Game Info

Developer: Cryptic Studios

Platform tested on: Win 7 (64bit) w/ AMD x4 945 Black CPU, 4GB Mem, 1GB 4890 ATI Gfx and SB Fatal1ty.

Release Status: Released (2/2/2010)

General Overview

Note: The screenshots I took in game were automatically edited by STO and did show any of the menus or HUD and things like that not sure if that was a beta feature to only show stripped down screenshots.

Well I played in the beta for about two weeks and logged in about 20hrs of gameplay in STO. I went slow trying to soak in all the quests, stations, space flight and battles. As with City of Heroes, Cryptic did a great job on the character generation engine and you can spend an hour (like me) customizing and assigning attributes to your character.

When you start STO you can only be on the Starfleet side of things. You will unlock the Klingon faction later and I hear you can purchase other factions when the game actually is actually released. You first start the game on a ship that is being bored by the borg and you have to destroy their spawning pods. So you get to experience your FPS side of the game, it is more like FPS/turn-based combat since you have to wait for skills to refresh. But once that is complete you will take over a ship and fight a borg cube and destroying it. This is your beginning/training mission in the game to get you used to controls and skill usage.

The main starport in the game is a pretty good size and you can do almost everything there (ie: get new quests, bridge officers, equipment for ship and personal, change ship look and color, etc). After your first intial contact with the Admiral you will be able to get and turn-in quests through your comm system on your ship.

I actually thought the quest system was designed well, each quest on average takes about 30mins or more to complete and there is different stages. Where you might have some space combat, ship boarding/away mission combat and then some type of mini boss battle. Overall a nice experience and Cryptic does a nice job setting the atmosphere for the mission. Another plus I liked about the quest engine is that STO automatically grouped you with people so you had people doing the same quest as you in the same instance.

Traveling in STO is done by a large cosmic map where you can fly in it and when you approach a system you can enter it. This is an ok system but could have been better. It only allows for impulse power engines to fly through it and it could take several minutes to get from one end to the other.

Ship controls and combat engine could have been better designed imho, you used the keys mainly for flight and use of skills. The pitch and height above or below a target will matter when in battle. Your weapons have a degree range and are only effective in that degree range (ie: 220, 45, 90, 120, etc..). I didn't find any weapons that were 360 degree of effectiveness. I usually had lasers in the front (220 degree and 100 degree arc) and quantum torpedos in the aft. Combat is fun once you get the hang of power distribution and the weapon arc system. You will have to manually use your bridge officer skills during combat, by pressing a key or click on the button. Remember STO is not a twitch based flight engine it is more tactical.

Leveling and skill distributing is done real easily with the interface and you get skill points and there is skill points for your bridge officers and you level with mission experience and the use of your skill points. So besides the EXP requirement use also have a SP requirement to level. This area of the game can be confusing because there is a lot of skill/technology areas and a lot of info to process. The descriptions of all the skills and their effect could be better described to the user.

Graphics and sound were pretty well done and I didn't have many complaints. I did see some collision issues and graphic flickering in spots. But sound effects and music was good and gave you the feeling of being in the Star Trek universe. I would have liked to hear comm chatter and communication between your bridge officers during the game.

Now to touch on the positives and negatives that I saw in STO. Now mind you I didn't get to Commander level rank and I didn't play every day and grind out the levels I played at a leisurely pace.

Positives:

- Character generator was great with all of the customization

- Lots of gear for the ships and your avatar

- Besides the little things I though combat was fun in space

- Quests were well put together

- Music and sound effects were done well

- Outer space graphics were nice to look at

Negatives:

- I would have really enjoyed freeform flight system

- You can only land on planets that you have missions on

- No death penalty

- Planet surfaces could have been done better with graphics

- NPC AI is dumb when it comes to away missions and they never use cover

- Be more descriptive in item descriptions and abilities

- Would have liked to see the bridge officers make choices and use their abilities on the fly

- Wanted to fight battles on the bridge of my ship through the view screen

Rating and closing comments

I guess the real question is would I pay for $15 a month for STO? Not right now I wouldn't. I would wait a few patches and when they introduce the moving around on your ship, because right now you cannot. I really wanted to explore strange new worlds and seek out new life. I didn't get that experience when playing. Everything is instanced in STO and there is no freeform that I experienced. But outside those things STO battle and combats system was fun to play after you learned it and died a few times. I did have some challenges in combat that I loved.

I was hunting a Klingion battle cruiser and when I engaged it, a few moments later four cloaked Bird of Prey appeared and wasted me. It must have taken me 10 deaths to figure out how to fight that battle correctly so it is fun. You have to use tactics in a lot of these battles to survive which is what I want. The art style in the game wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be and I really liked the outer space scapes. I think you should be able to play all races from the beginning and not have to unlock them or pay extra for them.

I will be watching STO closely to see if they add in some more great features because I do love the Star Trek Universe and want to play in it. Just right now I am looking for certain things in a game and I don't want to just settle on something, with the hopes of getting what I want in a game. So ask your questions and I will try to answer them all, anyone else that is playing do chime in as well.

Things I would want STO to have in the future:

- Have freeform travel through space and the ability to explore my own ship

- Hold conversations with bridge officers and crew members

- Land on any planet that I come across and explore the new world

- I want ship systems to fail during battle

- And I want a HOLODECK

- I want Seven of Nine as a bridge officer 🙂