to the more chaotic part of life as a captain in the Star Trek universe.
7/10
Sound: If you know Star Trek (since either the movies or The Next Generation on) at all, you know what you are expecting for music, and while it my take a bit to get started, (it will let you finish making your character first) those opening tones will immediately bring you right into the world through the eyes you had when you first arrived, whenever that was. And it doesn't let go. Running the gamut of calm in the background while in bases to grand and boisterous as you face off with the dangers of the 24th century, it is simply a joy to hear even as it works to fit the world you play in.
The voice, acting, however, runs a much more unfortunate range. When it's good, it's really good, when possible calling on the actors from the show to reprise their roles and when not possible using really good voice actors to imitate them very well. No, I won't call the quality of the acting into question because I can't. It is simply superb. The issue is with the quality of the recordings. Sometimes they sound great, other times, the quality changes mid-scene. Sometimes the timing doesn't fit the scene particularly well, and sometimes, some lines are just straight up skipped. It is just unfortunately inconsistent.
Much more standard are the sound effects, which you are likely more familiar with before you start playing then you will probably care to admit. Every phaser blast, torpedo launch, and tricorder use sounds exactly as you expect it to, capturing the feel of Star Trek you would expect. I really can not say much more since these sounds that make up the world are so iconic, and they are all here as they should be.
7/10
Gameplay: While playing Star Trek Online, you will find your time divided between two very distinct game modes: when you are on the ground and when you are piloting your ship. While on the ground, you will play from a 3rd person perspective, using your mouse wheel to control how zoomed in you are, but how you control it depends on what you want to do. Traditionally, you use the WASD keys to move around and turn while the game adjusts the camera to be behind you, reserving your mouse to click on the things you wish to interact with (including for combat). Unfortunately this leads to some very clunky action until you realize you can hold the right mouse button to control the camera for finer control (until you let go when it will snap back behind you) and your strafe keys are Q and E, letting you move a lot more freely during combat, adding much needed fluidity to it.
And that is a good thing, because the alternate sounds promising until you actually try it. With the press of a button (I believe it's X but I am not sure) you can switch to a first person style control system where your mouse disappears to be replaced with a crosshair in the center of your screen, your mouse now controlling where you look and WASD now performing just movement. Want to shoot? Just click like an FPS game... but I am going to tell you right now, don't bother with this because the FPS style is really just glossing over a much more standard Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game as established since the days of World of Warcraft and weapons with cooldowns do not translate to this style very well.
In either case, this game mode will be how you handle everything on your feet, be it as mundane as walking into a briefing for a story mission or wandering one of the world-hub areas like a faction's home world, or the more action packed events like beaming down to help an alien planet fend off an invading ground force or leading a boarding party on an enemy vessel and everything in between. If you see it in the sci-fi world you are visiting, you will likely do it at some point in this game and it feels about as it should for an MMO, making for the standard timing based combat any veteran of the genre should expect. If you are not such a verteran, this mode will not take too long to adapt to, but the clunkyness mentioned in the first paragraph is something to be aware of, since it is fairly common.
But STO stands out from it's counterparts with the other mode and one that really shines... space battles. In this mode, the camera behaves similar to the ground game a 3rd person perspective, but letting go of the mouse does not place your camera behind your ship again, letting you place it around as you see fit. You also lose strafing keys since these now become the throttle, one to speed up, and one to slow down while WASD is used to tilt your ship in all directions as you wish. Depending on the ship (and how it's geared up) you will find a variety of manuverability, whether you are in a small battle ship that can manuver around everything with heavy guns ready to unload but really can't take a lot of damage to massive ships like the Enterprise itself which can take a pounding, load massing volumes of weapons and even lots of space for deployables like fighter ships and orbiting turrets, but are ponderous in the battlefield. In short it feels like you might expect a naval battle in space to play out and feels absolutely perfect for it. THIS is why you play this game, right here.
But of course this is an RPG title, and as such the action is only part of the picture. Right when you start, you will make choices that will influence the whole game from then on, starting with your faction you are playing. Each faction has their own type of equipment they will use primarily. For example, the Federation tends to rely on phaser based weaponry, while the Romulans use plasma. Both have their own extra effects on the enemy, particularly for space combat. For example, phasers have a chance of shutting down a system on the enemy ship for a short time while plasma has a chance of keeping burning and doing extra damage that ignores shields. Other types of weapons have other effects, and may be a favored/default weapon for other factions, changing how things you fight early on are effected. This will also effect the very ships you can pilot for obvious reasons.
