I don't think I need to say another word...
When Star Trek Online was first announced back in August 2008, I was ecstatic. I've been a pretty big Trekkie for a while now and finally Star Trek was getting the MMO treatment. Finally I would now be able to captain my own starship and travel the stars, even if its only in a game.
Since then I've been following the progression of the development, following the story as it went from the end of Nemesis to where the game starts. I was constantly curious as to how they would do the basic mechanics. Would every player start as a lowly ensign and have to work their way up to captain to get their own ship? Would we all just be captains and start out with our own ship? As it turns out, everyone does get their own ship, but you start out as a lowly ensign and since the commander of a ship is always referred to as Captain regardless of rank, it ends up working out (Although I have no idea how on a starship, the highest ranking officer ends up being an ensign).
Anywho, back in January, I started out playing the open beta and was immediately hooked.
So without further adieu, here's a rundown of my thoughts on the game so far.
The Ranking System
Star Trek Online follows your typical level system, but with a twist. Levels go from 1-50 but are also broken up by rank. You start out an ensign, but are quickly promoted to Lieutenant. From there on, the leveling system is started.
Levels 1-10 = Lieutenant
Levels 11-20 = Lieutenant Commander
Levels 21-30 = Commander
Levels 31-40 = Captain
Levels 41-50 = Admiral
At each rank, a player gains access to the next tier of starships. With the exception of Lieutenant, you are given the chance to go with 3 basic classes of ships: Cruisers (Think USS Enterprise), Escorts (Think USS Defiant), and Science (Thing USS Voyager) but I'll get into that later. Suffice it to say though, the leveling system isn't anything fancy, but for a game like Star Trek Online, it works well.
Character Creation
While I can't say anything about the Klingon side, the Federation side allows for a rich tool to create your player. First you choose your class. Do you want to go Tactical, Engineer, or Science. Tactical officers are bred for battle and go well with the Escort Class ships (They are the DPS class). Engineering officers are good with starship repair and building fun toys (They are the tanking class). And finally, the science officers are your healers.
In terms of the look of your character, you can choose from base races (Human, Vulcan, Andorian, etc) or you can choose 'Alien' and pretty much build your own race. I went with Alien and pretty much came up with a Vulcan-ish like character, although I probably am quite tame when you look at what others have come up with.
Starships
Okay, I'll admit it, one of my biggest draws to this game is being able to be in the captain's chair on a starship.
As I eluded to earlier, with the exception of Lieutenant, you get to choose between 3 base classes of ship.
Cruisers: Cruisers are the tanks in the game. They're the larger ships that can pretty much take a beating and keep on ticking. In terms of their damage, their weapons are generally balanced when it comes to what direction they're facing. They also aren't exactly the most m aneuverable ships in the game. (Examples: Galaxy Class, Sovereign Class, Constitution Class)
Escorts: Escorts are the smaller, more maneuverable ships that can pack one helluva punch damage wise but can't take the same kind of beating a cruiser can. Their damage primarily comes from the front which can be a downside since they deal the most damage facing the enemy, although they're maneuverable enough that they should be able to change direction quickly. (Examples: Defiant Class, Sabre Class, Prometheus Class)
Science: Science Vessels are ships that focus more on the science side of things with better focus on scanners and whatnot. I'd say more but in all honesty, I'm not all that familiar with them outside that they're best paired with a science officer. (Examples: Nova Class, Olympic Class, Intrepid Class)
In each of these base classes per rank, are 3 more classes. So we'll say for Lieutenant Commander, if you choose Cruiser, you are given the choice between a Constitution Class, Excalibur Class, or Vesper Class as your ship. And now here's the beautiful part. You can then customize your ship mixing and matching parts as well as colors and paint d esigns. So you pretty much can make the ship yours.
When you start the game, you are given a Miranda Class starship, pretty much the same ship that wrecked havoc on the Enterprise in the Wrath of Khan. After you go through the tutorial mission, you can then customize it mixing and matching with parts of 2 other classes.
