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I'm typing this up in hopes that it'll persuade some of you to download and install this game. I'd love to play it with you and if there is enough of us who get together, we can even start a fleet (the equivalent to a guild). I'll start the review with the plot. After all, you won't play the game if you don't know the story.
The Story:
Cryptic, the creators of Champions Online and Star Trek Online, decided to make the game's year 2409, about 30 years shown after the events of "Star Trek: Nemesis" and 22 years after the destruction of Romulus and the Hobus Nebula (Shown in J.J. Abram's Star Trek). The politics of the Alpha Quadrant are virtually dissolved. The Romulans and Remans are angry at the loss of their homeworld, the Klingons think it's a good opportunity to seize "former" Romulan territory, the Dominion is reassembling it's forces, and the Borg are slowly conquering the systems on the Alpha Quadrant's outskirts.
The Klingons invaded the Gorn homeworld sparking distrust and distaste among Federation members, resulting in a withdraw from the Khitomer Accords and a war between the two factions. This is where you come in.
Character Creation Galore!
This is probably one of the best parts of Star Trek Online. Cryptic has spent a significant amount of time and resources in allowing players to create and customize their character. When you first login, your character selection will be empty with the exception of "Create New Federation Character".
First you pick your career, Engineering, Science, or Tactical.
Then you pick your race and gender. Here it lists your "required" traits, which to most players, is just MMO-babble. In addition to traits, it also gives you a short description of the selected race. If you don't like the options, Cryptic also allowed you to create your own. In game, it'll show your race as "Alien", but a lot of roleplayers and creative players use this to create other non-Federation characters such as Changelings, Romulans, Jem'Hadar, Vorta, etc. The only drawback is other races such as "Joined Trill, Liberated Borg, Caitians, and Federation Klingons are locked and must be purchased through micro-transactions. For the review I decided to make a Bajoran (which I will likely play at some point).
After you pick your race, you can choose other traits for a maximum of four. Some races require more or less than two traits, so it's a strategy of which ones to choose. Since Bajorans only have two I could choose more, or go with the game's recommendation, which I did since I know I lack ground skill out of three of my previous characters.
Next you customize your looks. This is where my fun usually begins. I love making new characters. First you can customize your face and head. The game provides you with different setups, or if you don't like any of them, you can go to "advanced" and you have a much larger array of options. I usually don't like the game's variants, so I tend to make mine a little more unique. Anyone familiar with playing the Sims games should be fairly familiar with the advanced features.
After you've meddled enough with what you want for the face, you move on to your body. Again, the idea is the same, you have your variants, but you can also fully customize nearly ever detail to the body, including your stance. For the Bajoran, I used "swagger" as my stance, and went with a variant since I was having connection problems.
Now my favorite part of character customization is your uniform. Cryptic has allowed several starter outfit sets to be used: Antares, Sierra, and your TNG outfits. Through micro-transactions, you can buy more outfits such as the Terran Empire outfits seen in both TOS and ENT, the original Kirk-era outfits, Bajoran Militia uniforms, as well as a third set designed just for Star Trek Online, Jupiter. At the time of making this, I had uniforms already unlocked, so I went with a Jupiter outfit and kept my color correct according to my career.
When you feel that your uniform is set, be sure to hit the "Save" button below. It's not required, but in case you have connection problems like I did, it'll save the outfit to your account so you can load it when you remake your character and saves you the hassle. The final menu before you play is your name and your ship's name. Here you are required to put in the character profile name and their display name as well as the ship's name. You can put in your own, or you can randomly generate one. The game does use a race specific name generator, last I checked. Here, since I was having connection problems, I made "Travis" as my profile name and randomly generated a ship name. (The picture shows a randomly generated character name.)
Click "Play now!" and you are then launched into the intro video and the tutorial.
The Controls
The controls for the game are fairly easy for a PC gamer. The default "RPG mode" move keys are W,A,S,D to move forward, turn left, move backwards, and turn right. Space is jump, F and Enter are the same, C crouches, X zooms, and you use either your number pad or number row to use weapons and abilities. You can also enter "Shooter Mode" by pressing B, which puts you in the first person shooter aspect where you use WASD and to turn the camera, you use the mouse. Left click to use your primary, right click for secondary, and middle for melee.
