Star Trek Legacy
Star Trek: Legacy is an epic game of Starfleet combat. You’ll become the Admiral of a task force of warships and must lead their fleet to victory in large-scale battles. Choose the ships, equipment, and captains that you will lead into battle. It provides an immersive strategic and tactical experience by emphasizing the dramatic excitement of large-scale battles without the hassle of complex starship management. Single player Federation campaign, spanning three full epochs (Enterprise, The Original Series, and The Next Generation) Robust multiplayer with full Xbox Live support
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Not Worth the $
Sorry I have to say something to all the sellers selling this item. How are you selling this game for so much money, when you can still buy them used at Gamestop for $14.99. I came on here hoping to get a copy for $10.00 at most. I played this game while it is fun. I know it is not worth what your selling it on amazon for. Could that be why they are not selling lol.
3 Stars “Dammit Jim, I’m a Doctor, not a video game reviewer!”
I like Star Trek. I really do. But I am not one whom you would describe as a rabid Trekkie. I know enough on the subject of Star Trek to make me somewhat knowledgeable on certain facts; Even-numbered Star Trek movies are the best ones, guys in red shirts invariably die anytime they beam onto a planet, and Captain Kirk would kick Captain Picard’s tush in a pitched fight clear across the Great Barrier. But again, I’m not a rabid fan, so when my brother picked this game up for his X-box 360 I was only moderately interested in it. I played it over this past week and have come to the conclusion that the game, while fun, is not as good as it could have been.
ST: Legacy wants to be epic, but only partially succeeds there. Individuals and fans of all Star Trek related shows will love the pure dedication that has been given to the ships, who are clearly the stars of this game. Players embark on their trek (pun intended) during the Enterprise series time frame with Captain Archer and the gang up through the post-TNG era. The plot follows the protaganists of the various series in their pursuit of a rogue Vulcan intent on introducing her own brand of the Borg into the Alpha Quadrant over the course of 200 years. The plot seemed a little weak to me, especially considering the visuals that are included in the game, and seemed little more than a vehicle to introduce the starships themselves.
The graphics are impressive, as is the ship selection. Be forewarned that if you’re looking to hop into the controls of a Romulan Warbird in the story campaign you’ll only find that in the Skirmish or Multiplayer modes. I noticed that many of the TOS series ships seemed to be pulled directly from Starfleet Battles, like the little Apollo Class scout ship, which consists solely of a saucer section and a single warp nacelle slung underneath. The ships themselves are beautifully rendered and match that of what you saw on the screen of all the movies. Every sound effect from the hum of the impulse engines to the unique sound of the phasers has been dutifully implemented into the game. And the larger the ship is, the less agile it is, giving you more reason to put a few Miranda or Steamrunner class ships in your fleet. The little ships are definitely the most fun but it will be the big battleships that you end up using to win, using brute force.
The music is fine, and certainly more than adequate to set the mood. Some of it seemed to be recycled a bit through most of the game a bit too much though. The voice acting was also adequate but I couldn’t help shake the feeling that the voice actors themselves, more or less, just phoned in 30 lines apiece and collected their paycheck. There was no real feeling behind the words being spoken, and it was particularly noticeable with Shatner’s Kirk, who is supposedly having some sort of blood feud with this rogue Vulcan but speaks about it in the same tone of voice one would use reading the annual earnings report of a mid-size toilet paper company.
The controls are a big detraction from the game and that is just the plain truth. Through the 20 odd hours I spent playing the game I was never really able to figure out at times which button did what. The left thumbpad controls motion, the right the view, while the bumpers and various buttons control everything from energy settings, hailing, scanning, selecting the closest enemy, initiating repairs, etc. And I’m not even including the weapons fire buttons. Furthermore if you have the ability to target individual subsystems on an enemy ship (sensors, engines, etc.) then please tell me how to do that. My brother has played through the game twice on increasingly difficult settings and said he didn’t know either and usually elected to just continue firing and blow up the enemy ship. You’ll find yourself repeatedly hitting the wrong button in the middle of a fight and about the only one I was 100% sure of at any time was the warp button, which coincidentally is one of the most tempermental ship subsystems on this game as it will quizically work only half the time.
