Star Trek Online Review

Star Trek Online Community Page

Star Trek Online is a MMORPG based loosely on the new JJ Abraham films except from some plot points such as the destruction of Vulcan. Some parts of this review will be quite long as there are a lot of stories as the main story and two types of combat. Also there is no spoilers throughout this entire review for any of the stories.

This game has in my opinion the best free to play system of any game since you can get everything in the game for free if you try. Since you can get dilithium from dailies, PvE, PvP and other sources.

The combat takes two forms ship to ship combat and ground man versus man combat: Ground combat has you choosing weapons kits and an away team made from your bridge officers. Each profession (class in any other MMORPG) has special abilities and kits for example my main character was a science officer and had a kit that creates fire to kill those pesky Klingons, but an engineer can make mines and shields. Your bridge crew have their own abilities but no kits (kits are effectively items that grant the user with up to four special abilities when equipped) these abilities can be a wide variety of powers such as heals,  force fields, stasis fields, holographic soldiers, turrets, buffs and debuffs.

Space combat has you also choosing weapons but you have to choose whether they are fore or aft which will affect whether you can fire from the front or back unless they have an arc of 360˚. You also choose bridge officers who will give you powers to assist you in battle. You also get consoles for tactical, engineering and science which do different stuff and one or two that can go into any slot. You also need an impulse engine, deflector array and a shield which will change speed and shield power. Your ship will affect how many weapons, consoles and how many abilities your bridge crew can use. You can get better ships as you level up and get promoted.

I haven’t mentioned everything there is in this games combat because there is a fair bit of stuff but this is the basics.

There are smaller things such as sending crew on assignments to get you special experience, small amounts of dilithium, some crafting materials and other such items. You can unlock better gear with PvE and PvP is used for money and experience.

You can play for hundreds of hours and still not see or do everything there is. With some fantastic story missions and some terrific PvE and PvP and a tiered progression tree. STO is updated frequently and has special events such as Winter and Summer events and they celebrate Star Trek related holidays such as April 5^th (no Trekkies google it).

I think this is one of the best looking MMORPGs and has a very Star Treky look about it with cool looking ships and planets. However some ground missions are small and repetitive it has gotten better but it still isn’t fantastic all the time but on a whole it is at least passable. People who play other older MMORPGs (namely WoW) will notice the fact it looks so much better.

So basically good aesthetic and good graphics engine and some great performance but I think the level design was not great at the release but has gotten better.

I am going to rattle off the main stories of the all episodes:

The Kilngon War is all about with the war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. The Romulan Mystery during the conflict of the Federation and the Klingon Empire, respectively, with the Romulan Star Empire in the aftermath of the Hobus supernova and Sela’s rise to power as empress.

The Cardassian Struggle is about dealing with the threat to the Cardassian Union by the True Way and a new Dominion, as well as the incursion of Terran Empire forces into our own universe. The Borg Collective tells a story about a new threat to the Federation and the Klingon Empire by an invasion of the Gamma Orionis Sector Block by the Borg Collective.

The Breen Invasion about the Breen threat to the Deferi in search for Preserver technology. The Undine Advance is about the conflict between the Undine and the peoples of the Milky Way.

There is also the foundry system where players can make their own missions. These missions are sometimes great and sometimes terrible. Some have some very good Star Trekky stories such as a group of missions called “Overture”.

I should say this review is based before the release of Romulus so things might chang from Romulus and other updates.