Customer Reviews

Star Trek Online Collectors Edition

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

When I first heard that Cryptic Studios was taking over production of STO from Perpetual Entertainment, I was thrilled. Perpetual had effectively done everything in its power to alienate the Trekkers who would be playing the game, and Cryptic had a solid reputation with me from their work done on City of Heroes/Villains.

Star Trek Online ultimately proved disappointing to me. I bought the Collector's Edition, which is very nicely packaged and includes a slew of freebie passes to hand out to your friends, a cool-looking replica of the new combadge featured in the game, and a very nice selection of production art. The game installs easily and once the patcher finishes updating, you're ready to go. Character creation is very involved, enabling you to customize virtually to your heart's content. Human, Vulcan, Bolian, Betazoid, non-joined Trill, Andorian...or get really creative & invent your very own 100% original Star Trek alien species! You choose Tactical, Engineering or Science career path, the only difference between which is the powers granted for use in space & ground combat.

Combat is the primary focus of STO, with a greater subjective focus on ground combat over space--which was sad for me, because I enjoyed space combat so much more. There's minimal "exploration", really no boldly going anywhere 100's of players haven't already been. There is an economy, which is strange really, but nice work has been done trying to shoehorn it into the canon. The levelling pace in STO is INSANE. You begin as a lowly Ensign. You're rapidly promoted to Lieutenant, and from there you'll go to Lieutenant Commander, Commander, Captain, and finally Rear Admiral. Each rank (aside from Ensign, which has 1, and RA which has 5) has 10 ranks. I rocketed all the way through to RA5 in what felt like no time at all, and I soloed 98% of the game. (This from the guy who took ~4 years to finally get 1 character to level 50 in City of Villains.) Unfortunately, STO suffers the exact same disease as any other MMO: Once you get to max level, there are only two things to do: PvP & large-scale raids. Since I'd rather gouge out my heart with a plastic butterknife than do either of those, I guess I'm done.

Klingon play is 99% PvP. There's some minimal PvE content, and they say there's more coming, but...meh.

I liked my time in STO. I want to love this game. Unfortunately, it was all over too fast & wound up feeling really rather empty. There's very little "Star Trek" feeling to the game; I know that's a meaningless statement without some examples to back it up, but I suppose it's more subjective than anything else. There are other players in the game--you see them whizzing past in their own starships--but there's no real conversation. No chatter, no roleplay, no...nothing. It's a Massively Single-Player Online Not-Quite-Role-Playing Game.

First off, I am not a huge Star Trek fan, but I don't dislike it either. I enjoyed the movies and the occasional TNG episode. I even enjoyed Enterprise. I like Scott Bakula, Connor Trinear, and who doesn't love Jolene Blaylock. Hottest Vulcan ever. I never got into TOS, DS9 or Voyager however. That's not to say I will never even give them a glance, just that I don't think I've ever seen an episode other than some of TOS. Sooooo, I'm not a fan boy in any sense of the word. Now that you know a little about my Star Trek background, on with the review.

The majority of this review was written prior to the actual release of the game. The content in this review is regarding my experiences of the beta and the first few days of release. Some of the details of this review may differ slightly as time passes due to updates; however, I feel that most will probably remain the same or very close.

Short and sweet if you don't want to read the whole review, I enjoy the game despite its minor flaws. I also believe the game has lots of room for improvement and shows great potential to be wonderful MMO. Ignoring the fact that it's still got some beta bugs and I often had trouble connecting for the first few days with the servers either going down or being full, I would give it 8 out of 10 at its current stage and for the content alone.

As far as the Collector's Edition goes, I would save yourself the money unless you're REALLY into the collectibles. While the badge and the art collection are nice and high quality, I don't feel they're worth the $33 premium.

The rest of the review is for those of you still with me who want more DETAILS about the game.

As for the game itself, I really enjoy it. You have full character customization and somewhat limited ship customization. You can choose the species and gender of your character or make your own with the ability to choose and manipulate a multitude of facial and body features. If you pick a specific race it comes with a few pre-determined traits and then you get to pick a couple more that fit your individual taste and play style. If you create your own race, you get to choose four traits from a list of almost 60 different traits that give bonuses to such things as strength, weapon abilities, ship related abilities, damage resistances, and numerous others.

