The interface is pretty slick. It's reminiscent of Star Trek, without actually being Star Trek. I guess the LCARS interface was just too difficult to put into an MMO... That's a ding purely from a Trekkie standpoint. And lets face it, you can bet your plasma manifolds that I am a Trekkie. And and engineering trek nerd to boot. So that little omission is somewhat saddening. Other than that, the interface is standard MMO fare, especially if you're familiar with Champions Online.
The character creator is an excellent system. Again, the interface is still pretty standard. It's serviceable. The options, like in Cryptic's other major MMO offering, allow you to put together a standard character quickly or to put together a completely original character with a little effort. There have been a few rumblings about missing parts from this {obscure Trek alien reference} or that {obscure Trek alien reference}. While, again as a Trekkie, I can recognize these missing parts, I don't fault them for that one. If you give everyone everything right up front, where do you go from there? What do you offer at a later time to new subscribers or to as part of expansions? I personally think that the character creator as is, is an excellent one. Do your worst, I say.
Getting into the game was pretty easy and like most MMO's, the game leads you around by the nose until you have a basic grasp of the games workings. After the initial missions you're dropped in a Starbase, a city-like hub with shops, quests, and the like. The circular layout can be a little annoying at first, but you'll figure it out quickly enough. Go requisition your bridge crew and modify your ship to your liking. When you start, there are three ship hulls. You can mix and match any of four components to create your own ship. The components, Saucer, Strut, Nacelles, and Pylons, are easy enough to swap out. But you can only mix and match components from your current class. You can then apply a base coat, titled Material, and then an overcoat for the paint job. These can be applied to the individual components. There are currently about 10-12 options on this part. The colors, however, are so muted, that it's hard to see any real difference in most of them. Forget that old Romulan Bird of Pray (see below) from the original series with the bird wings painted on the bottom. Nothing is that bright or even defined.
Once you're out in the world, you'll find that the Sector map really sucks. I mean sucks like that thing at the bottom of the pool that sucks people down and kills them. Yeah, it's that bad. MMO's work best when you can immerse yourself in them. In this case, you lose the sense of these big, super-fast spaceships because you're forced to piddle around between systems in this slow, plodding manner. And it doesn't look like space... You don't get the feeling of being in a huge universe because you're not. It's an MMO, I get that. Each sector is like a continent in WoW or a Zone in CO. You get quests of different levels, but for the most part, the sector is based on your current level. I can get that. That's part of the MMO business. However, the big blue streaks that layout paths from one system to another? Come on, I've seen ever single episode of every series. I've never seen anything like that except when they've show close ups of where they plotted out a course to a given system/planet. And then it goes away. What possible reason would we have for something like this?
The next thing is that upon reaching a system, you enter an instance. The game automatically groups you if you have the appropriate quest and there are others entering the same instance. This can be helpful and it's something that I actually liked. From this point, the actual game, the game mechanics take over and the game shows it's true colors, for better or worse. If you played the tactical battles in Pirates of the Burning sea, then you've played this before. The addition of the Z axis doesn't have a lot of effect other than when firing weapons with a 45 degree cone, such as disruptor cannons or photon torpedoes. In this case, the nose of your ship has to pointing toward the enemy, above or below you. Still, there are only four shields, not the expected six (fore, aft, starboard, port, dorsal and ventral). Add in the fact that you can't go completely vertical and you've got a four-sided target. This, after the initial disappointment, isn't a huge problem. I still found the ship combat to be fun, especially when in the middle of a giant scrum with three other captains against a dozen enemies.
Planet-side missions I found to be fun as well. Once I got past the initial problems with my bridge officers not showing up for away missions, making them nigh impossible to complete, away team missions were quite fun. They were not all that memorable but as I said, I enjoyed them as a break from ship-board combat.
Micromanagement... Not my favorite thing, to be sure. But for some reason, I enjoyed the MM-style mini-game that Bridge Officers present you with. You can constantly upgrade them, train them, and improve them. The other thing that I loved was the ability to rename them. Yeah, I had a bridge crew that consisted of the wife as a vulcan, and my dogs as bolians, bajorans, and some unknown species. That was a great thing for me.
All in all, the game is shaping up to be pretty cool. Will it be cool over the long term? That I'm not so sure about. I will probably buy the game once it's out, but it remains to be seen whether it can hold my attention once the Trekkie in my logs off. Then we'll see how much I enjoy the game or if it was just the Trekkie in me getting a quick chance to sit in the center seat...
So far... 6/10
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