After locking on, left or right on the stick will jump directly to other ships in the vicinity. Clicking it in will lock onto a single target. This will draw power from stronger sides in order to reinforce the weaker ones. But you can easily redistribute shields evenly across all four sides by clicking in the Left Stick. Should one side lose shields, the ship will take massive hull damage there. Each ship has shields on each side that take damage independently of each other, just like in the shows and movies. Shield management proves surprisingly intuitive as well.
Up accelerates, down decelerates, and holding up all the way initiates full impulse, maxing out speed. Left Stick steers of course, whereas the D-Pad manages speed. The controller inputs are relatively intuitive while providing a high degree of control over the starship's numerous abilities. Players pilot their ships from a third-person view. Space flight and combat is a big part of what makes this a legitimate Star Trek game. Piloting a starship isn't as simple as riding a mount around like you'd do in a typical MMO.
One of the things that makes Star Trek Online so different from Neverwinter is that it has two completely different methods of traversal: space and ground. But Star Trek Online is a much different game, so the developers went to the extra trouble of developing entirely new controls and UIs for it. I expected Perfect World to simply borrow Neverwinter's controls wholesale, since that game already works just fine (with a bit of a learning curve). Reworking the controls and User Interface (UI) was the next step in getting Star Trek Online to work on consoles. These improvements look quite pleasing to the eye in motion, although the actual performance of the game on Xbox One is comparable to Neverwinter, which suffers from occasional slowdown during complex scenes and crowded areas. Graphical enhancements include brand new High Dynamic Range Lighting (which seemingly confirms enhanced colors for the Xbox One S console), deferred rendering (a shading technique), and specular light probes.
The first thing Cryptic and Perfect World did was update the looks of the game to bring them up to Xbox One and PlayStation 4 standards. To make the game feel at home on consoles, some updates were in order. Star Trek Online is still going strong on PC, but it's also a six-year old game. Of course we'll have a USS Windows Central when we play! You can also pilot famous starships such as the many versions of the USS Enterprise, though the more desirable crafts tend to be sold as In-App Purchases or acquired from premium lockboxes.
Players will eventually acquire and customize more powerful ships, all of which can be named to their liking.
Players will revisit iconic locations such as the Guardian of Forever from The Original Series and meet numerous characters voiced by their original actors, such as Worf, Seven of Nine, Tuvok, Chekov, Scotty (voiced by Chris Doohan), Tom Paris, and more. Players can choose between the three factions, create a character from a number of Star Trek races (including my favorite, the Andorians), recruit a Bridge Crew, and set out into a galaxy filled with adventure.Īlthough the Star Trek Online storyline is all-new and ever-expanding, it includes many elements from previous Star Trek TV series and movies. Thus the Federation, Klingon Empire, and the newly-formed Romulan Republic all find themselves in great need of ship captains to fight their battles.