The ship customization is a little bit more limited. When you first start, you get to pick from three different styles of light cruiser or you can mix and match pieces from those three cruisers as well as the type of metal (gives it a different color) and markings on the ship. The physical look of the ship is the only thing that you can really change. That is to say, you can't choose how many weapon slots it has, how many bridge officer consoles you can have, etc. You can however choose different weapons and equipment, but you only have so many slots for each type. Once you rank up to Lieutenant Commander, you get your second ship. This time you're given a choice of an Escort, a Cruiser, or Science vessel. One is better on offense and has more weaponry, one is better on defense and has better shielding and hull rating, and the third is sort of a combination/happy medium between the two.

As you level up you're also given a pool of skill points that you can invest in your skills. The skills you have are determined by your class; tactical, engineering, or science. You can spread your points out, or you can spend them on one specific skill and max it out. As you level up you also obtain new skills and abilities to apply points to. You're also given bridge officer points through the leveling process. These points are spent on bridge officer skills. I believe bridge officer skills are randomly generated; however, if you don't like a skill that your bridge officer has, you can always train your bridge officer in a specific skill using your pool of Star Fleet Merits. Each bridge officer has two skills for each rank, so they have two ensign, two lieutenant, two lt. commander, and two commander skills. One of their skills is a ship skill and the other is a ground skill. If you want to train them in something, it will replace a skill of that same rank and type. For example if you want to train one of your officers in a Lieutenant grade ship skill it will replace their current Lieutenant grade ship skill.

Navigating the game world is fairly simple and I in no way feel constrained at all. In the game space there are different sectors, and within those sectors are different systems. When you are flying through sector space you are essentially flying at what is considered warp speed. It may not feel like space travel or be reminiscent of the various TV series, but there's a reason for this. If it took me three actual days to travel from Earth Space Dock to Deep Space Station K7 (in neighboring sectors) in the game, I wouldn't play the game. It would just be ridiculous. It might take me about five or ten minutes to get there which is acceptable to me.

While traveling across a sector, you may encounter wandering enemies that will automatically draw you into a deep space encounter. These can be fun, but they can also be a nuisance if you're trying to get somewhere or get something accomplished. They are easy enough to get out of though by just pressing the "Warp to Sector Space" button as soon as you enter. You may also find yourself being hailed to help with a conflict in a system that you're passing by. These two concepts do give it a Star Trek feel. They were always running into other ships out in the vast openness or getting random hails.

When you enter a system, you are then able to fly at varying engine speeds, including full impulse when not in a Red Alert state. I will say that the flying is not true 3D. You can only pitch up and roll to certain angles. If it were true 3D you'd be able to fly upside down or on your side relative to others and objects in space. However, this doesn't detract from the game in the least. The ships do have somewhat of a slow turn rate, but that's to be expected. They are large ships, they are not fighters. Some of the ships you can use are a bit more maneuverable than others though. Find the style of ship that fits you best.

The space combat system is also a fairly simple one, however it can get a bit stressful and you may feel like you're doing a lot of button mashing and about to break your keyboard. I use auto-attack for one of my forward and rear phasers/disrupters and then just press a single button to fire off my torpedoes, the occasional photon mine, or a tachyon beam to lower my opponents shield. Other than that, flying is a synch and I just use my mouse for directional control of my ship while my other hand works the keyboard. It can get a bit hectic sometimes if you bite off a little more than you can chew, but the hairy battles are the ones that make it the most fun. Each bridge officer that has an officer station has abilities they can use. Going back to their skills and abilities, they have different abilities based on their rank. They can only use those abilities of that rank if they have a station of equivalent rank to use. For example, a Lieutenant can not use their Lieutenant ability if they are using an Ensign station. One more thing I'd like to mention about space combat would be the power settings. You're able to vary your power settings between applying power to your engines, shield and weapons. You have a certain amount of power that you can apply and distribute. It took me several space death to realize I could redistribute power to my shields. This helped my survivability tremendously.

I have mixed feelings on the ground combat. Some of the special abilities granted by the use of kits are not very well explained and some don't really show much benefit. They may at higher levels, but at the lower levels I was restricted to in beta testing, I didn't notice much difference between using an ability and then attacking and just plain attacking. Some of the kits have benefits that are very obvious however, one being the martial arts kit. It grants a leg sweep ability that can be used to expose a weakness of an opponent and deal a little bit of damage. When their weakness is exposed you can then use a weapon or another ability to exploit that weakness and deal massive amounts of damage. As with the space combat you can also use an auto-attack for one of your skills so you're not button mashing your keyboard so much.

