It starts out with a character generation system outdated by much more than the game's actual age, goes on with a completely heart- and soulless tutorial, an interface that is not only confusing and uncomfortable to use, but also incredibly ugly and leads into mediocre gameplay and horrid graphics. I am incredibly relieved that this game is free to play now, for I could hardly stomach how it must feel to have spent money on this. I'd have to get paid to play it and I'd have to get paid even more to recommend it without swallowing my tongue. Simply horrible and a shame even for the Star Trek franchise.… Expand

Very disappointing to a die-hard Trekkie that really looked forward to this. Cryptic got one very fundamental and important thing completely and utterly wrong. Star Trek is about exploration. "To reach out to new life and new civilizations, and to boldly go where no man has gone before." Star Trek Online is all combat, combat, combat, combat, more combat, and even more combat. There is no exploration. Don't get me wrong. I thought the combat, especially the ship fights, was fun, if a bit unrealistic. One lone Federation ship cannot defeat 9 Klingon ships (3 at a time, but still), especially when those ships are warships. Sure, Star Trek is a bit unrealistic, but it has always had a tinge of realism that made you go "That could actually be our future." I did not get this feeling for a moment while playing Star Trek Online. The leveling system wasn't bad, and was a good tie-in to the actual ranks. The graphics were amazing, for what little actually had to be done. You are mostly limited to being in orbit of a planet when in space, while the "Sector Space" - the space where you pick what system you want to go to - was big but felt too much like a "Level Select" to me. Having to buy the Klingon and Ferrengi races (Note: I may not be understanding the method of obtaining C-Points correctly), and only offering the freed Borg as a perk to buying a Lifetime subscription, rubbed me the wrong way as well. All in all, Star Trek Online is an incredibly disappointing game that focuses far and beyond too much on combat and not on what Star Trek is really all about: Exploration. I will not be renewing after the free month.… Expand

I decided to come back to this after buying on launch originally a couple of years ago. Originally I played for about 2 weeks before becoming bored with the repetitive and buggy experience. By now the game should be in better shape, right? First the good. The space warfare is fun. For a time. Now the bad. Over the course of the couple of years since launch it actually appears to have become MORE buggy. How this has been accomplished I have no idea, but the situation is so bad I actually started to suspect some kind of corporate-espionage style sabotage. Over the course of my two days replaying, here is SOME of what I discovered.

1. Certain HUD tooltip elements don't deactivate on mouseover properly, instead flickering in a seizure-inducing manner. 2. The speed control slider moves up and down of its own accord at inopportune moments.

3. Gas cloud texture maps are broken

4. Away team members vanish without explanation on occasion

5. Keyboard shortcuts for abilities sometimes don't work - and I mean don't work at all, not just a long delay.

6. If you 'pin to taskbar' the game icon then try to launch the game from it, it will appear to work until the point of login, when the game will freeze at "connecting to account server". I noticed several people on the STO forums complaining about this and not realising it was related to the 'pin to taskbar' function. They were simply fobbed off or insulted.

7. Planets sometimes appear as transparent circles, showing the starfield behind

8. NPCs vanish (which is annoying when they are required to finish a quest)

9. Invisible phaser beams from invisible enemies sometimes shoot you and your team

Now I'm bored. **** game, forget it.… Expand

If you like the concept of City of Heroes in space, then go for it. Otherwise don't bother. Check their or the steam forums, they're full of all the issues this game has. I played for 30 days only to realize there was next to nothing to do once you hit the level cap. Add to that the lackluster way they inform you of what your skills actually do. And if your not psychic and you by accident put points into the wrong skills.....too bad for you, there is NO WAY to respec your skills.… Expand

I actually liked the ground combat better. I mean they put so much work into the character creation and if you know how to play right some of the battles are exciting. The ship stuff is boring and always the same. It's always taking place with a different skybox and you use the same set of abilities. You move to slow even with the abilities like evasive maneuvers to feel like it';s got any form of action. Most of all I wanted the space aspect to take place from the bridge with a little more depth then a high end flash game that is ultimately is. Too many "i" people working on this, ruined it. It would have been great if the space combat took place from the bridge and the ground combat just had a little more variety.… Expand

