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A dizzying array of choices and a constant stream of interrupting and text-heavy tutorial information create an exhausting first encounter with this MMO.
I initially followed Star Trek Online's development many years ago, but ultimately was not interested enough to put any money toward it or play it when it launched. Now, over two years later, the game is free to play and available through Steam, so I figured I would give it a shot. I'm glad I saved my money.
I am a huge fan of Star Trek Bridge Commander (STBC). I have played the game more than once and it is the benchmark for any game I review to determine if the game is worthy of an 8. I feel like Cryptic tried to capture a lot of the flavor of STBC, at least in terms of ship-to-ship combat. This would be no surprise, since STBC is probably one of the best Star Trek games ever released. That said, I am finding the space combat clunky and unclear. I had a hard time determining when I could fire or what angle was required to support multiple firing arcs. I also feel like the crew plays no direct role at all in combat, which is highly disappointing.
Third-person action is a good direction and I was hoping to be able to explore my ship. Sadly, they cut corners by only modeling the interior of key sections of the ship, writing off discrete transitions through transporting or turbo-lifts.
Speaking of writing things off, they throw up numerous walls of text and story elements in an effort to contextualize very basic, trivial MMO interactions like hitting switches and clicking on quest NPCs. In one example, three pages of chatter are summarized with a single instruction in bold saying something like "go to the next room and click on the NPC". They just wasted my time.
I will definitely return to the game to power through all these irritating tutorials and see how the world looks when they finally open it up for me to explore. You would think that after 2+ years in front of a real audience they would have improved the on-boarding process a little. Or worse, maybe they did. If this *is* an improved tutorial, I would hate to see what it used to look like. Yikes!
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