A Severe Disapointment - Another Trek Game To Lament in the Bargin Bin

User Rating: 3.6 | Star Trek: Legacy PC
By frankienickel | Review Date:
FIRST OFF - Star Trek Legacy is a port from the 360 - it is first and foremost designed from the ground up to play on the 360, not the PC. But what any decent game developer does with a port is spend time optimizing it and adjusting the gameplay mechanics to work with the PC... not Bethesda Softworks. Basic PC features are noticably absent, IE: remapping controls. This "rush to Christmas" release has brought about huge flaming on the Bethesda Legacy forums - something the developer will have to deal with in the months to come if they want to regain any hope of marketplace respectability. I'm sure as I write this review programmers are working on patches to at least make the game stable. Can you believe at time of launch multiplayer didn't work? Shame on Bethesda - shame. The graphics are by my estimation at least one generation (maybe two) out of today's new release standards. But maybe I'm spoiled by playing Total War 2 and Company of Heros lately. Star Bases break apart in to three or four large chunks rather than a great explosion with hundreds of particles spreading across the galaxy. The ship models are okay, but not what you would expect from a next generation Star Trek game... no word play intended:) The voice work of the captains is okay too, but nothing great. Noticably absent is NO PATRICK STEWART who at the last minute pulled out of the project. No doubt Patrick asked to play the game and decided it would be better for his career if NOT be part of this sub par product. Did I mention yet that you can't remap the controls? You're stuck with W,S,D,A to steer the ship - that's it. You can't remap to use a mouse - although you can plug in a 360 controller and it will work apparently. But for those of us who only play PC games, it totally sucks that you'd be forced by shell out for a 360 controller just to get the flight sim feel of the game back. And that's what Legacy feels like, a flight sim in space. No barrel rolls, no doubling back on an enemy who is behind you (flipping around). The flight engine they picked for Legacy feels wrong. These are huge capital ships, but it feels like I'm flying a jet plane. It's ironic that as I type this, there is an advertisement just to the left for MS Flight Sim X. Go figure. The sound score is okay, but nothing to write good things about. Sound is there and it works. Legacy's user interface is fuddled and confusing. To bring up command functions like "scan" or "transport" you have to hold down the "F" key and use your mouse to pick a function. Doesn't that sound doable? Well, in practice, because there is usually a lot going on, your mouse tends to be going all over the place - so clicking on the desired icon isn't the most intuitive process. I mean you can do it, but the smart answer is to map a quick key to those function... oh ya, you CAN'T! NOTE: Star Trek Gamers have been consistently let down by PC games in the past and I think they (and by "they" I mean me) expect too much sometimes. With that said however, I know what a decent PC game feels like and Legacy is not one of them. It was obviously rushed to market to try and capitalize on the holiday shopping season. Below is a quote from a well thought out forum post for the game:

1) Am I crazy, or can my starships not do 360 degree loops?

2) no ability to roll.

3) no ability to lock a target. Targets will be lost upon warp. They will also seemingly be lost randomly during combat.

4) Torpedo targetting system is unbelievable. It's an absolute crap shoot as to whether your shot will hit, regardless of how close those arrows are together. Add to that the fact that ships have to be in DIRECT los to your tubes to even start a lock.

5) As far as I can tell, no subsystem targetting. 6) No ability to remap controls. ****----- INEXCUSABLE ----- ****

7) Damage display is enough to make you cringe. All it displays is hull damage, your weapons could be 1 hit from going offline and you wouldn't know it. The actual way in which it shows you hull damage is laughable. An icon of a ship getting progressively more red.

8) No accurate information about your status. No % level of your shields or hull (did worf yell out shields being at 50%, or shields being half-red?)

9) The grouping system is either worthless, or simply unintuitive. Groups will not attack the same target even if you select them all then start firing on a ship. 10) No follow command (/boggle). This might have made the game playable at least, letting you rely less on the horrible interface.

11) Slow and unreliable interaction with non-enemy objects. Scanning a target requires you keep your cursor on target and hold down the F key for a bit. Better hope another ship doesnt fly in between you and your target, or that you have the time to be hanging around waiting for the option to start scanning.

12) The lack of ability to lock targets means a lack of ability to cycle targets. Sure, you can cycle targets in a crude "I have my camera point at different targets" kind of way, but quickly moving to different targets requires you have their hull damage memorized, because thats all the information you get in the cycle menu.

13) Fleet starship selection is a joke. I can't imagine why anyone would buy anything other than 3 battleships. You could try arguing that the little ships are more maneuverable... but good luck with that.

14) Rerouting power has no discernable effect on ship performance. It probably does have an effect, but since there are absolutely NO accurate displays (damage output of phasers, recharge rate of shields, maximum possible speed of engine) it becomes unnoticable.

15) No ability to remap controls. ****----- INEXCUSABLE ----- ****
This one deserves two entries because of how absolutly insane it is that they thought this was acceptable.

16) Uninteresting battles. When I fly in with my 4 battleships, I ponder as to how my enemy thought it's 10 starships would be enough. 2 to 1, 3 to 1, even 4 to 1 odds are a walk in the park. I guess they need to be since the control interface is so horrendous, but that seems like curing the disease by killing the patient.

17) No in-game save. You want to make the game hard? Fine, then make it hard. What you *shouldn't* be doing is making it unenjoyable to play. Me running a 40 minute mission then dying because I couldn't control my ship, THEN having to restart from the beginning does NOT make me want to buy your game.

END QUOTE

Also, I found the game play balance to be WAY OFF. My fleet of 4 star ships took on over 30 Romulan vessels and I took out everybody without breaking a sweat. I mean common... lets get serious. Overall, I agree with this post 100%. In the end, if you are a hardcore treker then go out and buy Legacy and hope for the best in terms of patches and faith in the modding community. If you are a regular PC Gamer, then stay away.

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