Now 2 years and 8 months since the game has launched and nearly 2 years since my initial review. In that time STO has not improved much. Failing in a subscription model Cryptic/PWE switched to a F2P model. Unlike many other F2P models, this one is a blatant cash grab and none of the transaction can be considered "micro". As far as content and systems go, nothing from my previous review has been addressed such as exploration, crafting PvP, factional systems, etc... leaving these important game systems in poor shape. In addition, the player-base has received word that the Feature Episode Series has been canceled, these missions were highly acclaimed by the player base. The only deep system the game has is the Duty Officer System, the new Fleet System was recently introduced but is indicative of the heavy grind found in asian MMO's where the reward is hardly worth the effort placed into it. From here, I will review the game's new season, Season 6 Under Seige. With $7 costumes to $20, you can only get per character, and lottery boxes with poor rewards abounding, the direction of economic model of this game will cause its ultimate failure. Season 6 took nearly 8 months to develop and while the system and generally the artwork are great, the poor content, rewards, and buggy aspects far out-shadow anything good. The monitization hooks abound in the Fleet System with some estimates saying the dollar cost of a fully functional Starbase is $1,500. The introduction of Season 6 came plagued with game breaking bugs to the Foundry, exchange, mail system, combat system to which Cryptic has been slow to respond to. In all, Season 6 has a good foundation that was poorly capitalized on by Cryptic. Even though this "shoot-em-up" version of the Star Trek Universe is F2P, I would recommend passing until the game could be fleshed out more.… Expand

This game really had promise one it was out from under the thumb of Atari's negligence. But barely a year from being purchased by the Chinese game company Perfect World, the game has devolved into an asian cashgrab grinder. Expect to grind for months at endgame to (moderately) progress your character, unless you want to buy the in-game currency which everything now costs. The Season 7 update leaves even the Ferengi in awe.… Expand

What an absolute waste of my time. Do you like varied missions? Do you like doing more than engaging in repetitive and mundane space battles over and over and over again without having the option to skip or use stealth to achieve objectives without resorting to combat? Well then look elsewhere, friend. Sure it looks pretty enough and has lots of customizing options, but that's where the appeal ends. This is a Star Trek game for those who hate nuance, intelligence, or diplomatic solutions. This is only for those who want to fight over and over and over again. If you want real Star Trek, dig up Bridge Commander. You'll have plenty more fun than in Cryptic's piece of trash.… Expand

Worst game ever. Already beat the game. Nothing special on this. Don`t buy it wase of money. Crypt = money $$$$. Don`t fall in this crapy game its not even close to a "standerd" mmorpg. Its more Starfleet command 4 not star trek online. However if you buy don`t cry. The misions are at 1 point nice if you follow the "story line"but when hit the maxs level its all about pvp/patrol misions. And let me say its real borring. I know i will go on the bad light but let me say this i have warn you. Don`t fall in this crap like i do. Even i have buy the Special edition and life time subscribe "yah stupid" so let me say don`t fal.… Expand

This is a game that programmers and artists clearly loved, but that managers and executives cynically farmed for cash. Despite staggering beauty in spots, and a few nice visual ideas, the space combat, though modestly clever, gets repetitive, the ground combat is clumsy and jarring, the writing juvenile, and the rest of the game as deep as a TMZ gossip piece. The community is uninvolved in-game, the crafting system is crippled, and the complex, subtle Star Trek universe of diplomacy, discovery, and wonder, is replaced by killing, more killing, and trying to sell a limited inventory of items that no one else wants. Fun for 30 days, but less of an MMO than a desk accessory.… Expand

Realism is key for me in games, as I am a hardcore gamer, and a Trekie to boot. To me, this MMO is a poor execution of everything Star Trek means to me. I have a list of things I don't like, most of which people have mentioned already. -scale of star systems: according to the game, it is only a couple dozen kilometers from a planet and it's moon/asteroid belt (!?!). Asteroid belts don't orbit planets. In STO every planet has asteroids, it kinda got to me. No reason not to die. No economy. (WoW clone type economy doesn't count in my book) Repetitive everything. No reason to buy stuff, everything is dropped by loot or mission reward. No reason to socialize. Frankly, no reason to play. :( Things I liked: phasers and photon torpedoes.... ground combat the first few times.… Expand