The AI of your away team does seem to be a bit lacking. They aren't exactly the brightest bunch of cadets in Starfleet. They can get stuck fairly easily and you may have to go back to get them occasionally. They will however attack what you tell them to and will go where you tell them to when you give them a rally point (as long as they aren't stuck). You can also place them in a passive mode so they won't shoot anything until you tell them to. That can save you from getting into too much trouble sometimes. They heal me regularly and repair my shields as necessary. I've only died on the ground once or twice, but both times I was facing opponents that I probably shouldn't have. They were just a tad bit above my skill level. All in all, the NPC away team has saved my butt a few times so I can't say too many bad things about them, but they could use a little bit of pathing work.

Forced teaming in space is also something this game does that I'm not too keen on. Basically what happens is you load into a zone with other players who are loading in at approximately the same time and then they force you all to be on a team together. The zone is then scaled in difficulty according to the skill and size of the team. The only way to prevent this forced teaming is to either already be on a team or I believe there's an option for the game to ask you first if you want to join a team. If you're already on a team, be warned that the zone will be scaled for a group of your current team size whether they are with you or not. (I was on a team with two other people who weren't with me at the time. I zoned into a system and I had a tough time with three brigand cruisers. Somehow I managed to pull through with almost no shields and about 3% of my hull remaining.)

I don't really care for the forced teaming because I've never really cared for PUGs or pick-up groups for those who aren't fluent in MMO lingo. PUGs can go horribly wrong when there's no communication, which is also something this game lacks. The only form of communication you have is through the chat window which can be a mess of random questions and incoherent statements from players in all different zones if you don't set up your tabs properly. There's also the possibility if you're using it that it may just go totally ignored by the other players on your team. I prefer to be on a team of my choosing or go it alone. That being said, the majority of my forced team experiences were typically good, mainly because I took charge and attempted to lead the group. If you or someone else doesn't take charge right off the start, the group could stray from each other, do their own thing, and can cause everyone to have a bad experience.

If you can have a team of your own choosing, the combat in both space and on the ground is great. And it's even better if you all communicate well. I play with three other guys that I used to play Star Wars Galaxies with for over two years and we all work very well together. It makes space and ground combat very fun and enjoyable.

I'm not saying this game is perfect by any measure. It definitely has its issues, but they are minor in my opinion. One thing it does have plenty of is potential. For a game like this there is an infinite amount of room for expansion and numerous stories yet to be told. And you honestly don't even have to be a Star Trek fan to enjoy any of it. If you are the type of person who can enjoy a game for what it is, a game, and not get caught up in how inaccurate it is or blow minor issues out of proportion, then I would definitely give this game a try.

As a long time Star Trek Fan and an avid gamer, I was eagerly awaiting ST:O and the promise it held. While I really wanted to love this game, shortcomings in its fundamental gameplay are impossible to ingnore. Rather than ramble on about my dissapointment, lets just break it down into the basics.

The Good:
Installed and activated painlessly.

Runs smoothly on my two year old rig.

Comes with 30 days of free play before you have to pay per month.

Episodes, basically story missions, are occassionaly interesting enough to make you want to plow through all the warts to see where they lead.

Generally a very friendly, Trek saavy community of players out there willing to help out new players and generate some fun playing this game.

The Not so Good:
Its a combat game, plain and simple. If you are looking for a deeper Star Trek experience than fighting the various bad guys you've come to know and love as a fan of the series, look elsewhere. Of course, this isn't a killer in and of itself, as I really do like a good combat game. Too bad this isn't one of them.

Episodes are a mixed bag. Many are solid but others are just inexplicably poor.

Graphics, even maxed out, aren't really all that much to write home about. Space and land combat zones really don't have a tremendous amout of variety. It doesn't take long to have seen most of what there is to see.

The leveling system never really gets to be a grind as you are likely to give up way before you spend any time grinding up levels.

The Bad

Its not fun.

The Core gameplay mechanics are just dull.

Space Combat is ultra simplistic until very late in the game. Circle strafe, fire phasers until shields are down, fire photon torpedoes to finish. Amazing how 2D space combat feels. Its telling that you have 4 shields, not 6. (yep, North, South, East, West. No dorsal or ventral, i.e. top or bottom shields). Space combat has been done so much better in so many different ways, i.e. Homeworld, Empire at War, heck even Freelancer.

