Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Star Trek Enterprise. And jeez, is it a hard voyage at that. After checking out the various series throughout the years, though things often looked bleak, things usually worked out in the end. In Star Trek: Legacy, if something looks bleak, chances are it is and you'll die. Yep, kiss that thirty minutes of your life goodbye, because you're about to do it all over again. So will you be cherishing this game like The Next Generation or crying blasphemy like Voyager or Enterprise?

THE STORY SO FAR
Those Romulans sure are a tricky race. While cruising through the galaxy (the game starts in the Enterprise area in what sounds like events after the series ended) you run across a ship being attacked by its own race of people. After escorting the ship to its research lab, an archaeologist of sorts, the leader of the ship leaves you high and dry, and you left wondering what she was all about. As the story progresses, you'll find yourself going through the series, with Enterprise begetting The Original Series, The Original Series begetting The Next Generation, etc.

The story isn't all that great, but it is pretty good as you advance through the game. Though the story of this archeologist is the main story, you'll also be handling missions that the Federation gives to you that have nothing to do with it, such as helping scientists cure a system of planets.

The story is told through a series of in-game cutscenes that show ships floating in space, and when Archer is talking, for example, it will show his ship; it isn't flashy in the slightest, but it sets up the missions and ongoing objectives well enough. Plus, you can't argue with the actual captains from the series doing their own voices.

SINGLE PLAYER: GAMEPLAY
At first you start out with just one ship, which would be the Enterprise incase you were unaware (shame on you non-fan). As the Enterprise (or as the Federation fleet as will soon enough happen) you'll navigate through space, searching planets and space anomalies, doing battle with enemy ships, manning various stations, and much more. Though the bulk of the game seems to be combat related, there are some moments where the goal isn't destroy all the enemy ships.

As the commander of your ship/fleet, you'll be able to designate places to fly to (either point in normal mode and click or use the Back button to go to an overhead view to plan destinations better), enemies to target, change the speed at which you are heading, warp, repair systems, adjust power to systems, etc.

The main problem about the controls in the game isn't so much that they are too complex (you'll be confused in the beginning but soon get how they go), but once you get more than just your ship, it is near impossible to manually maneuver them and give them one command at a time; often times my fleet would stay positionary somewhere or do exactly what I didn't want them to do. The best thing I found is to simply have them all follow you, so that they go wherever you go, shoot whatever you have targeted, and that way you at least know that they are partially doing what you want. The computer partner AI is also bad at not knowing when their ships are getting blown to pieces, because when that hull starts to deplete, you'll have to manually jump to that ship (thankfully at least done easily by pressing on the designated area of the directional pad), click what you want them to fix, and then press the directional pad again in the direction of your ship to control it again.

Setting things like speed or changing your system focus is easy and done by holding the B-button down and scrolling up and down with the D-pad (speed) and holding the X-button and scrolling the thumbstick where you want to focus your attention. The default systems is set right in the middle, but you can move the cursor so that your crew focuses more on engines (speed), weapons (fire damage), or shields (better defense/heal quicker). You'll adjust these on the fly depending on your situation, so if you need to catch something you'll change your attention to engines, but if you find yourself in a battle you'll move to weapons. You can also put your cursor in various positions to focus not exclusively on one detail.

Combat (and the whole game for that matter) is very, very slow. I guess this is more true to the realm of the Star Trek series, but it is so tiring to slowly crawl towards a planet a good distance away or bank and turn slowly. You can warp in many cases if you have the power, but you'll often overshoot your target cause you don't know how to stop, stop to short, or any other number of factors. As for combat, there isn't too much strategy. When you get into range, you use the right trigger to fire your phasers, and you want to do medium length bursts to get the most bang for your buck, because once they are depleted they have to charge. Besides phasers, you've got photons as well, which you use with the left trigger by lining up the enemy ships (the closer the reticule is to the enemy the better shot you have at actually hitting them). The phasers are infinite, but you only have so many photons at your disposal for each mission.

The game was billed as a real time strategy game for some time, but it is actually pretty far from that level of gameplay. There isn't any resource gathering, and the only micromanagement comes from trying to make your AI squads do what you want them to do. Star Trek: Legacy feels more like an arcadey flight sim set in the Star Trek universe.

You'll have a lot of battles to complete and a lot of different situations to fix, but most of them involve ship-to-ship battles and escort/protection scenarios. Nobody likes escort/protection missions! This leads to the other big problem of the game – it is hard! Now, I'm one not to mind a challenge as long as it is there for a reason, but it is needlessly difficult because of stupid and unfair reasons. For starters, does four Federation fleet ships against like thirty Romulans sound fair? Nope, it doesn't. And then we come to the checkpoints of the game…and when I say checkpoints I actually mean none, because there aren't none. Surprise! So, say you've spent forty minutes trying a mission, and you end up losing when a rogue ship slipped in and took away the last ship you were escorting. Well, you can't go back five minutes to try and right the problem. Nope, instead you have to start the WHOLE mission over. Maybe some people have forty minutes they can waste over and over, but I'm not one of them.

MULTIPLAYER: GAMEPLAY
In the game there is one mode that is essentially two. When played as a single player game, it is called Skirmish, where you can set various parameters like maps, amount of players, etc. This same mode can also be played over Live with other players, where it is then just called Multiplayer.

In Multiplayer, you can either do Death Match, which is your typical all around game scenario you see in all the other games out there, while Co-op Wave is you and people you meet up with fighting wave after wave of non-relenting enemies. During both types you can select the number of players, number of teams, what era you are playing in, fleet size, time limit, command points, number of spawns, and spawn delay. In Multiplayer you can also choose what race you want to play as with the four being The United Federation of Planets, The Klingon Empire, The Romulan Empire, and The Borg Collective.

It plays just like the normal single player campaign, so if you liked it you'll like this, and if not you wont.

GRAPHICS
It is completely fair to say the graphics are just okay, because though the ships look pretty good (far from amazing looking though) the rest of the galaxy is pretty barren. You'll see a lot of stars, some good looking planets and nebula, but things like explosions and debris looks pretty poor.

SOUND
Much like graphics, it technically gets the job done, but barely. The sound effects are pretty minimal, as is music, with the only standout being the voicework, since you get all five captains voicing their characters from the various series. Hearing Archer sound like Archer isn't a big deal, but hearing William Shatner as Kirk is a blessing to Star Trek fans everywhere.

IN CONCLUSION
Star Trek: Legacy does some things well enough, but it fails to succeed at anything really. Things like insane difficulties, stupid AI, and generally slow gameplay makes this a game you definitely have to adjust to. It is okay, but that is about it. It isn't that great, it isn't that bad, but rather just an average game that will find more of an audience with the fans who'll be able to overlook the shortcomings because it is a Star Trek game.

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