The game fails to deliver in many many ways. But, mostly its just devoid of content. The combat system is 'ok' in space.. but, its basically rehashed City of Heroes/Villains and Champions Online. Also, the developers have done a poor job of engaging the community. If you played SW:G at release... then, as bad as that was, STO is worse. If the game didn't have the Star Trek IP... it would have no playerbase at all, in my opinion.… Expand

Space combat is something other games can look to take a bit from; not too complex to make you want to rip your hair out, but just enough to make you want more. Ground is boring to say the least; Nothing real ground breaking, for the most part I feel like I'm playing WoW back at level 30(lack of abilities and major difference in characters). The biggest killer is the fact that yet again if you buy it your paying $60 for beta. Zero foresight to at least make the first few weeks bearable. No content to ease leveling for Klingons. And to top it all off the NPCs in the klingon area feel like they dont even have a lootable. I collected more loot in the first 6 levels of the Fed area than in the next 10 levels in the klingon area. Tons of potential but im not paying for the next 3 months to wait for cryptic to release patches to bring the game to "release" status.… Expand

Game gets a 4 simply due to the storyline missions...of which there isn't enough and they are spread too thin. "Finished" the game in under 5 days /played. At max level, can only do "daily" missions, which are literally on a 24 hour timer...and of which there is *one* of. (The other, at the time of this writing is broken...pvp for feds) The klingon side, which would be the pvpers...is drying up as well. Last night's queues: 97 fed, 4 klingons. 75 fed, 2 klingons. 55 fed, 0 klingons. etc. This was for space missions....ground missions had 20+ feds waiting, and 0 klingons across the board. Cryptic blew it AGAIN. I will NOT be giving them any more money, ever. The "bait" of the 45 day patch is crap too.… Expand

Another unfinished mess by Cryptic. Pointless skill trees, worthless itemisation, broken combat and just like their previous failed MMO Champions Online: Retarded game changing last minute decisions. Not to mention that this POS has a cash shop despite being a pay monthly game, and has purchasable content despite it's only just released. Why wasn't that content part of the game? Because they are greedy idiots with no long term plan for this game.… Expand

STO is a poor game all around. No 360 degree movement in space combat making space combat a 2d snoozefest, the AI in the PvE portions of the game is awful, ai combat movement is limited, they rarely reinforce shields or take any defensive measures, difficulty(and there is very little of it) is attained my the usual mmo convention of adding more power the npc (ie. they're weapons do more damage than my identical weapons) instead of actually developing a decent AI, instead artificially inflating damage and shield power but not making combat anymore interesting and less fun as the game progresses. Exploration is nowhere to be found(star clusters are a joke), Ground combat is more of the same old loot and dice-roll based combat, which was a fine system in the 1970's when rpg's were played on paper, but its become archaic and laughable in an interactive game. Graphically the game is a mixed bag, the 3d models look fine as do the back drops in space but the texture work is some of the worst i have seen, the ship damage texture is awful, and the death animations for space are embarrassing; the ships disappear and are replaced by a stock explosion, no ship parts or debris flying off, (reminds me of space invaders). The future does not look bright for STO if the first real "content" patch is any indication, badge grinding and raiding seem to be the focus going forward. Sad that no company has had the guts to break free of the eq/wow mmo mold. With STO, Cryptic solidifies itself as the shovelware king of the mmo industry with this timid, soulless and boring approach to one of the best sciFi IP's around.… Expand

Buggy, laggy, and not fun. Yet another game that imitates a MMO in order to charge a monthly fee yet offers no incentive or motivation to actually team up to accomplish a task. Why are there games that do more for multiplayer while not charging a fee? Cryptic excels at squandering potential when it comes to game design.