Despite the controls the game is, as I said earlier, quite beautiful. Watching your fleet exchange broadsides with a Borg Cube is really breathtaking and seeing so many types of ships made available to the player is wonderful. I do not have X-Box Live, so I could not engage in a multiplayer battle with anyone, but did tinker with the Skirmish mode for a while. And here I found the single biggest detraction yet. Skirmish mode reminds me a great deal of another great game, X-Wing Alliance. Players don’t cooperate on pre-made missions but rather use an editor to “build” a fleet from scratch and then send it towards another fleet. That’s fine and dandy but I want to relive the epic space battle of STII: The Wrath of Khan (and who doesn’t?), or take part in the giganto space battle over the Earth from ST: First Contact. Heck, even the battle of Wolf 359 would have been welcome. You’ll find none of that here and it makes me sad since all the necessary shipsets are there and are obviously begging for it. Another quick note is that collisions should be catastrophic events for any ship but here ships bounce off of each other, planets, asteroids, and a host of other objects without once taking any damage. A “Worf Maneuver” style assault, warping your ship right into the side of a Borg cube for instance, would have been a most welcome weapon to have at one’s disposal, especially on the last (very hard) mission of the game.
The game is pretty enough to perhaps warrant playing through it again, and maybe getting to try it out with some more of the smaller ships. But other than that I don’t see much replay value in the Campaign mode. This is further hampered with no scenarios to play and a very spartan Skirmish mode. Overall this is a good, solid game but with some flaws attached to it that drag the overall score down. I enjoyed it a great deal and heartily recommend it to Star Trek fans who have ever had a hankering to pilot their own Sovereign class starship at will.
3 Stars Good Value for Your Gaming-Dollar
Let’s face it … even if you’re a Trek fan, you’d have to admit that the franchise’s run on console systems has been pretty rocky. Knowing its track record, I was a little apprehensive when I found out that ‘Legacy’ was in production. However, most of the still-shots in the game’s advertising ended-up looking pretty good, so eventually this wound-up being a title on my “buy” list.
I’m about three-quarters of the way through it now and I can say honestly that I don’t regret having picked it up. There’s more “good” here then “bad”, no question about it. In terms of the games graphics, in my opinion, I thought it was a real beauty. I thought the ships in the various fleets were beautifully designed and the damage animations were all terrific. I’ll touch on the actual explosions later.
The voice acting was all top-notch. Bethesda managed to get most of the grade-A talent (Bakula/ Shatner/ Stewart/ etc) to come back and reprise their roles for the game. With Trek having been off the radar for a while now, it was a real treat getting to hear some of these guys back in the saddle again. Furthermore, the sound F/X and background score were average. Nothing that stands out, but I wouldn’t say either detracted from the game’s play at all.
The story-line, while it’s (admittedly) not going to win any awards, was competent enough to accomplish the task of tying the three generations of The Enterprise together without being ridiculous. If it was a cross-over then was done on television, I’d probably have watched and enjoyed it. It is pretty short though. I’d say the game-play clocks-in at about six to eight hours at the most. On the `ensign’ level (easy), you can probably finish this REALLY quickly.
Although the game does get a thumbs-up from me, it does suffer from a few HUGE issues and several annoying minor ones. The worst, for me, was the inability to command the other vessels in your fleet. Other then a basic “form-up” command, if you want these ships to do anything more complex, you have to take command of them yourself and pilot them manually. I was stunned at the lack of basic “guard this”, “escort that”, and “stay” directions. To illustrate, there’s a mission in the beginning of the game where the goal is to protect a small convoy of medical transports. Stupidly, of course, they all go shooting off in different directions. In order to accomplish the task of making sure those transports survive, you have to take control of one of your ships and send it off blindly in one direction while you go in another. The hope is if that vessel bumps into something, seemingly on the transport’s route, you can jump over quickly and take care of the obstacle.
I’ve read several criticisms of the maneuverability of the ships themselves. I didn’t have that big of an issue with this. These are big, lumbering vessels that pilot like … big, lumbering vessels. For the most part, I was of the thinking that they shouldn’t be able just turn on a dime. Because it’s space (a 360 degree environment) it’s true that the camera controls can become a little tricky, but no worse then a lot of other games out there. Where my issue came in was the control of the ships themselves. First, the button-layout is pretty awkward and there aren’t any other combinations that might make it easier. This is something that the PC version may have as an advantage. Using a keyboard and a mouse would probably go a long way toward making this a bit easier. The other issue that drove me stone-crazy was the speed-controls. There’s ‘Stop/ Impulse/ and Warp’ … that’s it. Although the option exists to divert your ship’s power around, there’s no degree of anything and no ‘reverse’. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how this was overlooked. There’s one or two missions whose degree-of-difficulty is increased ten-fold, just because I wasn’t able to back-up or fine-tune my acceleration.
