What could have been the greatest game in the Star Trek franchinse fell through with several poor elements
The single player campaign is an interesting concept that spans all of the Star Trek timeline and manages to be one story. The story is disappointing and as a Trekkie there are some continuity errors that I've noticed. The campaign isn't really rewarding, replayable or immersive. And some of the missions are overly difficult and likely to be frustrating. The controls and gameplay are the best parts of the game. The controls feel great after you've become accustomed to them. After a while, you'll find yourself maneuvering your ship to fire the forward and aft torpedo banks and the more powerful phaser banks. The game has four basic classes of ship, ranging from scouts to battleships. There aren't any real differences besides weapons and speed. Only the biggest ships are really worth using in terms of usefulness. Adding to that, the multiplayer and skirmish modes feel tacked on. For instance, it's impossible for you to have a big fleet and the enemy just have one big ship. The enemy AI will automatically fill up his fleet boxes because you can only select a maximum ship number. I'd love to find out how Voyager would fare against Voyager, but that can't happen because the only way I can give him enough money and one ship gives him too much money and he'll automatically choose a Sovereign class. It's frustrating. However, I have lots of fun setting up skirmishes and just playing around. I love Star Trek battles and usually find the battles fun and rewarding, even though the options are limited. An example of what they could have been, can be found in Star Trek: Starfleet Command.
I'm giving gameplay a generous 9. Although it's stricken with problems, it's still fun. The games graphics could have been a perfect 10/10. The ship models look absoloutley brilliant and I find myself simply marveling the beauty of the Excelsior class ship. And then, as you play, ships take physical damage, which looks cool, although it seems to just pop up out of nowhere. Ship explosions look nice, but some of the larger ships look like crap when they blow up. For instance, you'll see five or six nacelles explode when a Galaxy class ship blows up. Also the planets are ludicrously out of scale.
I'm giving graphics a nine as well, because they're great but still lacking what they could have been with some more effort.
The sound is pretty good. The sounds sound like they should, but the voiceovers are lackluster, even though they're the real voices of the captains. Shatner shows obvious age, Stewart has some weird moments, and Bakula's not a good voice actor.
Therefore, a nine.
The game has valued well for me, I come back and play the skirmishes frequently. However, it's not what it could have been: NINE!
I've tilted this game down to a 7.5, because I feel that this game is only 3/4 of what it should have been. It feels like my homework assignments in a lot of ways: just enough to get by.