Your generic quest/grind MMOG. The multiplayer elements are completely ignorable as it is solo game by design with co-op elements added in. Not really impressed as it just like many other MMOGs out there right now who have already perfected their genre. I guess if you're a fan of the new age star trek (enterprise, the new movie and such) this is for you, older trekkies will find too many plot holes and retcons of the older series. TL:DR This game would be worth it if it were free, however the monthly fee is not worth it.… Expand

This game is a shame. It has no StarTrek at all. It is all combat, at space mainly, even the combat at ground is bad. I admit the space combat is fun to play, but all is space combat, no exploration, no diplomacy, no Star Trek at all. The skill system is useless. What is the point in having four officers with a punch of skills to level up, when you can only use five or six skills at maximum? It has no sense to raise for example 2 space skills per officer when you can only use 5. The missions are mainly go there and get an object, or go there and kill those guys. The klingon faction is a waste of time, no fun missions, no content, just a bit of pvp with a painful difficult level. Stay away from this game please.… Expand

This has got to be one of the worst MMOs ever created. Even the term "MMO" doesn't apply since it's so over-instanced that it might as well be a single player game. What little content actually exists in the game is bland, boring, shallow and extremely repetitive. The ground combat is an utter joke. Space combat is also trivially easy and gets boring very quickly. Furthermore the utterly disrespectful way in which the developers are treating their customers is enough for anyone (no matter how much they love Star Trek) to quit instantly. This game is a definite no-no even for hard core Trekkies.… Expand

For a Star Trek game there is NOTHING about this game that is Star Trek but it's look. After 10 days of playing i had cleared ALL content on the federation side. Cleared all content in 10 days of an MMO, WOW! No diplomacy No exploration (what they have is a joke) Combat TOTALLY untrue to Star Trek. (ya. i was blowing up Negh'var Klingon Battleships in a 200 year old Miranda class.) I could go on listing massive issues with this game and its relation to Star Trek for a while. It really is that bad and i couldn't be more sad about this outcome. A game i had been waiting for for 10 years. A game I wish steam would give me my money back on. If you like mindless almost endless combat, this game is for you! If your looking for a Star Trek game, this one is FAR from it.… Expand

This game is so incomplete. You have 3 missions, all with a different skin on it. You have 3 ship type to choose from. There is a complicated amount of weapons/equipment that have stats that will mean nothing to most people. Ground combat, ai, the enviroment are all in need of reworking. Looks worst then other older mmos looked on the planets. This game has nothing new to offer, and without the star trek name would probably not have made it past testing.… Expand

Some really nice visuals, but the game itself is horrible. Every mission falls into 2 catagories - 1) fly a couple of patrols killing ships at each waypoint (about 90 percent of the time) and 2) going to a planet and playing a very badly designed 1st person shooter (about 10 percent of the time). The space combat is not 3d, and is so mindless you might as well be shooting at a block - the ground combat is so buggy and mindless you just need to turn on autoshoot and walk forward an inch every 40 seconds or so. Stay far away from this one folks, your gaming money is better spent on something worthy.… Expand

A good attempt at the franchise but they could have used another year of development for the ground combat system (Champion's Engine), and the space combat is only good because Cryptic didn't come up with it, its a dumped down direct rip of the combat system in Starfleet Command 3. Personally, I'll rebuild an old system and play SFC3, rather than pay Cryptic. As a trekkie my expectations were pretty low, and even Cryptic was able to fly right under them without any effort, literally. Not good.… Expand

This is game completely miss what Star Trek franchise was about. It only looks like star trek on the surface under the hood it everything that made the shows great. And manages to mess up all the other things it tried to do to make it fun. Ground combat is a joke, the space ship combat could be fun expect that all the super hero powered ships seem to encourage button mashing spam. The crafting is bad joke. And so just about everything else about this game.… Expand

Whilst the game is great for Star Trek fans, which I am one of them, it will slowly fade into the nether regions of "terrible games". Visually, it's a nice game. Content wise, it's a decent game. Long-term playability it's dismal. I've counted up about 4 different activities you can do and all the missions are a randomization of those activities. There is a lot of positive reviews of this game because it's new. Give it 6 months and you'll find membership dropping and those positive opinions changing to "mediocre".… Expand

A disappointing and embarrassing attempt to recreate the TNG-era Star Trek universe in a massively multiplayer setting. Persistent, unresolved, showstopping technical problems with the servers and the client are the primary reason why I rated this game so low. Due to the promising space combat, I would rate the game a solid 5.5 if all the technical issues disappeared. But even that very nice-looking space combat gets boring after a while, because the game is so repetitive. Highly recommended to avoid, especially if you are a Star Trek fan and don't want to ruin your opinion of the franchise.… Expand

I have a feeling this game would have been so much better if not made by cryptic. Since it was though it was released far to early with a lack of content, boring quests, horrendous ground combat, and without any real fun factor. Also with all the instancing I don't think it should be called a MMO. I regret my purchase, Buyer Beware.

