Star Trek Online

Certain communities are harder to please than others, which is especially true when it comes to cinephiles and gamers. Sometimes it’s because a new episode in the series does not seem to be as good as the previous ones, but other times it’s just stubbornness to go along with change. Old fans turned their nose at Fallout 3 when it first came out, due to the first-person perspective and even the soundtrack. By the time New Vegas was released, everyone pretty much accepted it and moved on.

Star Trek Online has to deal with one of the pickiest and hard-to-please fanbases out there, so the developers were certainly quite brave. Thankfully, it turned out alright in regards to lore and general Star Trek trivia, but there are a few other mistakes that may alter your experience. As a whole, on the other hand, the game is worthy of its name, and Trekkies can truly lose themselves for a few hundreds hours.

Although it’s classified as an MMO, don’t expect the same experience as in World of Warcraft. Most of the missions you undertake have to be completed on your own, although given the fact that you are the captain of a spaceship, there are always a few hundred crew members around. Obviously, PVP is also possible later on, but you need good gear to survive such bold endeavors. In order to get gear, you have to grind for quite a bit, which is not a very attractive prospect.

As far as the combat is concerned, you are either fighting using your spaceship, or down on the ground using your character. The latter is a bit disappointing, because there’s not much to it, other than clicking on enemies and waiting for their HP bars to drop. On the other hand, the space combat is a bit more exciting, although it’s also repetitive as hell. Still, you get to both pilot and shoot a variety of powerful guns, and there are some interesting maneuvers you can try as well.

From a technical point of view, the graphics look positively decent, especially thanks to the world design. There are many impressive constructions taken right out of the TV series, not to mention all the curious races that populate the universe and the customizable spaceships. The karmic punch comes in the form of bugs, which have a way of annoying you on a regular basis. A great deal of them have been fixed since the game was released, but the work is definitely not over.

Star Trek Online may not be perfect, but thanks to the original voice actors and extreme attention to lore, it should please most Star Trek fans out there. As a game, on the other hand, it can get pretty repetitive and pointless after a while, especially if you are not into grinding for resources and currency.