After running through various setups for learning the basic controls, you then switch over to space. There's only one mode for space. You move the ship with either holding down both mouse buttons or with WASD. Space fires all available energy weapons while Ctrl + Space fires all torpedoes and mines. Alternatively, you can use your number pad/row for individual weapons and abilities.
The controls can be changed via the options menu, and the abilities tray can be customized and re-arranged to better suit your style.
After your first level up and finishing the tutorial a man named Admiral Quinn contacts you telling you to see him on Earth Spacedock, which you go to when you choose to leave the map. He will be the first person to give you your first set of assignments for you to complete. And you've started playing the game. Pretty simple, eh?
Did I mention the customization doesn't end yet?
Yes, once you get to Earth Spacedock, you can go to the shipyard to customize your ship! Yes, Cryptic has put forth a lot of attention and detail, as well as resources to allow players to customize their ships. All free ships have three basic setups and designs which you can choose from. Below are various setups I toggled through to demonstrate the various combinations.
The defaults:
Other combinations:
Iconic Locations!
Yes, Star Trek Online features a large portion of the planets seen in the different Star Trek episodes. You can visit Starfleet Academy to learn up the history since "Nemesis" or you can visit Risa for some R&R, or head over to Deep Space Nine to see the wormhole (And no, you can't visit the Gamma Quadrant).
The Soundtrack
It's hard to notice at first, but as I've had time and longer exposure I've noticed the classical score for the game. It's beautiful. It fits right in, and without it, the game wouldn't be as thrilling. It's there and in the background where it's subtle, but when it's gone, you notice it. The music is wonderfully done and sounds like it was performed with an orchestra.
You can play as the Klingons too?!
Yes, once you hit level 25, you unlock the option to create a Klingon Defense Force character. I'm sorry to say, but the story has been little built on, after the first chapter. Afterwards, your doing the same exact missions as you do on the Federation side.
Other activities
Well you might be thinking this is cool and all, but what if you don't want to fight in a war? Well then don't. Cryptic has gone out of its way to allow players to have fun doing other things. You can visit your ship's interiors, you can play Dabo on DS9 and Drozana Station, and you can even go exploring. Yes there's a lot of things you can do!
What an active community!
Well, if you're one to have an active community buzzing around you at active public social hubs, then this is a great game. You can find a lot of friendly players, but not all of them are nice, I'm sorry to say. But finding a friend or two isn't hard. Most of the time you can go to a spacestation and ask for help and you'll get a volunteer or two. You can even run up a team of four other players to do the same mission together.
Difficulty levels
Well you'll be glad to know that the game starts you on easy difficulty. It's the least challenging and the least rewarding. After hitting a certain level you can change the difficulty in your options menu. The other two settings are "Advanced" and "Elite". The challenges get a lot harder, but the rewards are much greater. I tend to play on Advanced and had hardly any trouble solo-ing most of the story.
Later ship classes and designs
Cryptic is still trying to add more ships seen in the television series for the players to own and use. The higher the rank (level) you get, the better ship you can fly. The ships are broken up by career. Your cruisers are slow and good for tanking. They're best optimized by engineers. You then have your escorts which are designed to deal lots of damage but also are small and nimble to avoid getting hit. They are best used by tactical officers. Finally you have your science vessels for, what else? Science officers. These ships are your support ships and boast loads of various support abilities.
Am I limited to my career ship?
No! Absolutely not! You are more than welcomed to fly whichever ship is available to you. On my tactical character, I prefer cruisers. My science officer flies escorts. It's really whatever works best for you.
Price to play
After two years of running, Star Trek Online is free to play. In order to unlock better items and ships, you have to spend money and buy them via micro-transactions.
My review: After going through all of that content I'll have to give Star Trek Online an 8 out of 10. It's a superb game and the story is thrilling, but I notice that the load on the server can get quite intensive and there are still various minor bugs yet to be fixed. Does this ruin gameplay ability? No, it's all minor things, something where detail is more a key to seeing.
So what are you waiting for? Go out and download Star Trek Online! It's free and not so hardware intensive. Below are two links. One to the System Requirements, the other is to the main page to get Star Trek Online.