I am an avid Star Trek Fan. I love this game. I played it in BETA. When the game was like 3 years away from being released... The graphics are good, Sound good... controls are excellent... The problem you will find with this game like myself, is the boring gameplay. Not that the gameplay is boring, but you get bored doing the same thing over and over and over again!

The space combat is new and fun but that is the only redeemable quality about the game. The ground/planet combat really just looks and feels incomplete, like it received no love from the developers. There also isn't enough built in emphasis on playing with others, something that is more and more common and necessary in MMO's. I also, and this might just be me, wanted to be a member of a ships crew and work as a team. That was not the direction they chose to go with STO where everyone is the captain of their own ship. I really think that was a mistake and that someone will strike gold when they figure out how to design an MMO around that style of gameplay.… Expand

STO is now F2P so i gave it a try for 4 weeks.
The first 3 weeks of gameplay was interrupted by daily patches and daily server shutdowns to fix the broken patches.
leveling was extremely fast,and boring doing the same cookie cutter missions over and over at each level.I reached the level cap in 1 week and thats when the real boredom started.After reaching the level cap there is nothing to do except a few STF missions which you need to do hundreds of times each in order to try to get the good gear that you need to participate in pvp.
The game seems to be a typical low budget cash cow game. The community forums require a cash payment in order to gain access to them. some of the mission rewards called mystery boxes require a cash payment in order to open the box and receive your reward for completing the mission.
A never ending stream of bugs and glitches seems to be the major features of this game.
STO makes the same mistake that many other F2P games make, they seem to feel that since it is F2P that all the user can be treated as,and used as,beta testers to weed out and report the bugs and glitches that infest the poor quality patches and updates.If I want to be a beta tester I`ll go play a beta game. when I play a live game,either F2P or P2P, I don`t want to be the lab rat that tests the poor quality patches and updates.If they can`t be bothered to do a quality job creating and testing their patches and updates why should I have to be burdened with finding and reporting the bugs and glitches in their patches and updates.
overall the gameplay reminds me of some cheap knockoff of an old NES type game.
As with many other F2P games the customer service in this game is dreadful at best and non existent at it`s worst. This game is hardly worthy of the Star Trek name, I expected much better.
If your just looking for another pointless low budget,generic grindy, cash cow game then you`ll love this game.Personally I wasn`t the least bit impressed with it.… Expand

Sadly, once your get past the eye candy what you are left with is a game troubled with mediocrity, at best, and outright disdain for gamers, at worst. Yes, the rabid fans of STO will defend it to the end but the simple truth is that we have been offered a shallow, poorly constructed, shell of a single player game. Perhaps it can be saved but I highly doubt it. If you read their forums things have gotten so bad that they are banning "I quit" threads. The question to ask is if this is for the benefit of the community are a desperate attempt to impede opinion. Thanks Cryptic for putting the final nail in the coffin of Trek games.… Collapse

This doesn't feel like a game that should be charging a monthly sub. The starship combat is tons of fun. However, everything else, particularly the ground combat, just feels like an unwelcome distraction, and I find myself praying that whatever random encounter I'm in doesn't lead to an away team mission. I even suspect that the space combat will lose it's luster in 30+ hours. Also, low difficulty curve, high level variance, and lots of instancing doesn't leave this game very multiplayer friendly.… Expand

