The worst crime this game commits is that it has the audacity to be generic and mediocre. If you divorce it from its Star Trek license, it'll be a very forgettable game. Which, I suppose, is pretty typical for Cryptic Studios.
If you've ever watched Star Trek and thought to yourself: "I wish I could play a game that recaptures this experience", then this game is not for you. The ideal Star Trek game should be about 3 things:
1) Exploration
2) Confrontation with strange and unknown phenomena that reflects philosophical and social issues. Usually non-violent, handled through dialogue.
3) Command/maintenance of the ship.
Star Trek Online does none of that. The game is heavily instanced and very linear. It's filled with very poorly implemented action that shouldn't be there. You rarely get any dialogue options. And, when in space, you CONTROL the ship in some simplistic mini-game style, instead of commanding your crew.
There were many templates that this game could've borrowed from: Mass Effect for the dialogues, Guns of Icarus for the space battles, FTL for the exploration and/or space battles and maintenance of the ship. FAR: Lone Sails is another good example of ship maintenance gamified. All the aforementioned games will give you a more Star Trek experience than Star Trek Online.
But to make matters worse, even judging the game on its own merit, it's below average. The on-the-ground sequences are extremely linear (to the point of having invisible walls in areas that you should be able to access). The game keeps throwing enemies at you, but the combat is horrendous. For some reason the game thinks it's a shooter, allowing you to dodge and even have shooter-controls with a crosshair, except all that doesn't matter because the system is still tab-target. It's so ridiculous that even when the slow-ass Gorn throw rocks at you and you dodge, the rocks still hit you. Not to mention most enemies have laser weapons anyway, that couldn't possibly be avoided.
The role-playing also makes very little sense. You get to design your uniform and pick a logo of one of the ships from the ST universe, except in the game you won't be serving on those ships. So you'll basically be dressed as an Enterprise (or Defiant or other) crew member for the entire game despite being a captain of your own ship. Btw, what a "great" idea to make everyone a captain of their own ship. Something that people in the universe have to earn, you get it from the start. What kind of player progression is there to expect then? Why can't you be a crew member at someone else's ship? That would be so cool. Not like it's impossible to execute either, since ships in the show always had several hundred members/passengers on them. Couldn't you treat these spaceships as guilds? There'd always be enough people online to help control and maintain the ship. And since you can't be without the ship in Star Trek, people would basically be forced to socialize, which would develop a strong community. Again, this is just one of the ideas, but it just showcases how much can be done with the Star Trek formula, and how little was done here.
Honestly, if Bioware just made Mass Effect Online, that would be a near-perfect Star Trek game. But this game is completely not worth spending time on.
If you've ever watched Star Trek and thought to yourself: "I wish I could play a game that recaptures this experience", then this game is not for you. The ideal Star Trek game should be about 3 things:
1) Exploration
2) Confrontation with strange and unknown phenomena that reflects philosophical and social issues. Usually non-violent, handled through dialogue.
3) Command/maintenance of the ship.
Star Trek Online does none of that. The game is heavily instanced and very linear. It's filled with very poorly implemented action that shouldn't be there. You rarely get any dialogue options. And, when in space, you CONTROL the ship in some simplistic mini-game style, instead of commanding your crew.
There were many templates that this game could've borrowed from: Mass Effect for the dialogues, Guns of Icarus for the space battles, FTL for the exploration and/or space battles and maintenance of the ship. FAR: Lone Sails is another good example of ship maintenance gamified. All the aforementioned games will give you a more Star Trek experience than Star Trek Online.
But to make matters worse, even judging the game on its own merit, it's below average. The on-the-ground sequences are extremely linear (to the point of having invisible walls in areas that you should be able to access). The game keeps throwing enemies at you, but the combat is horrendous. For some reason the game thinks it's a shooter, allowing you to dodge and even have shooter-controls with a crosshair, except all that doesn't matter because the system is still tab-target. It's so ridiculous that even when the slow-ass Gorn throw rocks at you and you dodge, the rocks still hit you. Not to mention most enemies have laser weapons anyway, that couldn't possibly be avoided.
The role-playing also makes very little sense. You get to design your uniform and pick a logo of one of the ships from the ST universe, except in the game you won't be serving on those ships. So you'll basically be dressed as an Enterprise (or Defiant or other) crew member for the entire game despite being a captain of your own ship. Btw, what a "great" idea to make everyone a captain of their own ship. Something that people in the universe have to earn, you get it from the start. What kind of player progression is there to expect then? Why can't you be a crew member at someone else's ship? That would be so cool. Not like it's impossible to execute either, since ships in the show always had several hundred members/passengers on them. Couldn't you treat these spaceships as guilds? There'd always be enough people online to help control and maintain the ship. And since you can't be without the ship in Star Trek, people would basically be forced to socialize, which would develop a strong community. Again, this is just one of the ideas, but it just showcases how much can be done with the Star Trek formula, and how little was done here.
Honestly, if Bioware just made Mass Effect Online, that would be a near-perfect Star Trek game. But this game is completely not worth spending time on.