Played a few hours to get Captain rank then did a few more missions until things began to repeat and I got bored. The game was similar to the SNES Starfleet Academy except that it lacked penalties for having shields and weapons active at inappropriate times, and was overall much simpler. It was a mix of menu based interaction with ship's systems, mini games, and 3D space flight sim set up in endlessly repeating randomly generated missions. The concept of the game was amazing, but some of the implementation annoyed me, and there was a lot of missed opportunity to add depth. For example, I would have loved a career mode or something where you go from mission to mission with damage and position from the last mission carrying over into the next. And limited energy for warp, weapons and shields that had to be replenished, permanent upgrades to unlock with progression, and diplomacy, experiments and away missions. But the game was not like that and was just self contained simple missions with full repair in between each.

I usually began each mission by going to La Forge to boost power for a specific system; transporter for rescue missions, phasers for asteroids or distress calls, phasers or shields for combat but I think shields may be better overall for more difficult battles. However I hated the mini game of guiding sparks to the appropriate system. It was too complicated to figure out without any pause so I just saved state at the beginning and seen what system would get the boost. Then I changed 1 thing at a time until I got what I wanted. I could manage a few sparks by changing the last set of nodes. Seemed like phasers always won out in the event of a tie. Boosting shields or phasers automatically turned them on, but still had to go to Worf to turn on the other. Then go to Data to plot the course. Walkthrough said there was strain caused by going fast and that you should balance beating the time limit with arriving in top condition for battles, but I never noticed any problem with always going warp 9. Then I usually went to Data to check the sensors, which gave a top down view of the area showing the planet and other ships without pausing the game. Pressing up and down on the main screen controlled impulse speed. Pressing select switched to 1st person flight sim controls though there was not any loops or going upside down. This part was frustrating at times when enemy ships were moving around and hard to find. The turn speed of the enterprise was painfully slow, and it was very clunky to switch back to Data to check the sensors to see where the hell the enemies were. And they probably would not still be there by the time I switched back. It was not great dogfighting but impressive for the NES. Sometimes I had to adjust speed to keep up with enemies, anywhere from full stop to max speed. It seemed to vary from battle to battle with no rules of thumb. Phasers could be blue, orange, red, dual beam or single, and I assumed that changed based on their condition and boost. They were the only reliable way to kill enemies and could even hit at significant distance. It was weird how they seemed to cause recoil while hitting an enemy though. Torpedoes were nearly useless as the only time I ever hit with them was when the enemy was coming straight towards me. I only lost 3 missions, and of course loaded state to correct that. Once I failed to defend a starbase but it was possible I hit it with friendly fire. I definitely friendly fired the asteroid target. The 3rd was the most difficult mission I did not long after reaching captain rank. Had to break a Romulan blockade and they had 4 ships. I died several times. I wonder if it would have been easier with boosted shields. As it was I has to go all out to kill 1 ship then leave the system to repair in between each kill. This was the only time where I really needed to use La Forge's repair allocation. The mission after that was 3 Romulan warbirds at once and I slaughtered them while barely taking any damage. No idea why there was such a difference. Plenty of missions did not have combat. Then it was usually going into orbit, which was a stupid flying through rings mini game. I found it either ridiculously easy or impossible, but there was no penalty for trying again and hoping for a better sequence. Then there was the transporter. I hated this mini game because there was a specific order that the people or cargo had to be beamed up. So it was scrolling around trying to beam up everything until I found the correct 1. God damn waste of time. The game wasted a lot of time with pointless animations, which I skipped at 200 fps. The transporter mini game could be a fun full game on its own by removing the stupid strict order and adding in much more depth. Imagine having a birds eye view of an area and having to do transporter triage by saving people from hazards, evaccing wounded before they die, putting troops into tactical positions, and sending enemies to death. That could be a cool game; Star Trek Transporter Chief. Like a mix of Lemmings, Command and Conquer, and 911 operator. I never had to transport enemies off the ship in this game, but why would I do that instead of shooting at the enemy ship? I also never fought the Borg but I don't imagine it would be much different.

The concept of this game was better than the actual play. The thought of doing more electrical boosting, transporting, or putting into orbit makes me groan, but the ship combat was decent.

6.2/10