I'm sorry I bought this game! At best this game is only half completed. It lacks any serious content. The developers must of thought everyone just wanted to do PvP or patrol mission. Not enough episodic missions to level with. Exploration mission are cheap on XP's. Oh and those new worlds you are supposed to boldly go and explore equate to nothing more than test planet patches, with a real estate area equal to the half the circumference of the great forge area in WOW, or the area around the space dock in Theed if playing Star Wars Galaxies. There is no crafting system to speak of, unless to call scanning a cloud in space, or a cheap graphic to get an anomaly harvesting, and using the so-called harvested items to turn banal equipment into negligibly better banal equipment. It becomes mind-numbing after 12 levels because the templates used for missions both space and ground is so limited, nothing seems new, it all follows a very basic formula. I made the mistake of buying the digital deluxe version. Do not buy any version of this game, don't use it if they give it to you for free!!!… Expand

50 dollars, for a game that takes 5 days to complete. NOT WORTH THE MONEY. all the weapons have almost the same damage, or the same. Ground combat is about the worst I have ever seen in a game. if you can even play it. Alot of the time your guys beam down 2 a planet inside the grpound and cant move. triggers for completing missions offten dont work, so you will find yourself do the same mission 3 times to activate the trigger for completion. 2D plain in space, where there is a floor and ceiling, really... WOW, cant get worse than this..?? right? Wrong. The PvP you will spend more time waiting than playing.. ALOT more. I waiting 2 hrs. once to get into a PvP..Then it stated, 35 people vs me alone. I died in about 30 seconds. Was that worth the 2 hr wait. not even close. This is probley one of the worst games I EVER played. We all know now why the life time membership, was pre-order only. This game deserves to be in the 5 dollar bin at your local Walmart.… Expand

Initial excitement quickly turns to boredom once you realise that ship to ship combat involves little more than mashing the space bar to fire all phases and occasionally hitting an ability when things come into range. Planet scouting missions will leave you hunting for a tiny white dot in a space full of stars. Another disappointment from Cryptic.

Buggy, laggy, and not fun. Yet another game that imitates a MMO in order to charge a monthly fee yet offers no incentive or motivation to actually team up to accomplish a task. Why are there games that do more for multiplayer while not charging a fee? Cryptic excels at squandering potential when it comes to game design.

Graphics are okay but unfortunatelly i don't remember the sounds. Starting with a very booring storyline, and when you complete, than you can just after leveling. The characters modelling are terrible. Contains a lots of loading screen and this is the worst in this game and every (which have) MMORPG games. When i play with an MMORPG games i don't want to see a loading screen looks like WoW. Have a lots of ship battles in the space and this is also horrible. This game have a booring gameplay, and if you not really like, not try this. Free to play but i don't want to play it again.… Expand

Uggg. Another game with great potential and a background story that is unique. Again we have another game with stale mechanics. If you made the graphics neutral you could probably swap this out for LOTR Online and have the same game. The linear quest lines have been dated for over a decade now. It is a shame the makers couldn't give this title some originality instead of just banking on the name.

WOW game mechanics like linear progression, tank-nuker-healer, taints every opinion I have on a game; basically I loath it. I've been there, done that, and I don't want to do it anymore.

Season 7 did horrible things to the economy, negatively altered the play style of a large portion of their player base and was ushered in with corporate doublespeak. Cash shop -> Lock boxes -> and now creative removal of in game means of acquiring currency in an effort to force you to buy with real life money.
Season 6 was grindy but still fun, season 7 is just grind. Thank you China.

The S7 Update is the clearest indication that STO is a Pay to Win game. Every aspect of advancement at End Game requires an epicly slow grind. Comrade DSthal is Overlord of Grind and Dementing Returns. STO will never be the same, it is a fraud for them to claim to be F2P.

The best thing going for this game is the character creation at the very start of the game. You can change almost everything about your character's face and body, even your uniform color scheme. From there it goes down hill. Ground combat is glitchy and dull. You spend the entire time pressing one or two buttons over and over. Space combat is similar but without a group of 4 NPCs following you for help. Instead now you press "fire all weapons" over and over while spinning in circles. Quests are dull and lifeless. Differences in quest types are very few. You're constantly fighting the same kinds of ships and ground enemies. There is little to no change in the game, and I played until level 30 or so. Ship tier customization is a joke. Personal class choices are a joke and don't really affect you in space but they do a little bit on the ground. The entire MMO is a cluster of instances with no real base. The way you travel is through a bland and near empty tactical map, traveling from one instance to another. Horrible game, horrible MMO, horrible score. It only gets a 4 because the game was fun for the first 30 minutes. What you see in 30 mins. is what the game is, just repeated over more dull levels.… Expand

