A fun little game that might be worth owning.
You aim your phasers and torpedo's with the right stick which projects this targeting cone area. If there is an enemy ship in the area then thats where your shots will go(unless they are moving). Your left stick controls your ships movement which is just how fast your going and if you turn left or right. One button fires your phasers, and another fires torpedo's. You also have a speed burst button so you can fly faster and try to evade fire and stuff.
Even though the gameplay was pretty fun in ST:Encounters it had absolutely no replay value. You could have random battles and survival battles but whoop t doo. ST:Conquest fixes all that with an awesome Star Wars Battlefront 2-esq conquest mode. You start off with a single planet and you have to try to take over all the other planets in the galaxy.
Theres only like 6 races for the conquest mode: Breen, Jim hi dar, Romulans, Cardassians, Klingons and Federation. Theres also a bunch of races who inhabit the nuetral planets like borg, firingi, obsidian order, and others. You can play some of those other races in skirmish mode but some of them you have to unlock.
Now each factions gets to have 3 commanders. Commanders specialize in something like attack,defense or movement that gives them an edge. As they level up their abilities grow and you can end up with a guy who has +100% attack/defense or a bunch of extra movement.
Each commander controls a fleet of ships. They start out with one and then you can buy more and add them up to a total of 7 ships. You get to choose from scout, cruiser, and dreadnaught type ships. The smaller ones are faster but the bigger ones are more heavily armed and tougher.
Each planet in the game can have a starbase and a mining/science facility. Each of those can be gaurded by turrets. There are different types of bases that control how fast you can heal and if you can build ships there. Mining lets you earn more money, and science lets you research ship upgrades and also work on your special weapons.
Each race has 3 special weapons to choose from like genesis device or wormhole generator. Once your special weapons bar fills up you just goto your homeplanet pick which of the three you want to use and then pick a target. The more science facilities you have the faster your special weapons meter will fill up. Special weapons are pretty powerful. The genesis device damages everything in that system by 50% which is great right before you attack hehe. A wormhole generator can give you access to anywhere thats not a homeworld allowing you to reach places you couldnt normally reach. And there are alot of other weapons.
Anyways you use your money to build fleets and then send them off to conquer everyone else. Unlike ST:Encounters its now 7v7 battles plus whoever is in control of the local bases and facilities. The most important thing in a battle is flying in formation. The default is everyone run around like idiots and get killed. Everyone just goes their own way and shoots at whatever they feel like. If you use it then you will get crushed.
If you use offense of defense though your fleet flys around together acting as one. They shoot where and with whatever you shoot. This lets you totally crush the enemy. Defense makes your shields more powerful, and offense makes your weapons recharge faster. If you let weapons recharge to full they are pretty devestating.
A cool part is you can switch between ships with the directional buttons or if the ship your driving blows up you automatically switch to the next one. Another cool thing is you can run away by holding down the triangle button or flying towards the edge of the battle area. This is great if your hurt but also its great if you just want to raid a system and kill the enemy fleet and not mess with their bases lol.
One bad thing is that the races in the game always start in the same place. If they would have just randomly plopped people down it would have made things alot more fresh and new each time. And there are always the same races. Random placement and the inclusion of the other races would have really gone a long way but some super incredibly anal guy was probably like "you cant have the cardassians start on earth thats just stupid!!!" as stands their with his fake spock ears on and stupid red shirt.
Another gripe is that the different kinds of ships are basically worthless. You could never fly around with an entire fleet of scout ships. Im sure if you play on harder difficulties you want have a choice because of all the fighting and stuff but on easy I only roll with dreadnaughts...a fleet of dreadnaughts lol.
I guess if i wanted to be extra picky I would mention the fact that you dont get to see very far with the top down view and the battles usually involve ramming into enemy ships and then blasting away lol. You fly in circle around each other alot but you are either in point blank range or just chasing the little red arrows that tell you where bad guys are.
I liked ST:Encounters and gave it an 8. This game has a ton of replay value. Whenever your bored with your RPG's or whatever other games and you just want to have some nice slow relaxing fun then this game will be great. For the replay value and the pretty good gameplay thats why I think this game is worth owning.