Star Trek Online (STO) is a free to play MMORPG that takes place within the Star Trek universe, bringing the decades of lore, characters, settings and alien races into a single large scale MMO world and populating it with science fiction fans. At launch Star Trek Online required a game purchase and monthly fee for access which provided the game a solid foundation of funding to develop a high quality adventure. Star Trek Online has been free to play since 2012.
Star Trek Online takes place in the year 2409 and throws players into a galaxy at war which is a familiar setting at various points of the television and film franchise. Throughout the MMO fans of the Star Trek series will recognise many of the games locations, characters and ships which helps adds to the immersion aspects of the game and provides obvious additional appeal to the die hard Star Trek fans.
Other well known races also appear as you progress with familiar faces such as the Borg, Species 8472, Krenim and others providing opportunities for PvE and questing. Players who aren’t strongly familiar with the Star Trek universe won’t feel left out though with enough story and general science fiction themes built into the game that you don’t need to be a Trekkie for a fun experience.
Players themselves can belong to one of three factions in the game including the Federation, Romulan and Klingon who are at war with each other and in turn alters your available ships and central game locations. Star Trek Online is not one to shy away from character customisation either with a wealth of options available allowing you to create your own Star Fleet officer from a range of races and cosmetic variants (or alternatively not in Star Fleet at all). Similar customisation also extends to your personal ship which allows many science fiction fans to live their dream of being a captain in the Star Trek universe.
While much of your time is spent playing starship captain you’ll also need to call on other crew members for away missions where you’ll fight against enemies in direct combat in addition to the ship based combat and day to day ship management. These two combat types are closely linked meaning some quests will even involve a mixture of both and ties in perfectly to the overall game theme. These two combat styles also provide fantastic diversification with ship battles being long strategic affairs while away missions are often faster paced and more in line to your typical World of Warcraft style MMO.
Like any MMO players can spend just as much time outside of combat engaging with the various mechanics and features of Star Trek Online which include the standard array of crafting, raid dungeons, trading and general world exploration.
Summary:
- An MMORPG set in the Star Trek universe that allows you to play as the Federation, Klingon or Romulan.
- Mixture of ship based combat and ground based away missions.
- Customise your captain, ship and crew to roleplay in a vast science fiction universe.
- Fully featured MMO with trading, combat, crafting, raids and even community quests through the Foundry.
- Paid MMO on launch transitioned to free to play since 2012.
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Review Platform: PC
Rock
This game has so much potential. Graphics, content, strategy, creativity and fun are amazing. The fact that it is Star Trek in and of itself creates a fictitional world that I am already familiar with and allows my imagination to run wild. However…
I played this game for two years, but have come to a point where I just can’t do it anymore. The bugs in this game are out of control. Most of them are just annoyances but some are actually game breakers, making it almost impossible to play at times. Even worse, just about the time you figure things out well enough to actually become good at the game, they nerf everything to the point that you feel like a beginner again. Please, don’t get me wrong, I love a challenge, but instead of creating more difficulty they strip you of everything you earn and create.
Most players seem to run around 2-3k DPS, while I have ran a solid 15k DPS. That doesn’t bother me because most people don’t spend as much time and money on this game that I have, but when I run a single 15 minute mission and die 8 times when I used to run the mission without dying at all (as long as I paid attention) it kind of takes the fun out of the game.
I am letting this game go. Maybe one day Cryptic will actually figure out why people get so frustrated with this game, in the meantime…I’m boldly going to some other mmo in hopes of finding a new and better frontier.
Jay
I played for about 2 months, in that time I was able to cap and get fully geared and get to the end of the game! Yay? Well it took running the same maps from level 45-60 over and over and over, then when you start doing some real damage, you get to continue doing them for really no reason at all, over and over. There is no endgame, while you would expect there to be. You run the same missions from level 45-end. I am completely bored, although there is stuff to do, its all work-work-work, for nothing.
PvP – severely unbalanced. Most people only run a set few ships and everyone goes for damage output. Rarely does anyone make healers or tanks unless maybe theres a fleet battle, which are d rate in entertainment. Its hard enough to even get together enough people to do it.
They also pretty much force you to buy ridiculously priced ships off their item store to even be remotely competitive with other players. Some events have people paying hundreds yes hundreds of dollars and still not get the ship they want. Its a real sick twisted marketing scam. I would recommend a subscription game because you will put a ton of money into this game trying to get enjoyment out of it.
Anonymous
This reviewer is wrong. This is yet another company that doesn’t think Mac users play games. There is no version available for the Mac…
Games Finder Admin
The Mac client was shut down in February 2016 and the review updated accordingly. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.