I have played this for four days. Giving it a really good go , probably knocking up 25 hours play time, and I'm bored. So far it has been laggy (almost as bad as Champions) but mostly offers no reason that I have yet found to team up with another player. This could have been a single player game, for £30 it might have been worth it, a monthly fee for a single player experience is certainly not worth it. And the lag really does get to you. A quick flick to EvE or WoW and you are quickly reminded of how smooth and seamless multiplayer games should be. Not to mention they should be multi player! (durr) this game offers no reason that I have found in four days to intereact with other players at all. I love Star Trek, I don't like this game. I have cancelled my subs , but would love to be able to return in a few months with a better experience. At the moment your subs are paying for a Beta game to have the contents added that shouldbe there from the start - like any semblence of multiplayer for a start… Expand

Trivial diffuculty, repetitive content, bugs and lacking server stability, canned copy and paste replies to support tickets totally missing the issue dominate, making it difficult to enjoy the game. After a week you have killed more Klingons and Romulans then aired on the show during the past 40 years. This got nothing to do with Star Trek, this is just a generic MMO grinder with Star Trek skin. In fact it's not even realy MMO considering the first M standing for Massive. It's heavily instanced (Lobbies ~40 players, fleet action zones ~20 players and regular grinding zones 5 players).… Expand

Very linear and repetitive content. Many places where you will be forced to repeat "exploration" (aka either combat with 5 vessels, or hitting the f key on 5 things) missions, or defend sector missions because of a clear lack of content. Re-playability? Not unless you ant to do the exact same linear line of quests ad nauseum. Space combat is beautiful, other than the 45 degree limitation on pitching your ship. this is not a problem other than a few places that turn into a corkscrew fest flying maneuver. (See Ponor system which is designed 90 degrees and you can see Cryptic's shortsightedness) Ground combat is clunky and abysmal in comparison. When Atari has Elite Forces, why not just use that?… Expand

Ship combat is quite fun when you get the hang of the controls. The rest however needs quite a bit of work to be enjoyable. Ground combat is just plain boring. It should have been called Star Trek at war online. Its missing more of the "to boldly go" than the shows.

This game is only skin deep and anyone playing more than a couple of days will realize it's value is very very shallow. It's sad to see such a great IP like Star Trek rushed out the door by a poor company like Cryptic, and you would have thought Cryptic learned their lesson after Champions Online bombed. We can only hope it gets better in the future. At the moment STO borders on fraud for how unfinished it is out of the box.… Expand

The art is Beautiful and the ship models are very well done so the graphics people should be very proud, but that doesn't make up for the absolute lack of content, horribly buggy missions and constant server issues. This is NOT Star Trek by any means. It does NOT have any of the feel or immersion of ANY of the 40 years of the Star Trek franchise and has been a terrible disappointment for those that waited with baited breath for an MMO that would fill the love of Star Trek fans' dream of on online game. Save your money for something worth playing online.. STO is certainly NOT it. Once you get past the 'oh cool..it's Star Trek' honeymoon period, it reveals itself as a bland cookie-cutter semi-multiplayer game.… Expand

I loved the game until I reached the max level where there is sadly nothing to do. In total there's probably only two weeks of real gameplay in this game. PvP is severely lacking. The daily missions at end game, which there are too few, are by their repetitive nature boring. It's lack of depth leaves you wondering why you paid full box price for an incomplete mmo. Until they add more content and complete this game, I would recommend against buying it unless it's under $20.… Expand

Horrible game. Lacks depth, substance, a dynamic universe, re playability. The game has nothing going for it. Ground combat is clunky, space combat is lack luster. No risk for the reward. Absolutely nothing deserving of the score it has received from some of the other reviewers. They are obviously first time players as this game is not a MMO. You can find all the same features in this game in your basic Game Spy Lobby game. There is nothing massive about restrictive instances and I believe Cryptic should be brought up on false advertisement charges for trying to pass the game off as a MMO. If Guildwars is not a MMO than STO is not either as they both use the same restrictive structure. I think I am being more than fair giving the game a 2, only because of the character creation and the alright graphics.… Expand

This game at it's present state is uneventful and drab. All of the naysayers of world of warcraft can go ahead and eat their hats. There isn't a game out or coming out that can top Blizzards MMO. They took what works and improved it 100 fold. Star Trek is another broken design with little reason to "go where no man has gone before". Save your money, or play wow.