Ground Combat is just ultra horrible. Squad based, 3rd person shooter is perhaps the best way to describe it. Your avatar, the captain, will be taking point. Always. Run in, shoot until they are dead or you die. It looks lousy and plays even worse.

Missions - the bulk of your time will be spent here. Missions are no more complicated that go here, kill all bad guys or go here and press "F" on these 10 things.

Skill system - an impenatrable mess. You will be presented with an abundance of skill options, 80% of which have no discernable impact on gameplay. Most of the effects take place behind the scenes, and the game does nothing to pull aside the veil. Unless you read up in advance by trolling the forums, you'll end up leveling skills more or less at random, wondering if they really do anything. As far as I can tell, you can get pretty far without really paying any attention to what skills you pick.

Frustrating madness moments : One of my favorite head scratching moments from the early game really sums up the ground game. In a mision on a damaged ship, you fight through a freighter overrun by pirates to save the stranded crew. You fight to them along a linear path (pressing "F" on flashing things along the way) and then when you get to them, you don't beam out. No, you turn around and fight through the exact same path (conveniently repopulated by beamed in baddies) to get back to where you initially beamed in. Guess what happens when you get there? You beam back to the ship! Best part? In what must have been a glitch, the rescued crewmen didn't actually beam out with me. I watched my team de-materialize as the crewmen watched helplessly as their ship fell apart around them. Actually the high comedy moment of my first 10 hours of gameplay.

Conclusions:

In summary, this is really two combat games in one, one worse than the next. It happens to be set in the Star Trek universe, which is nice, but the core gameplay itself leaves so much to be desired that I worry no amount of new "content" short of a game engine overhaul, can give this game any staying power. Too bad really. If you can get your hands on a buddy trial, I strongly reccomend it. I was able to determine this game was not a good fit for me in the first 10 hours of gameplay.

There's an exhaustive amount of "I love this game" vs "Don't waste your time" reviews out there - I'll leave that part up to you. I sprung for the "Collector's Editon" box after spending too much time waffling over the 'is it worth it?' factor of the physical "bonus items" (versus just getting a digital edition) so, in case you're in the same boat, read on:

"Deluxe Packaging - Futuristic 3dX holography set in a high quality brushed aluminum finish."

Far nicer than your average retail game box. A hidden magnetic catch keeps everything contained and overall it has a nice 'gift box' appearance inside and out. The holograph is a nice touch but, don't be fooled, the 'brushed aluminum' is simply a matte silver decal over a sturdy cardboard box.

"Deluxe Manual - Hardbound, art book, manual, and disc case in a single, elegant package."

Since the 'art book' portion of this package is what ultimately sold me on buying this edition, I'll tell you a bit about it. Physically, the quaility is very nice; content-wise, I was left wanting. Since the Trek universe is so vast and this game was in development for like 5 years, I'd hoped for some cool behind-the-scenes/concept art/sketches/process work here, but the 30ish pages of 'art' are sadly light on substance: basically stylized screen captures and 2 pages of stuff I hadn't already seen on the website. Ultimately, I WOULD NOT recommend buying this editon on the merit of the art book alone. I did and I regret it.

"Communicator Badge - High quality cast metal design based on the in-game badge model."

A nice collectible: solid with a nice brushed finish; wearable if you like (attaches using 2 typical pin backs, sadly no hole-saving low profile magnets here).

"Guest Passes - Credit card style buddy passes entitling friends for a ten day game trial."

A nice touch - they look pretty cool and are a good value for getting your friends in on the action.

The rest of the features (Red Matter Capacitor, Next Generation Uniform, Deep Space Nine Uniform) are in-game features that I haven't gotten around to checking out yet - might edit these in to the review later.

I have been playing since it launched but logged in for the final time last week. This game is horribly instanced. There is no open space, instead you control your ship from a small sector map. You can get onto your bridge but it has no in game function. Combat is buggy, especially ground combat. Enemies will regularly one-shot you or gang you to make up for the broken AI. PvP is a joke, hardly anyone participates anymore. When you finally find a match it is unbalanced, 10 on 1 or similar. The Klingon faction is unfinished and only gets token updates, nothing significant.
Graphically the game is pretty but that's all it really has going for it. Crafting is awful, missions are repetitive, and there is no end game content.

