When Encounters came out, I thought for the amount of money paid it was okay, but ONLY after you cheated to give you all the ships. The Campaign for Encounters was abysmal, and before you unlocked all the ships, the Multiplayer was also abysmal...not even worth anything in my book. After you unlocked them via a cheat, or if you were THAT patient, through the campaign, it may have been worth the money.
Star Trek Conquest Blows Encounters out of the water...by a LONG shot. Each element by itself (Turn based strategy, Empire Building, Top Down action battle or AI controlled battle) are not stellar, but combined, it makes for the out and out best Star Trek game period. I would have probably paid near the same price as a full out game instead of a budget title if I knew how good that game would be.
One of the things that seemed ignored too much by Star Trek Creators, was that they ignored the DS9 storylines, and especially the Dominion. Instead the concentrated on Borg...which, whilst you have your Borg player fans out there, never really struck me with the individuality of ships or background lore, or anything else. In leiu of playing Dominion I've always had to play Romulan. The creators of this game MUST have been Deep Space 9 Lovers like me. The situation of an all out galactic war, the inclusion of the Dominion, the Cardassians, and the Breen (yes, the Breen Empire in a game, we finally can see what they might be made of!), and the basic, fleets in battles makes for a Great Deep Space Nine game. They should have called it Deep Space 9: Conquest, instead.
I played my first game as a tutorial, starting as the Dominion (of course) on the easy setting and pitting myself against the Feds and Klinks (we'll see who wins the war this time around). There are 6 choices of empires to choose from, the Feds, Klinks, Roms, Dominion, Cards, and Breen. Each get 3 ships in their types of ships they can build. Feds get Defiants, Intrepids, and Galaxy classes. Klinks get the Bird of Prey, the Vorcha, and Negh'Var. The Dominion gets the fighters, cruisers, and Heavy Battle Cruisers. The Roms get the scout, and unknown (or not in the series as far as I can tell) and the Warbird. The Breen get their knowable ship, and can't identify the other two. Finally the Cardassians get the Hideki, I think it's a Galor, and haven't played the Cardassians enough to know the other.
These reflect the idea of a scout ship, a Heavy Cruiser, and a Dreadnought type ship for each race. You then get to select from three types of Admirals to start your first Armada. These are broken down into Attack Admirals (get bonuses when they attack or are on the offensive), Defense Admirals (get bonuses when they are attacked or are on the defensive) and Movement Admirals ( can have their fleets move farther in a turn than other generals). These generals gain experience RPG like, and as they level up, their abilities get stronger. They can get up to 4 levels, to become dominate Lords in their respective abilities.
You then start in a random system. In easy you can see all the other enemies, but in the medium and hard difficulties you cannot. You can create fleets ONLY in your home system. In other systems, once you conquer them and build a starbase you can replenish the fleets, but Admirals and the fleet creation can only come from one spot. This creates a strategic element to the game as you get farther from your own system as to how to get new fleets to the outskirts of your Dominion...er...I mean Empire, and keep them up. It also means that sometimes when you might push for victory, instead you'll retreat in order to make sure you still have a fleet there instead of your fleet being vanquished and you having to transport another fleet all the way back.
In your home system you also can create a special weapon once you have enough energy/research for it. This can vary from anything from the Genesis Device (which I hated since the Klingons kept on using it on me) to the Breen Virus, and other such weapons. These can be particularly useful if utilized at key points in the game against your opponents.
Otherwise, in every system, you have two build slots. In one of these is built a space station. A space station is vital in order to build new star ships for your fleets, to heal up your fleets, and to provide a basic system defense. You can build a normal station, or an advanced station. In the other slot you have a choice between a mining facility or a research facility. This of course will provide you either resources to build more ships or research to make stronger ships, items, etc. It's a balancing act just like any other RTS.