Once you've made this choice, you will create your captain within the faction which will also come with more specialized abilities for your starting point and as well as a career choice. This last detail will have a direct effect in some of the conversation choices and side-goals you can accomplish during missions in the game as well as some of the further specialized equipment you will be able to use and off you go with one of many varied possible starting points for your adventures into deep space.
And while this is an RPG, leveling works differently then in most others. Most other games your level increases your stats like health or strength as you play. You do not have that here. What your level does is increase your rank which over time increases the power of gear you have access to, points to buy new abilities, and new systems the game will introduce to you as you go along. Enemies do level up with you as you play, but it turns more into an arms race in this regard which is actually fun to play with since you do get to meet new and more dangerous threats with bigger and better ships that are more dangerous and harrowing events.
Unfortunately, this is not how the adventure ends as there is a level cap of 65 you will meet before you finish the story of the game, requiring you not to just have better gear and abilities, but particular ones, and this is where the game loses a lot of steam. Once you are this invested, finding that gear is exceptionally hard and you will either grind like all hell or cave into the ever present in-game store to get what you need to try a new strategy and even before putting the work or cash into the game, you best do your research to make sure you are not on the wrong side of some "Rock-Paper-Scissors" system. And while this is a MAJOR drawback, understand it is one you will be hitting well after most people get their fill and leave. For me, this issue hit around the 130 hour mark. 130 hours of gametime in and I had still had 1/3rd of the story left to play, so even if you are playing solidly for that, you will have a ton to do in this game, not including all the random encounters, patrols, and even daily goals and holiday events MMOs are known for to draw long-term players to keep playing.
Overall, the game is far from perfect, but I can't complain about something that I've been playing since November without dropping a dime and enjoying it for most of that time.
7/10
Bugs: If there is any major weakness to this game, this is it. Thankfully it is not nearly at the level it was at launch when the game was literally melting graphic cards, but I would be lying if I told you to expect an error free experience.
- Where's the base? My first night playing this game (which incidently was during the 2021 Extra Life marathon... and you SHOULD consider being a part of it if you game in any way) when the last mission we took on as a group involved invading a base... that the game just refused to render. We were able to finish the mission but we literally did so by feeling our way through invisible halls of an invisible base to reach our goal, finish up, and beam out.
- Attention! Sometimes, this game just does not know how to place characters for a cutscene leading to some rather funny scenes once in a while. The most recent of these for me was when everyone was gathered around a table discussing the current threat... but they were not so much sitting down as standing in their chairs at full attention... including your own character. Expect these issues in cutscenes from time to time.
- Easily Borked Missions: This is the death knell for the game in my honest opinion, but beware if you have to quit a mission mid-step for any reason as you might be denied the ability to finish it. In my case, this happened VERY late game where I was facing off with an enemy vessel which for the life of me I just could not do enough damage to to finish them off. This was the last encounter of the mission before it would have ended and rewards dished out, but after fighting this one ship with the backup of 2 other ships by mission, multiple deployed turrets, fighters, and calling in help of another cruiser class ship for about an hour straight, it was clear I wasn't getting anywhere, so I warped out to gear up more for them and try again... only when I came back there was no one to fight. The mission moved on to the next objective like he was never there (answer hail) only there was no one to make a call to answer on the map... friend or foe. I was alone with an objective I would never be able to complete. Leaving and coming back again did NOT help. This is actually the point when I stopped playing.
Score: I will not lie to you and tell you this is the best game I have ever played. It is not. However, it is rare when an MMO of any sort can hold my attention for more then maybe a month or two. Without dropping a dime on the game, Star Trek Online managed to keep me entertained for about 130 hours and I have been playing regularly since November. It stands out as something truly special from the hoard of "WoW Clones" you see out there with half the game taking a truly awesome take on space combat, and has more then enough content to warrant it's long life in the online world. You will even see an active community when you log in! So as far as MMO games go, I can not say much against it.
But at the same time, the game gets very involved once you reach max level so expect to spend time with wikis from time to time to make sure you don't mess up your end-game, and you will do so LONG before you complete what is here for story and it clearly has technical issues that should not be after being around as long as it has. Overall, it is pretty good and if you are interested in playing an RPG in the Star Trek world, you will enjoy yourself. If you are looking for an MMO offering something different from others out there, it's definitely worth checking out.
7/10
System Requirements:
- Core 2 Duo running at 2.2 Ghz
- 4 GB RAM
- Geforce GTX 400 series/AMD Radeon 5000 HD series/Intel HD Graphics 4000 series
- 35 GB hard drive space
- Windows 8 or 10 (64 bit only)
System Specs:
- Ryzen 7 (2700) 3.2 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- Nvidia Geforce 1660 (6GB VRAM)
- Windows 10 (64 Bit)
Source: Steam
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