An excellent and underrated game that was undermined by it's bugs and unremarkable graphics.
Klingon Academy's story is underappreciated and suprisingly well written. It takes place just before the movie Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. You are a raw cadet in the Klingon Academy training to become captain aboard your own starship. Your teacher is General Chang, one of the main Antagonist klingon's in The Undiscovered Country. As you progress along the story, you begin to see Chang's Paranoa and hatred towards the Federation. The entire campaign that is played out while you are in the Academy is to destroy the entire federation, with a huge climax of destruction at the end of the academy tour. The campaign doesnt end at the academy however, you eventually graduate and move on into the real world, fighting real battles. As the Klingon government continues to push for Peace with the federation, Changs plot unfolds as he attempts to start a war himself. And this is all portrayed with the actual actors from the Star Trek movie including some guest appearences that will be easily recognizable.
The gameplay in this game is excellent, it is very complex, though it may not appear so right away. Think bridge commander time 100. or 1000. One of the first things you learn in the Academy during singleplayer is that you can USE your environment. Most maps in singleplayer and multiplayer are HUGE, including multiple star systems and many different environments within them. This includes Gas Giants, planets, Black holes, and stars. Each with their own unique effects. Gas Giants and Nebulea both have an adverse effect on Shields and sensors. Your view is hampered and raught with static, and your shields fail while your hull takes damage the longer you are in it. This is however perfect for fending off persuers when outnumbered. It also masks you from their sensors, so they can't pinpoint your location. Not good enough? Fly into an asteroid belt! You can fly in and dodge moving asteroids at full impulse while your pursuers slam face first into a rock. Black holes also present Gravity as an effect. Not only must you dodge debris in the black holes cumulative disk, but if you get too close, the gravity will be stronger than your engines and your ship will be pulled right into the black hole, crushing your ship.
The environment isnt the only thing that is great in this game, but the features of your ship. You have a lot of control and options to your ship. Sure, you can easily stick to flying around and shooting, but your battles will be a lot harder and mutliplayer battles near impossible. You have your standard energy management, where you can move energy to shields, weapons, or ECM's to avoid detection, or improve your cloaking device to become nearly indetectable by even sensors with boosted power. Tractor beams can be a useful weapon. Give them enough power and you can lock on to almost any target. Most will hit you with a counter tractor beam or boost power to engines, but even if you only get 3 seconds, it could be enough to slam your enemy into an asteroid field or another enemy, or even just hold them in place long enough to get a torpedo off into their impulse engines. Transporters are also available. If you disable a ships shields, you can transport troops over to an enemy ship to sabatouge enemy components or even capture the enemy ship!
You can also damage subsystems, which is generally standard in most simulators. Destroy the engines, or the warp drive. However the damage modeling in this game is top notch. Wherever your shots hit, that section of the ship is visibly damaged or even destroyed, as chunkes fly off. It isnt lame where only 2 or 3 sections can come off after taking 40 hits. 1-3 good hits or a torpedo can tear a hole right through the saucer section of a federation starship. In the end of a firefight ships can be so visibly damaged, missing 1 and a half nacells, engines completely gone, half the saucer section of your once beautifal Enterprise destroyed.
Which brings up graphics. This game has not exactly aged well, and even in it's day it had problems. Many cards back in the day had trouble displaying smoke trails on damaged ship engines, and backgrounds could be distorted. Ship models are good but could have been better. Many boxy designs and poor textures really hurt the game in the graphics department. However the graphics are decent enough and the gameplay and singleplayer remain remarkable. With so many different ways to approach a battle, excellent features and abilities, excellent environment and map design, and great acting and singleplayer, this game remains a classic that if you can find it, you should definetly give it a purchase to hold a spot next to games such as Freespace 2.