The Nitty Gritty
Okay, enough with the basics of how the game is set up, now for how I feel about the game having played it for 2 weeks in its production form and a previous 2 weeks in its beta stage.
Overall I am extremely pleased with how the game works.
The space combat is a lot of fun and probably the bread and butter of the game. The mechanics are great. All of your weapons have firing arcs so you can't just fire your forward torpedoes against an enemy behind you. You also have to pay attention to your shields. You have 4 shields (Fore, Rear, Starboard, & Port). Each shield is pretty much independent of each other so if you're taking a lot of damage from one side, you can focus shields in that direction or simply turn to let that shield recharge. And this mechanic is the same for your enemy. So all the while in combat you have to watch your shields, your enemy's shields, while making sure you get a firing arc. In some battles, this can get challenging.
The ground combat I was not nearly as impressed with. Now don't get me wrong, it's not bad by any means. It just isn't anything special either. The good part is that for missions that require you to send an away team, you are never alone. If you're not in a team, your away team will consist of you and your officers. You can send commands to your officers to use their special abilities as well as to tell them who to target. Ground combat other than that is pretty much what you'd expect. There's a lot of phaser fire and the occasional hand to hand combat as well.
In terms of the missions, the majority aren't too bad. Some of them seem repetitive but there are plenty of unique missions as well. Some of them even have you running into familiar faces, environments, and you're often left with the feeling like "Holy Crap, I'm actually here!" I'm not going to go into too much detail on that last part as to not ruin any surprises.
As for the mission types, some require you to just orbit a planet eliminating enemy patrols. Some have you defend a space station either from space or on board. Others have you beaming down to a planet to scan some plants and fulfill the Federation's Exploration directive while some have you beaming down to face the enemy. Some of these are fun, some are "meh", but overall it's not too bad.
This leads me to my final point. I've seen a lot of chatter that people seem to be somewhat disappointed at the low amount of exploration missions there are when compared to combat missions. And I think there are people who don't realize that if this game were 90% exploration (the way exploration has been done so far) and only 10% combat, this game wouldn't sell. As big a Trekkie as I am, if the major point of this game was the exploration part as its done, I probably wouldn't have gotten the game and definitely wouldn't be willing to spend the money each month to continue playing. It's not that I'm hellbent on combat, but the exploration part just isn't enough to stand on its own, and I'm pretty sure Cryptic knows that. As for the exploration missions, I would like to see the missions take more of a puzzle approach. Where you're not just running around scanning things with your tricorder, but actually need to figure something out in order to complete the mission.
In the end, it's definitely a game I'm going to be playing for a while. I'm definitely curious to see what they're going to add to the endgame. I can picture it now, a huge raid against a Borg cube approaching Earth.
Below are a few shots of my Tier 2 ship, the USS Andromeda. Feel free to link shots of your ship and your character in the comments.
Seriously, there are 3 games I want, 2 are out, 1 is due out next week and I seriously can't afford them all. It reminds me a lot of last year when in October and November it was constant new games. I mean last year was Fable 2, Fallout 3, Resistance 2, and Gears of War 2. This year it's Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, Borderlands, and Dragon Age: Origins. Dragon Age looks to be a pretty good RPG, Modern Warfare 2 seems to have a pretty good multiplayer and what has been hinted at a relatively powerful story, and Borderlands has been reccommended to me as pure fun.
So what is one to do? I can't afford all 3. Modern Warfare 2 I'll probably end up holding off on, I kinda wanna get it on the PC but the way they're doing the PC version with no dedicated servers and capping the multiplayer at 9v9, I can't say I'm a huge fan of. The console is always an option but I'm not quite sold on that. I have a friend who just started Dragon Age so I might wait to see what he thinks of it. So the first one I pick up will probably be Borderlands.
Seriously though, why does it seem that so often all the good games come out back-to-back-to-back?!
I'm not sure how I feel yet about Halo ODST, but this looks like it could be good as well as give more details about what happened before the first Halo for those who don't like to read.