Star Trek: Legacy

"Legacy won't take you to warp speed."

I had high hopes for Star Trek: Legacy. With all time and delays put into this game, everybody expected an above average game. We would think that Bethesda and Msd Doc would take the best elements from Starfleet Academy, Klingon Academy, Starfleet Command and Bridge Commander. No such luck. Legacy feels like a rushed console game that not even the 5 Captains from the Star Trek series could save.
Graphics: 7/10
Here, there are good points and bad points. The elements of space were pretty good. Planets glow and each one had its own look (except for the planets that look like Earth backwards). Suns are way better than the ones in BC. Still no black holes or planets with rings. Most of ships look good, but not great. Those ships that had a flat surface by design look great, such as the Enterprise-A. But it lacks when it comes to the Galaxy and Sovereign classes who have very detailed hulls. Weapons fire looks really bad. Beams weapons are too thick and never look like they are emitting from a phaser bank or array. TOS torpedoes look cool but TNG torpedoes look like globs.

Sound 3/10
The music for the most part, does not give you the Star Trek feel at all. It's like someone made a parody of Star Trek music. Sounds effects are weak and not canon at all. Some sites reviews (like Yahoo! Games) say the sounds are from the shows and movies. Well they must not watch it as much you would think because Star Trek fans will not be pleased. It will take a massive Sound pack mod just to correct this (however ships from different eras use the same sound files so it may not be able to be corrected). The voice acting is pretty good only for Federation characters. Other races just utter the same phrases during combat.

Story 5/10
Some reviewer said he couldn't follow the story. I'll just say that you had to have seen Star Trek: First Contact to get the plot of Legacy. It is an interesting plot but they leave a lot of holes and unanswered questions. What makes this obvious is that there only about 4 hours of game play. I was personally looking forward to hearing Avery Brooks (Capt. Ben Sisko) finally lending his voice to a Star Trek game. He was only in one mission.

Game play 2/10
This game will take a while to get use to. Especially since you can't edit the keyboard layout. In Legacy, the starship combat takes place on a 2D plane. You can go up and down but there are no loops or barrel rolls. It feels more like Freelancer than Star Trek. A very serious step backwards from BC and KA is how linear the game is. There is no free movement in the single player. You're stuck in the system the mission started in. One good point is that there some variety in the missions. Like I said, there is only about 4 hours of game play. You know something is wrong when you finish the game the same day you start it. The enemy AI is OK but your fleet is pretty incompetent. They may not move where you want them to move to. They won't repair their damaged system until take control of them and make them. Legacy's difficulty can go from easy to insane. Some controls don't always work. I still cannot figure out how target subsystems. Skirmish Mode is also severely limited. Still no free exploration (I thought Star Trek was about exploration) and you can't choose which ships you going to fight. The computer will always choose the strongest ship it can afford based on how many “command points” you choose. Multi-player is buggy, and unbalanced. It will take patience to get through Legacy, but there is not much of it to get through.

Overall 6/10
With mods, Legacy might become a 7 but there is only so much that can be done. Basically, Legacy looks good but plays badly. It pains me to say this but Legacy is probably the 2nd worst Star Trek game ever (Star Trek: Away Team being the 1st).

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/31/07