N-Philes

Star Trek: Conquest

Posted March 23rd 2008 by Gareth Trinkwon.

Bethesda's 2008 Star Trek outing has arrived, and with one of the most epic Trek stories you've ever seen! You see, each of the major factions in the galaxy has thrown away their principals and begun working towards one thing: galactic domination! Why? I don't know! It might make sense for those war-mongering Klingons or the Dominion to have such an objective, but the Federation? Humans are supposed to be peace loving hippies in the future. It does seem to go against what Star Trek is supposed to be about!

Star Trek: Conquest plays a little like a hacked up version of intergalactic chess. The game is turn-based, which means nothing is real time. You're given a chance to make your moves and then when you're done, the other teams make theirs. The core game play is based around a galactic map screen where you're given an overview of various solar systems that you control and are in range of seeing. The systems are represented by little circles (nothing flashy!), and are interconnected by lines indicating pathways for your fleets. Your starting system, or homeworld, allows you to construct fleets of ships, making it the most important system on the map for any aspiring commander. Building fleets lets you select from one of three admirals (characters taken from the show), each of which have their own stats and expertise (attack, defense, movement). You can then select from three different types of ships: Scouts (small), Cruisers (medium), and Dreadnoughts (large). By utilizing them, you can move to new systems, kick out the current occupants, and then set up a base to issue repairs and expand your fleets. However, there is one catch: you can only ever have three fleets at any one time, which is where some of the game's strategy comes in. As your empire grows defending planets bordering other factions can become extremely tricky.

Defending worlds or sending a fleet to a new system for conquering triggers combat mode, which gives an overview of the ships and defenses on each side. You can then decide to either decide the battle automatically, which is a harsh ruling based entirely on the size, type of ships involved, experience, and HP of the fleets involved, simulate the battle, which displays the battle in the overview screen and allows you to issue extremely basic commands to make your fleets to go on the offensive or defensive. You can also order them to retreat if the battle goes sour, which can be a life saver when you don't want to have to rebuild your fleet from scratch at the home world. The third option is "arcade", which throws you into the 3D battle and gives you complete control over the ships as they battle. The controls are simple and you just steer with the analog stick and fire your phasers and torpedoes using the pointer. This mode gives you a little more say in how the battle goes, but I usually just found myself making sure the odds were on my side and ran the battle automatically.

Fortunately, to up your odds when defending worlds, in addition to building bases, you can build two sets of defense turrets to assist in fending off attackers. A fully defended system along with a fleet of ships can make it pretty difficult to capture for an attacker. You can also build either a research station or a mining colony. The former allowing you to level up some of your stats and improve performance, the latter allowing you to increase your cash flow and build more fleets and structures. Making money is one of the most important aspects of the game, as everything from creating fleets to building defenses is based on spending as much of it as you can.

Unfortunately, that's pretty much all there is too it. The problem with this game is simply that it's far too simplistic. Since there are no system stats, there's no real difference between any of the systems that you capture beyond their location. There are no varying mining stats or research rates or even other statistics such as population morale. Once you've acquired a system and built your facilities you never really have to worry about it again (except to defend it). The selection of ships in your fleets is also far too limited. The Star Trek series has an absolutely huge array of starships to select from and yet this game limits you to three basic types. Another thing I felt was sorely lacking was diplomacy. Star Trek by its very nature has always been about peace, yet this game is all about war; it gives you no opportunity to call a temporary truce or forge an alliance with other factions. Perhaps I'm just used to the luxuries of the Total War series.

The game may bear the Star Trek name but there's really not a lot of Trek content to get excited about. Fans will recognize many of the admirals from the various shows. Favorites like General Martok, Weyoun, Gul Dukat, and Tomalok make appearances as commanders for their respective factions, although their appearance is in name only. I thought the Federation got cut a little short on the admiral front. They were only bit-part characters that appeared once or twice across the show, and two of them were villains! Where are the cool admirals that yelled at Picard when he screwed up? Or even Janeway? She's an admiral now, right? Fans might find some satisfaction in playing as the Klingon Empire or the Dominion, and the game could potentially provide a bit of replay value in playing through as each race at least once: Federation/Human, Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian, Breen, Dominion. Beyond that, those looking for an intense Star Trek experience that only a hard shot of Romulan Ale could provide, well it's best you wait for the Ale.

Presentationally, the game is - you guessed it - pretty simplistic. The interface consists of a series of fittingly futuristic/metallic boxes and buttons, and varies depending on which faction you play as. The galaxy overview is simply a nice space background with a group of circles representing systems, with lines indicating movement pathways between them. Fleets are represented by 2D icons that sit above the system icons. That's pretty much it. The game's arcade combat is fully 3D and does a good enough job of rendering the ships and weapon effects, but it's nothing to scream about, though The audio follows suit from the visuals. No licensed music or voice actors, just your familiar female Star Trek computer voice/scary Klingon female/other alien commanders and the odd remarks from your admirals during battles.

Slight Pulse - Should have been WiiWare.

It's got some good ideas. Unfortunately it feels like very few of those ideas were taken much further than the initial concept, and the game, while deceptively complicated at first glance, offers very little depth or complexity. It might have been permissible had the game been sold via WiiWare for a few points, as it does have some entertainment value. As a full priced game in a retail store though, it's difficult to recommend.

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