I went with an attacking Admiral and built up a fleet of Jem Hadar Fighters to go off exploring the galaxy. Building up mining and other items, eventually I got my first research done, and had options of getting stronger ships or facilities, cheaper ships or facilities and other items. Just like in the show, the only connection from Dominion Space into the rest of the Space of the Empires seemed to be via DS9, which in this game...I conquered and continued into Federation Space.
The battles were much like Encounters in controls, but the controls were a LOT better, and more intuitive. Furthermore ships were more balanced towards feeling like Star trek Star ships. (In a skirmish trials which we ran, ships of equal strenth actually took longer to fight than in Encounters, the battles were longer and slower paced, with the shields on multiple faces being the key to the battle. Turning to keep whichever shields you had up to the enemy). In great battles, expectedly, the smaller ships would blow up faster as concentrated fire took them out DS9 fashion, whilst stronger ships took quite a bit more blows.
If you went for an automatic battle, it would show icons of the ships and who fired on who, but it was faster, and you had les control.
We then took out the Federation, and then moved onto the Klingons. The Klingons had been doing their research however, and their ships were a LOT hardier then ours. The battles did not go well at first. The Dominion was flush with funds, and we centered many of our systems into research at that point, to get to a situation where our ships could counter the Klingons. Massive battles ensued (and once research into ships is done, the ship battles are longer and harder as ships can withstand more and have an even more star trek feel in ways).
Eventually we took out the Klingons and that was my first game. The second we played the Federation (weapons are different in how they were portrayed, and ships were slightly different, which took a little getting used to), and the Fog of War was up which made exploration a bit more star trek like. Unfortunately there was no diplomatic solutions available for the Feds, so it was war as usual.
It is really simple to figure out (I didn't even have to read the manual) but there is some sort of hidden depth to it as well, making it have some sort of addictive quality. There are more ships in skirmish which you can unlock, and in skirmish you can play mano-eh-mano in a ship to ship battle (where you can see relative strengths and weaknesses), or in fleet combat (which is also cool).
In comparison to other games it could qualify as the following
BotF comparison is that this game strategically based, is excessively simple. No where near the turnbased map options, or the diplomatic options. In the actual battles however, the graphics are better (obviously), the options are more in regards to the types of commanders, and your control of ships, and personal control of ships. It does have a half similiarity to BotF in that you still have to balance resources and research out, which makes for a deeper game. In addition this game has special weapon effects which adds something different to the mix that BotF doesn't have. However BotF blows it away in the RTS arena.
In comparison to Star Fleet Command, you don't have as many options in your ship controls, heck you have no ship upgrades for individual ships. All you have is your choice of commanders. However you control more in the "Dynaverse" or galaxy in what to attack, and where to take out enemies, so though SFC blows this game away in the Tactical battles, this blows SFC away in the Strategic level per individual player (though a whole group via dynaverse is probably better group wise speaking).
In comparison to Armada, well, that's a little harder to compare. You have more control in Armada over your fleets, and no turnbased arenas. I suppose this game gives you more time to think about what to do next. In addition this game has admirals, which Armada could have used (Conquest:Frontier Wars style) but didn't, so that's a plus in the games direction.
So this game can't really outrank any other game in each individual section, but when you combine all of these items together, it really makes for a killer game.
In fact, it's a great Star Trek WAR game, for a DS9 universe, though it stinks for a typical Next Generation Universe game where everyone is diplomatic and loves everyone else.
It could be an even better game if it had Multiplayer for conquest mode, especially Multiplayer over the internet or other fashion. In fact that would be awesome and add unlimited playability. A mode which put you into the Original Series (just think you still could have Feds, Roms, and Klinks, but also add in the Gorn and Tholians maybe) or other eras of play would have also added to this game.
Overall, for the budget price, and how good this game is, I REALLY suggest any Star Trek fan with a Wii, or PS2 to get it. There is some sort of addictive quality about it that just keeps you going, and even if it's simple, it has something that just has that Strategic type edge that keeps you focused and concentrated on the task at hand. All the miscellaneous elements which individually might be weak, combine to make one terrific game.
Topic: Star Trek Conquest (Read 1112 times)