Star Trek: Legacy

"The Sad Tale of Star Trek Games Continues"

First Impressions: When I received the game and popped in the disk, a rather plain installer appeared, the kind you expect for application software and the random freeware game. As even the worst previous Trek games I have played possessed a uniquely screened installer, this did not bode well for the game. Still, I proceeded on, and once the game started up, I was mildly pleased to see it at least held its own screen for that.

Then the bugs kicked in. My computer can run Oblivion on all ultra high settings with no slowdown, but Legacy's startup was slow and poor at best, which was sad.

On to the segmented parts:

Gamplay 3/10: The gameplay is extremely poor indeed. The controls are a simple WASD format, which while typical for FPS's, it simply does not work here. You turn at a snail's pace when you control your ship directly; it is usually far more convenient to aim your ship at a target and have it control itself. There is extreme difficulty when it comes to firing weapons, as phasers are difficult to aim half the time and torpedoes refuse to fire unless you are directly aligned either fore or aft of your target, which is just simply not how the torpedo systems of starships in the Trekverse work. Your "fleets" function pathetically as a group. What's more, even though the game offers an overmap view, the default mouse movement speed upon it is slow as a rock, causing you to lose many a mission thanks to not being able to direct your ships in time. Even the maximum speed set is barely enough. Worse still, the camera speed is reset everytime you quit the game and there is no way to change it once inside a specific game. Maps themselves are merely just blobs of space with the occasional planet that may or may not be important, along with nebulae that will more often than not damage your ship, albiet slowly. Combat is horribly done: your ships can fight battle after battle after battle without taking damage yet occasionally the enemy will be able to inflict horrendous damage to your "fleet" in a few seconds without you even being able to react, causing many a loss of a game. The campaign story is written horribly, as most Trek game stories tend to be, and even the fantastic talent of Bakula, Stewart, Brooks, Mulgrew, and Shatner cannot save it, though I must admit the voice talent still kept me interested long enough to play out the story in its entirety.

Sound: 4/10: The gameplay sounds are mainly just the generic phaser and torpedo firing sounds we all know from the series'. Voice talents are a mixed bag, though they tended to be quite good for the most part, often making battles seem more exciting than they really are with all the talking back and forth about targeting and phaser firing. The music was immensly poor and plagued with bugs, however, often forcing a track to replay a few seconds of itself over and over again. This happens most notably with the main menu track.

Graphics 6/10: Far, far less than I expected, considering this is Bethesda we're talking about. Bland ship models that could have come out of Voyager: Elite Force and even blander planetary graphics. Torpedo and phaser fire are also generic and completely indistinguishable amongst the eras, sadly. Still, the graphics are serviceable and get the job done with very few bugs, which is more than can be said for the rest of the game.

Balance 2/10: The computer A.I. is the saddest A.I. I have ever seen in a modern game. It's the kind of A.I. one would expect out of a strategy game from 1993, almost: it is just that bad. Computer ships will literally fly around in circles occasionally taking potshots at your ships, but your "fleet" can easily take on a real sized fleet--30 ships or so--and escape with nary a scratch, almost. Even worse, the computer will randomly become so incredibly powerful your "fleet" will be annihilated almost instantly. The computer is especially notorious about refusing to allow you to accomplish basic tasks, like damaging the engines of an enemy ship, thus making some missions in the campaign more difficult than necessary.

Overall 4/10: Bug-ridden, sound poor, graphics poor, badly written game that just does not live up to even the smallest bit of hype given to it. Bethesda and Mod Doc software have delivered a dud, which is so typical of Star Trek games. One would think creating a Trek game would be easy and the game might actually turn out good, but time and again this just is not so. One more Trek game fails to deliver.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 12/13/06