Beat with help from a walkthrough due to it sometimes being difficult to figure out what to do. This was probably ths only NES game I have played on my PSP emulator that was too slow at default speed. The opening story sequence, art, dialogue and overall atmosphere of the game really felt like an episode of the show, though it struck me while watching Kirk and Spock in the turbo lift how much they looked like Beavis and Butthead. The main gameplay was top down on away missions, with occasional enemies to shoot, talking, puzzles and mostly finding the correct location to use items. It was not really my kind of gameplay and seemed silly to have to rely on quest items when they had a starship with transporter and replicator technology. The gameplay and areas were fairly simple. There was the option to choose between several different crewmembers as the other 2 in the team, with all except the biologist being necessary at certain points. If Kirk lost all hp there was no penalty other than being brought back to the ship to beam down again. Losing both team members preventing picking up items and probably using them too, which happened to me on the 2nd planet with the cleaning robot. The premise of the game was cool; they were sent into uncharged space beyond the Romulan empire and did not have enough fuel to get home. Kinda like Voyager lite. However this only lasted for 2 planets and could have been fleshed out a lot more. There were plenty of other planets to visit but they were just pointless flavor. I kept trying to talk to Spock on the bridge to find out about each planet but he only spoke about them in the turbo lift and by then I was locked into beaming down to a useless area with nothing to do. In fact there was never any reason to talk to anyone on the ship. It was mostly flavor.

The 1st planet had a stone age tribe and advanced terraforming facility with a puzzle about figuring out the safe tiles to walk on based on symbols in previous rooms. The 2nd planet was a rocky wasteland with a cryogenic facility that was keeping an entire civilization alive to survive a disaster but said disaster also broke the machine and prevented then from waking up. The puzzles here were not complicated except that I thought the bouncing pieces of trash that were needed were the worm enemies from planet 1. Then they were escorted through Romulan space and the 3rd planet was in the neutral zone. It had silly busy work quests and breaking a guy out of jail. The walkthrough claimed there was no way to get out without being imprisoned but I avoided it easily by walking around the edge of the room. After this I was not sure what to do since the game gave no hints. I guess I was supposed to remember the opening. There was a ship battle against 1 Romulan, which played similar to the TNG game. Then the last planet was 1930s themed and really felt overly simple compared to the previous areas with plenty of dumb item quests. Like did they really need to fish coins out of a drain to use a pay phone, or pick the lock on a wooden door when they have phasers?

Comparing this to the TNG game I just played, it had better story and atmosphere without those annoying mini games but I would rather play more TNG than play this again. There really should have been more to the game; more planets with stuff to do and find, more combat, more dialogue with the crew, more varied quests and possibly even multiple ways to solve each. Possibly even add in some RPG elements. But as it was, a decent experience.

6.5/10