Main Page: http://startrekonline.com/
System Requirements: http://www.startrekonline.com/node/494
The Story:
Cryptic, the creators of Champions Online and Star Trek Online, decided to make the game's year 2409, about 30 years shown after the events of "Star Trek: Nemesis" and 22 years after the destruction of Romulus and the Hobus Nebula (Shown in J.J. Abram's Star Trek). The politics of the Alpha Quadrant are virtually dissolved. The Romulans and Remans are angry at the loss of their homeworld, the Klingons think it's a good opportunity to seize "former" Romulan territory, the Dominion is reassembling it's forces, and the Borg are slowly conquering the systems on the Alpha Quadrant's outskirts.
The Klingons invaded the Gorn homeworld sparking distrust and distaste among Federation members, resulting in a withdraw from the Khitomer Accords and a war between the two factions. This is where you come in.
Character Creation Galore!
This is probably one of the best parts of Star Trek Online. Cryptic has spent a significant amount of time and resources in allowing players to create and customize their character. When you first login, your character selection will be empty with the exception of "Create New Federation Character".
First you pick your career, Engineering, Science, or Tactical.
Then you pick your race and gender. Here it lists your "required" traits, which to most players, is just MMO-babble. In addition to traits, it also gives you a short description of the selected race. If you don't like the options, Cryptic also allowed you to create your own. In game, it'll show your race as "Alien", but a lot of roleplayers and creative players use this to create other non-Federation characters such as Changelings, Romulans, Jem'Hadar, Vorta, etc. The only drawback is other races such as "Joined Trill, Liberated Borg, Caitians, and Federation Klingons are locked and must be purchased through micro-transactions. For the review I decided to make a Bajoran (which I will likely play at some point).
After you pick your race, you can choose other traits for a maximum of four. Some races require more or less than two traits, so it's a strategy of which ones to choose. Since Bajorans only have two I could choose more, or go with the game's recommendation, which I did since I know I lack ground skill out of three of my previous characters.
Next you customize your looks. This is where my fun usually begins. I love making new characters. First you can customize your face and head. The game provides you with different setups, or if you don't like any of them, you can go to "advanced" and you have a much larger array of options. I usually don't like the game's variants, so I tend to make mine a little more unique. Anyone familiar with playing the Sims games should be fairly familiar with the advanced features.
After you've meddled enough with what you want for the face, you move on to your body. Again, the idea is the same, you have your variants, but you can also fully customize nearly ever detail to the body, including your stance. For the Bajoran, I used "swagger" as my stance, and went with a variant since I was having connection problems.
Now my favorite part of character customization is your uniform. Cryptic has allowed several starter outfit sets to be used: Antares, Sierra, and your TNG outfits. Through micro-transactions, you can buy more outfits such as the Terran Empire outfits seen in both TOS and ENT, the original Kirk-era outfits, Bajoran Militia uniforms, as well as a third set designed just for Star Trek Online, Jupiter. At the time of making this, I had uniforms already unlocked, so I went with a Jupiter outfit and kept my color correct according to my career.
When you feel that your uniform is set, be sure to hit the "Save" button below. It's not required, but in case you have connection problems like I did, it'll save the outfit to your account so you can load it when you remake your character and saves you the hassle. The final menu before you play is your name and your ship's name. Here you are required to put in the character profile name and their display name as well as the ship's name. You can put in your own, or you can randomly generate one. The game does use a race specific name generator, last I checked. Here, since I was having connection problems, I made "Travis" as my profile name and randomly generated a ship name. (The picture shows a randomly generated character name.)
Click "Play now!" and you are then launched into the intro video and the tutorial.
The Controls
The controls for the game are fairly easy for a PC gamer. The default "RPG mode" move keys are W,A,S,D to move forward, turn left, move backwards, and turn right. Space is jump, F and Enter are the same, C crouches, X zooms, and you use either your number pad or number row to use weapons and abilities. You can also enter "Shooter Mode" by pressing B, which puts you in the first person shooter aspect where you use WASD and to turn the camera, you use the mouse. Left click to use your primary, right click for secondary, and middle for melee.
