Customer Reviews

Star Trek: Starfleet Command, Volume II: Empires at War

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is one of those games that could really be great, if but for a few serious disappointments. While I would never call myself a Star Trek fanatic, I did enjoy this game... for a while, at least. It is generally a decent game, but has a steep learning curve and can be extremely frustrating at times.

The first and most obvious problem with the game is bugs. LOADS of bugs, and many of them very serious (i.e. game breaking). Fortunately, the SFC 2 community has been working to address these problems, and is still active and helpful. If you get the game, definitely get the latest patch. It will save you a great deal of pain.

About that learning curve- only a Trekkie who wants to push every one of those funny colored lights on the TV show would ever appreciate an interface like this. There are enough buttons to make starting the game discouraging for beginners, though the tutorials do a relatively good job of explaining things. In single play you can also pause to issue orders, but for multiplay you really have to know the hotkeys. There are more hotkeys in this game than any other I've played- literally the entire keyboard is used.

One of the worst problems with this game is difficulty. I'm not sure how the designers come up with missions for you, but I suspect it's purely random. It's entirely possible you'll accept a mission that is utterly impossible, given the firepower you have at any particular point. Until you have three battleships, it's recommendable you save in a new slot after every mission. My first mission in SFC 2 was a blast- literally- when they stuck my poor little frigate up against a space monster that didn't stop firing plasma torpedoes. The good news is you can't ever get completely wiped out, since they always give you a frigate to play with. The bad news is if you keep getting wasted, you'll never get anywhere and the required missions will quickly become impossible to complete.

Though the game has a 3-D look, it's not really a 3-D experience. You maneuver along a single plane with no Z-axis to speak of. Pretty much all the maneuvering you do is throttle up and down, and steer left and right. You can't reverse or roll your starships. What is kind of funny is that there's no collisions despite the fact that you're all on the same level. You can fly right through enemy ships, and you really should because it's impossible to miss at that range. I can see why the designers didn't allow you to maneuver with depth, as this would make lining up your weapons even more impossible than it already is, but this makes the game play in a very 'fake' manner. It also makes it impossible to hide from enemies, even if you have cloak.

The starships in the game behave more or less like they're 'supposed to,' which does NOT mean that everything goes like it does in the movies. Photon torpedoes seem to have terminal homing problems and almost never hit in 'normal' mode. You can load up your ships with missiles, mines, shuttles, and fighters for more reliable damage, but things largely degenerate to phaser/disruptor slugging matches. Those, by the way, take so long to charge that even an easy battle can last ten minutes.

The game's graphics are good, even for now. Weapons look like they do in the movies, and the ships have good detail. There are enough unique types of vessels to make the game fun to watch, though there aren't actually as many unique designs as advertised. The vessels you see here are largely the older Trek ones- not including Next Generation, DS9, etc. There are also many ships that don't appear anywhere, but Taldren made up. They did a good job modeling them, however, so they don't look goofy.

The game's sound really needs work. The soundtrack is good and the weapons sound like they should, but you'll immediately notice how scarce the voiceovers are. Essentially, you get alert reports, some damage reports, and Sulu's voice in the tutorial. That's pretty much it- the rest is text flashed on the screen in ridiculously small print, and sometimes faster than you can read. Most of the plot is conveyed in this manner, so keep a finger handy on that pause button for these times.

The missions, in addition to being occasionally bugged, are sometimes ambiguous. You are given orders at the start, and it's all or nothing to the finish (no saving in the middle). Some are characterized by long stretches of flying through empty space, which is exceedingly dull. You command up to three starships, but only one directly. You can issue general commands to the others, but they sometimes behave quite stupidly. They also follow you no matter what, which can be good or bad. Sometimes you really want one of your ships to withdraw from battle, but the only way to do this is take command of it yourself and fly off. Unfortunately, the others will also tag along. Then again, this is exactly what you want when you run into an impossible encounter.

My last gripe is the naming conventions. They use a rather counterintuitive system of letters, pluses, and dashes to designate ships. Even worse, each race has different designations for equivalent ships. It's very important to know what the designations are, since you really don't want to charge your frigates at a line of dreadnoughts. The only good way to do this is to spend an eternity in the tech library, which is somewhat less than fun. If Trek ships looked more distinctive, it could be easier to tell the various types apart. I think they do in newer episodes of the series, but these are the old ones and they all look similar.

Though in general I think SFC 2 is a good game, it could have been a whole lot better. I'm curious to see where this franchise is going, and might even get the sequel. However, due to the problems with this one, I think I'll wait for it to get cheaper.

The new version Starfleet Command 3 is out but You might want to buy this game next to it. This version has better interface and gameplay. SFC3 interface is worse. Only difference is the time difference. SFC2 is Orginal Star Trek. SFC3 is Next Generation

This game is a good game. It is a good naval simulation of starship combat. Although the campaign mode is flawed, it is still has a variety a different missions to complete, altough after the campaign is completed, some of them get slightly monotonous.