One big note if you are thinking about buying the collector's edition!! DON'T BUY IT FOR BONUS ITEMS!! As of 6/14/10, Cryptic has already announced that the items offered in the collector's edition are now available to every player regardless of what game they purchased. So save your money and buy the cheapest one if you must have this. The same applies to lifetime subscriptions, ALL BONUS CONTENT that was offered to lifetime subscribers is now being made available for every player. So again don't spend a lot of money buying this game for the advertised bonuses because they are nothing more than another way to get you to plop down more money than you need to to buy this game. The fact that they are already having to do this along with a recent welcome back weekend and the game hasn't even been live for four months yet should tell you something.

Finally research their forums before you buy this. Do your research and do not impulse buy this one. Lots of people were let down by this game, by Cryptic, and Atari don't let yourself be another one.

First, I have been a fan of Star Trek since the original series. Yet I am still willing to allow the developers some freedom to work with the material. But the developers in this case are lazy (this product was rushed...), and I seriously doubt their competence.

I have been playing this game since closed beta (11+ months ago). And some of the same issues we had in beta, and at launch, are still here. So Overall, I have to say that while it has been fun to play at times, I am disappointed because it could have been so much better. Sadly I bought a lifetime subscription so I can't just quit.

I bought this Collector's Edition because it has one bonus item that's not available anywhere else, and it has some uniforms that I could buy on the Cryptic Store. So it worked out that for the price it was an acceptable deal.

As a Star Trek fan since I watched the first episode broadcast in 1966, I had high hopes for this game. I've played games of all sort my entire life, and over the last few years spent quite a bit of time in World of Warcraft.

Sadly, this game just didn't deliver for me.

The graphics are not very good, and that was an initial disappointment that did not improve.

There were bugs in the beginner training missions. To get past one of them I had to abandon the character I had started with and begin the game all over again. This was after the game had been out for some months ... so there was no excuse for those kind of bugs in the starting missions that everyone has played since their early beta.

I found the method of looting technology/earning brownie points and then returning to a starbase to buy upgrades for your ship to be contrived and poorly conceived.

The space battles weren't any fun either. They were slow moving, and your options are somewhat limited. Now, its conceivable that there is something more in the advanced game. However, I was unwilling to sit thru hour after hour of boredom, replete with poor graphics, in the possibly unrequited hope that I would reach more interesting game mechanics or content.

I know from reading development notes over the years of this game's construction that the foundation of the game mechanics were substantially reworked a couple of times before retail release. They should have given it at least one more shot. It was easy to understand how translating being a member of Star Fleet didn't lend itself well to an MMORPG. If it was at all possible, it was going to take a brilliantly conceived design idea that would have to be expertly realized in the programmed product. They obviously did not have the minds or talent on hand to accomplish that.

Sadly, this product probably is a waste of everyone's time and money in this form. I'll say that it was OK for a few hours to watch an avatar of myself run around in a Starfleet uniform and see a few things in their game universe. However, any interest from that faded quickly, and bear in mind that as a life long fan of Star Trek, I was predisposed to give them the benefit of the doubt.

However, I do REALLY like the pin on comm badge that I got in my collector's edition! LOL

This game looks great, but the lack of supporting materials even in the special edition is concerning. I have played other games fromt this vendor that are much more straight forward. Nothing is intuitive in the UI. When I looked online to find ANYBODY with information on how to perform necessary tasks, I was constantly referred to a group of 6-10 manuals by a third party at $20 a piece. After a month I cancelled my subscription. I will monitor over the summer in case some reputable main stream company puts out an all inclusive strategy guide, but I am not going to pay $120+ for the one by killer games??? If you have unlimited time to use trial and error, you could like this game, but for us weekend gamers this was a lesson in frustration.

I'm a huge star trek fan and pre ordered STO as soon as I could. I didnt even last 2 months playing it though... its the same stuff over and over again. How many times can you blow up a klingon ship or shoot enemies on the ground? totally repetitive and boring. skip it.

It had such possibilities but...
Choppy play, poor speed, not very intuitive, and you don't get to play unless you PAY PAY PAY after you buy the game.
I'm SO disappointed. I paid over [...] and only got to play for 9 days. One day the server was down every time I went to play and there were numerous other connection problems on other days. I couldn't even get the 30 days that were supposed to come with the game unless I gave them my credit card and signed up for after the 30 day period. What a sneaky rip! Boo HISSSSsssss