After running through various setups for learning the basic controls, you then switch over to space. There's only one mode for space. You move the ship with either holding down both mouse buttons or with WASD. Space fires all available energy weapons while Ctrl + Space fires all torpedoes and mines. Alternatively, you can use your number pad/row for individual weapons and abilities.
The controls can be changed via the options menu, and the abilities tray can be customized and re-arranged to better suit your style.
After your first level up and finishing the tutorial a man named Admiral Quinn contacts you telling you to see him on Earth Spacedock, which you go to when you choose to leave the map. He will be the first person to give you your first set of assignments for you to complete. And you've started playing the game. Pretty simple, eh?
Did I mention the customization doesn't end yet?
Yes, once you get to Earth Spacedock, you can go to the shipyard to customize your ship! Yes, Cryptic has put forth a lot of attention and detail, as well as resources to allow players to customize their ships. All free ships have three basic setups and designs which you can choose from. Below are various setups I toggled through to demonstrate the various combinations.
The defaults:
Other combinations:
Iconic Locations!
Yes, Star Trek Online features a large portion of the planets seen in the different Star Trek episodes. You can visit Starfleet Academy to learn up the history since "Nemesis" or you can visit Risa for some R&R, or head over to Deep Space Nine to see the wormhole (And no, you can't visit the Gamma Quadrant).
The Soundtrack
It's hard to notice at first, but as I've had time and longer exposure I've noticed the classical score for the game. It's beautiful. It fits right in, and without it, the game wouldn't be as thrilling. It's there and in the background where it's subtle, but when it's gone, you notice it. The music is wonderfully done and sounds like it was performed with an orchestra.
You can play as the Klingons too?!
Yes, once you hit level 25, you unlock the option to create a Klingon Defense Force character. I'm sorry to say, but the story has been little built on, after the first chapter. Afterwards, your doing the same exact missions as you do on the Federation side.
Other activities
Well you might be thinking this is cool and all, but what if you don't want to fight in a war? Well then don't. Cryptic has gone out of its way to allow players to have fun doing other things. You can visit your ship's interiors, you can play Dabo on DS9 and Drozana Station, and you can even go exploring. Yes there's a lot of things you can do!
What an active community!
Well, if you're one to have an active community buzzing around you at active public social hubs, then this is a great game. You can find a lot of friendly players, but not all of them are nice, I'm sorry to say. But finding a friend or two isn't hard. Most of the time you can go to a spacestation and ask for help and you'll get a volunteer or two. You can even run up a team of four other players to do the same mission together.
Difficulty levels
Well you'll be glad to know that the game starts you on easy difficulty. It's the least challenging and the least rewarding. After hitting a certain level you can change the difficulty in your options menu. The other two settings are "Advanced" and "Elite". The challenges get a lot harder, but the rewards are much greater. I tend to play on Advanced and had hardly any trouble solo-ing most of the story.
Later ship classes and designs
Cryptic is still trying to add more ships seen in the television series for the players to own and use. The higher the rank (level) you get, the better ship you can fly. The ships are broken up by career. Your cruisers are slow and good for tanking. They're best optimized by engineers. You then have your escorts which are designed to deal lots of damage but also are small and nimble to avoid getting hit. They are best used by tactical officers. Finally you have your science vessels for, what else? Science officers. These ships are your support ships and boast loads of various support abilities.
Am I limited to my career ship?
No! Absolutely not! You are more than welcomed to fly whichever ship is available to you. On my tactical character, I prefer cruisers. My science officer flies escorts. It's really whatever works best for you.
Price to play
After two years of running, Star Trek Online is free to play. In order to unlock better items and ships, you have to spend money and buy them via micro-transactions.
My review: After going through all of that content I'll have to give Star Trek Online an 8 out of 10. It's a superb game and the story is thrilling, but I notice that the load on the server can get quite intensive and there are still various minor bugs yet to be fixed. Does this ruin gameplay ability? No, it's all minor things, something where detail is more a key to seeing.
So what are you waiting for? Go out and download Star Trek Online! It's free and not so hardware intensive. Below are two links. One to the System Requirements, the other is to the main page to get Star Trek Online.
Main Page: http://startrekonline.com/
System Requirements: http://www.startrekonline.com/node/494
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