Although I do like the graphics, I would have loved it if the “explosion” animations were a little cleaner. Anything I destroy seems to just fall apart into varying-shaped polygons with a light-effect behind it. There’s no real “effect.” If there’s one thing that I know Star trek fans absolutely love it’s a good sense of scale. These ships are big. We want them to look big, control big, and (most importantly) blow-up big. Sadly, it just doesn’t deliever.
Another odd thing about the controls, you have the option of ’self-destructing’ your ship. This is strange because if you do this with the Enterprise, it’s ‘game-over.’ The Enterprise (or the “lead” vessel) always has to survive; having said that, to even make “self-destruct” an option is pretty ridiculous. For the remaining fleet, if your ship is damaged badly enough, that ship will blow up and be destroyed. If I’m to the point where I’m considering blowing the thing myself, what’s the difference if I pull the trigger or if it’s destroyed? Either way, the thing blows and I’m down a vessel to command. Who pulls the final trigger doesn’t seem to have any strategic advantage one way or the other.
Not so much a criticism, but a missed opportunity, might have been the ability to customize some of the different models of ships you can purchase. Being able to adjust the speed/ shields/ or weapons systems would have been a cool way to increase the games replay value. As it stands now, it’s a take-it-or-leave-it situation with each model and class. There was something else I wanted to put on the wish-list of features, and admittedly this is probably a double-edged sword since the controls are tricky, but I’d have loved to have been able to “ram” another ship. As it is, if you’re going to collide with an object, you’re just bumped around whatever the obstacle is. It would have been outrageously cool to be out of torpedoes, low on phaser-power, and diverted power to the shields and just smashed whatever was in your way.
Lastly, unless I’m REALLY missing something, you can only have one save file for the game! As it stands now, for example, if I want to load up the game I’m playing, I start right where I left off. Doesn’t sound like a big deal right? It’s aggravating as hell though, for a 360 owner who wants to replay a previous mission for a gaming-achievement they may have missed. Again, unless I’m COMPLETELY overlooking something, the only time you have the ability to replay a certain part of the game is immediately after you finish it.
I know this sounds like a lot, so I do feel obligated to (again) point-out that, over-all, I did like it. This is certainly the cream-of the-crop so far for its home gaming run. At around fifteen-dollars, if you’re looking for something different to give you a break from playing GTA IV, Star Trek: Legacy is capable of adequately filling the void.
Note: I believe a free-demo is still available on xBox Live.
5 Stars This game is a challenge
If you are a star trek fan this game is worth it.
At this time it is the only star trek game on the x box 360 system.
It is also available on the PC.
I’ve finished this game six times. It takes patience. DON’T GIVE UP.
The strategy guide is not much help. I got through the game without it.
If you can’t finish the game keep it for a collectors item.
There is only one cheat code which wont help you in the game.
YOU CAN GET THROUGH THIS GAME. JUST KEEP TRYING!
5 Stars Simple and alot of fun!
Let me first off state that you must know the controles in order to like this game. Once you know the controles… You are set for a wonderful time. It takes about 30-40 mins to learn them. A quick scan of the instructions and the 1st level, is pretty much everything you need to know.
The missions are not difficalt as other say. I beat the game in 4 hours and did not fail a single mission or lose a ship.
However the saving system is as bad as eveyone says. Only saves after the mission. Where you choose replay mission or next mission. This is when it will save.
Apart from the game being extreemly short (if you know how to play)… Alot of the ships you will not get to use in the game. Because of the amount of command points you get are very small compaired to the cost of alot of ships. The only way to get more CP is to replay the mission(s). If I wanted to I could of had 4 Enterprise E’s in later part of Generations Era.
There are 15 missions… 5 Enterprise, 5 Orginal, 5 Generation. They go by very fast and get progresively harder as you get to a new era.
The story follows the Borg and a Vulkan woman set out to make “paradise”. Obviously you have to stop them at all costs.
Multiplayer on the 360 is dead. No idea about the PC.
Skermish mode will give you the chance to play all races in the game (except the Vulkan woman’s ship). This is the next best thing to multiplayer. You can get quite of few hours of play time just with this mode… As you test out your fleets.
It would have been nice if they added 2 bonus missions per era to give you the chance to play Romulan and Klingon. Thats the only downside.
I put this game up there with Starfleet Command series. Alot less things going on sure… But just as much fun. It’s like bridge commander, but without the bridge.
Trek fan’s, do yourself a fav and check this out.
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