I loved SFC I. Empires at war was a game I really wanted to like. Really. It looks to be about the game game, with a better dynaverse and improved this and that. However, I could barely get the game to work. I downloaded the patch, searched and posted a decent smattering of questions online at a bunch of forums, including Tandrens. When I finally got everything working (Took over a week, btw.) I finally got into the game itself. Hooray, right? Wrong. On my first mission, I had to stop a pirate frigate. I kept shooting at the pirate's ship, lauched every missile I had, send all my shuttles against him. No luck. I spent about a half-hour trying to blow the damn thing up. I could barely make a dent in his shields. WTH! This was the first mission. With a working knowledge of SFC I, I should have had a decently easy time of doing it. But after I gave up, I tried a new campaign, with the same results. I've been told the patch should take care of this, but for some reason it doesn't. At least not for me. I also, just from looking at it for the ten minutes I've spent not wasting my time trying to hurt the godlike pirates, think the dynaverse looks pretty bland. You can't tell what system are where, there's no info on them, nada. Anyway, this game sits on my shelf, mocking me. I know I could like it, if it would work right, but it won't. Hopefully SFC III will be less of a hassle, and I can get back to enjoying Taldren's Star Trek games. Of course, now they work for Activision, publishers of such horrid Star Trek games as Hidden Evil and Armada. There is no justice. Hopefully someone will grace us with Star Trek Titles set in the TOS era in the future. Or at least I hope so. So to sum up: Stay away from SFC II, unless you have a good week or so to get it working right.

As an avid player back in the 80's this and the SFC 1 are excellent simulations of the board game. Although in real time, you can slow the game down enough and keep pausing also you can turn on the grid so that you have a hex board just like the board game, less the hours of looking through 800pp of rules. I do regret it not using the phase movement chart but I have gotten used to realtime. Good AI, nice fleet action, very true to Task Force Games. Wish they had Federation Empire on pc.

I had this game before, and love it now as much as I did then. The Price was great and it arrived in less time than I expected. I'm very happy with thus purchase.

I had been looking at SFC I for a long time. I had the Demo but wasn't sure about it. Then out came SFC II! As a Star Trek fan I love this game!!!! Finally a game that shows what it would be like if these majestic ships were real. Phasers, Photon Torpedoes, transporters, shields....There is a speed control for those that want a faster game. (I like the regular speed). This is s nice change of pace from FPS.

This is a very cool game. I only have one problem with it. I can play it on the computer by myself but have yet been able to figure out how to connect to my brothers computer and play against him. We worked for hours trying to connect.

i bought this game[starfleet command volume II empire at war] at sam club i tuck it home load it up and it ask for cd key i enter it time after time it would notwork it sade [ bad cd key coad] so i tuck it back to the stor to get a new one and when back home and stared over i got back to cd key and same thang happend agen bad cd key coad so i whent back to the stor agean and to get one moer and gest what happen ? you gest it. it happend agen [ bad cd key coad] plese help me let me know what to do the gm at the stor is look funny at me is ther some way i can by pass the cd key coad or do i have to keep returnning it to the stor until i get one that works ????? thank you your coustomer

Having played the first Starfleet Command, I have to say that SFC2 is a better game. It offers slightly better single-player campaigns, improved graphics, a few new gameplay options, and stirring music. However, like the first one, it is primarily a wargames simulator, with very little in the way of a coherent story or compelling missions. For anyone interested in the Star Trek universe, it's definitely a worthwhile buy. For anyone else, you'll likely lose interest after a short while due to a rather steep learning curve and repetitious gameplay.

Gameplay: Like the first SFC, SFC2 requires a bit of study in order to play. There is a heap of things that you need to learn, from what various weapons do to how to manage a ship's energy resources. Thankfully, the game comes with good tutorials which answer most questions. All of the action is controlled with the mouse and keyboards. The user interface is fairly straightforward and useful once you learn what everything does.

The core of the game is the ship vs. ship skirmishes, which are very well done. This game, like the first one, makes you feel like you are the captain of a starship and that everything hinges upon your commands. The enemy AI is very smart and will try to outflank you, fire when your shields are down, board your ship with hit-and-run squads, and pursue you if you attempt to flee. The friendly AI seems improved in this game, though it will sometimes rush into fights when it is clearly outgunned and outclassed.

The campaigns are decent, but certainly not very memorable. Actually, this is the weakest part of the game. As you move about the map, you can do various missions, some of which will be campaign-related and others will be random. There are really only about 10 different types of missions (escort, ambush, patrol, kill monster, etc.), and after a while they all get a bit tiring. Also, the game does not really convey the sense that you are actually part of an empire at war with other empires. There are different empires represented on the galactic map, but there's just no sense that your actions matter much in the grand scheme of things. Fortunately, you can introduce certain variables that create variety, such as buying more ships (up to 3), venturing far away from your own empire (the missions will get harder), and playing as different races. However, ultimately, this game is little more than a battle simulator, so don't buy it for the storyline.

Graphics: Though still very similar to SFC, the graphics here are quite good. Ships are nicely detailed, weapons appear as they should, and most other objects are convincing. Explosions are not too interesting, since ships and other things just break up into 4 or 5 pieces every time. However, the game still looks good to me in 2005.

Sound: No problems here. I like the fact that the developers added new movie-quality music to the game. Sound effects are generally well done, and the little voice acting that is used is convincing.

Other issues: The game did not ship with a printed instruction manual, although I think there was one on the disk. If you have played SFC, you should be able to jump right into SFC2. With the 2.0.3.6 patch, I didn't notice any bugs, except perhaps in the "Battle of the Graveyard of Thoughts" mission, which either had poor mission instructions (which is common in these games) or a bug that does not allow you to finish the mission successfully. As in the first game, allies and enemies are not always clearly marked, and you cannot save the game in the middle of a mission.

Overall, this is the best Star Trek game I've played. It could have been much better if more time had been spent making the campaigns more interesting. However, if you are a Star Trek fan, it's definitely worth a look.