Star Trek has a rich sci-fi lore and loads of source material that should make the perfect MMO game. Originally released in 2010 on PC, Star Trek Online is a free-to-play MMO that, after six years, has made its way to the Xbox One. The game is developed by Cryptic Studios (City of Heroes/Villains) and distributed on consoles by Perfect World Entertainment and offers fans and newcomers alike a chance to become engrossed in the Star Trek universe.
Going into the game, after being a City of Heroes player back in the day, I had high expectations from Cryptic and the license they were using. You start the game by joining the Federation, Klingon Empire, or Romulans. From here you are free to customize your character as you see fit. There are plenty of ways to customize your character to make him or her stand out from the crowd. Customization is a big plus in this game as you are able to select from a large list of humans or alien races for your avatar. You also have options to customize the facial features and body of your character as well sort of like a Bethesda game’s character creation but simplified. I created a Vulcan and joined the Federation. From here you can select one of three different player classes: tactical officer, engineer, and science officer. I chose the tactical officer and was sent on my way as a rookie cadet in the Federation.
I had higher expectations for the game after the character creation but from here is where my experience spiraled downward. The gameplay in Star Trek Online consists of shooting on foot and piloting and fighting your own ship while exploring the universe. I found the on-foot sections to be okay but seemed a bit clunky. The shooting mechanics are typical of the MMO style of game where you highlight an enemy with your cursor and press a button to continuously shoot them. You can choose from different abilities as well to help you in your battles. While not terrible, I found the on-foot battles to be a bit boring and repetitive. Move around while shooting until your bullet sponge enemy dies. This is an MMO so enemies have health bars and some of them are bullet sponges and are tedious to defeat.
While the on-foot sections were tolerable, it wasn’t until I got to pilot my own ship that the game’s flaws started to show. After the brief opening sequence on foot, you are assigned to a ship and eventually gain control of it and become its captain. I named mine the USS Cygnus and was really excited to explore the universe and see what the game had to offer. Then the tutorial space missions hit. From here you are given control of your ship in space but the controls, in my opinion, did not translate well from a mouse and keyboard setup to a controller. To accelerate you have to click up on the D-Pad and select your speed. You can customize if you want to focus on speed, shields, etc. All of this was great but I sorely missed a mouse and keyboard for it. I found myself spinning the ship in place while slowly moving at a snails pace.
From here you are given your first introduction to space battles. The space battles are far worse than the on-foot combat sections. The awkward flight controls combined with boring space combat really killed the momentum of the game. The space combat literally is fly or stay still while shooting a laser beam at an enemy ship. Eventually it gets destroyed. You have other abilities but they didn’t distinguish themselves from each other, they all felt the same, lasers or missiles and waiting for the enemy health to deplete. I wasn’t a fan of the space combat and the tutorial didn’t do a good job of getting me excited for the rest of the game either.
The good thing is, once you leave the tutorial missions, you are set to explore and do what you want. From here, the game does improve as you are given full customization over every aspect of your ship and crew. This is great and is really something Star Trek fans are looking for in a game based on such a beloved franchise. While I really enjoyed customizing my ship, the battles and missions still felt boring and repetitive to me.
The game originally came out in 2010 and it definitely feels like it. The visuals aren’t fantastic and are a bit blocky but the characters are designed well and fun to talk to with multiple branching dialogue trees. The dialog trees depend on your own choice or your character class and brought a good sense of decision making to the game which I feel is a key aspect of Star Trek.
There are also microtransactions in the game that allow you to purchase weapons, ships, items etc., but I did not feel this was a pay-to-win type game. The items could be accessed with some grinding if the player is dedicated enough.
Summary
If you are a hardcore Star Trek fan and can look past the clunky controls and bland visuals, there is a lot of great customization options available to the player. Casual fans of Star Trek might be turned off by the games repetition, complexity and awkward controls. I can only recommend this game to the dedicated Star Trek or MMO fans out there. However, it is free-to-play so if it interests you at all, you can give it a try without hurting your wallet.
Tommy was a community contributor to ICXM, writing 3 articles in 2016 covering game reviews. ICXM operated as an independent Xbox and Windows gaming outlet through the run-up to Xbox One S and Project Scorpio, plus the broader Windows 10 gaming push, drawing from a rotating bench of editorial volunteers. They post on X as @sirtommyguns.