"Tons of potential" That's the phrase heard a lot in STO amongst it's players in game or on the forums. The game does have tons of potential, if it was currently in closed alpha testing I could be very semi excited for this game. Unfortunately STO is another MMO game released long before it was ready. I saw in a recent interview where a Cryptic developer was gloating about how they created a MMO in under 2 years time, there lies the problem in STO. It feels exactly like a game that was developed in under 2 years time and those missing 2-3 years of proper development can really be felt once you see how bare bones STO is. Maybe a year or two from now STO could reach its full potential, but sadly I doubt anyone will be around to witness it after another botched MMO launch.… Expand

This is the worst ive ever seen... I seriously dont know where to begin... The game is not even half done and yet they want full price for it? AND a monthly sub even though its not an MMO? Its sad to see good people pay hard earned money for this kind of crap. Cryptic should be ashamed of themselves. This could have been a good game with two more years in development, but as it is right now its just ridiculously repetitive and empty. Its basicly four mission that you do over and over again and then the game ends. There is NOTHING to do at higher levels. Now they are waiting for people to resub so they can release a 45 day patch. (we all know why its 45 days and not 29 days, dont we?) It feels like a beta product that you have to pay full price for while the devs are developing the game, and actually, thats exactly how it is...! Its crazy. Never again a Cryptic product. (I gave it a 1 instead of the 0 i was thinking of giving it because the space combat was fun for a week).… Expand

This is a mediocre game at best. Gameplay isn't that great, space battles become repetitive and boring after a few hours. Ground warfare looks like a bad Sega Genesis game and is bugged to all hell. I highly don't recommend this game. Wait until they offer a free trial or something.

I am seriously, seriously disappointed. Cryptic Studious should be ashamed of this catastrophe. It's like playing a game thats in Beta testing stage and needs serious overhauls before it becomes enjoyable. They shouldn't be charging people to play this, they should be PAYING them to play! The lag, the bugs, the bland missions, the non-satisfying PVP!!! Maybe in a year or so it might be worth trying...but if your eager to play and you don't believe me: go ahead and try it, but you have been warned!!!… Expand

Another great idea, another total fail by Cryptic. They keep repackaging their craptastic graphics engine and zero contentent PvE in every game they release. Seriously It is a shame they got to use the Star Trek license. As always Cryptic wants you to pay them to release old smelly code.

I love Star Trek, but I hate myself for having bought this game. I played the beta release and thought surely they'd iron out the bugs before the official release. I was wrong. There's nothing compelling or interesting about this game that makes me what to put up with the clumsy interface and lack of interactivity. I almost gave this game a zero, but gave it a one since it has a Star Trek theme. I was so ripped off by the purchase, but at least I'll not pay a dime for a subscription. Worst $50 I ever spent!… Expand

The ground combat is not very good with some areas sporting eyeball blasting floor color schemes that leave you with a massive headache. Many quests are broken. The space combat is cool but repetitive and after about 10 battles you start wishing there was a way to bypass it. Speaking of space, it just doesn't "feel" like space. It's all far to small and planets and other objects seem tiny and much too close together. I don't like this game very much.… Expand

Terminally slow ship combat, dire ground battles, sketchy quests combined with a buggy interface ruin what could have been a great game. On entertainment value alone, this game just doesn't cut it and needs a massive overhaul if people are expected to continue paying their monthly fee. It's a pity as the premise offered a great alternative to the likes of WoW.

Unfinished, NOT Star Trek as 90% of the game is nothing but fighting. No crafting, housing or anything else that people come to expect. Worst this is this is NOT an MMO.... it's a 3D chat room with avatars used to for groups to go into private instances aka Guild Wars or DDO. The game was released unfinished yet Cryptic has the nerve to not only charge $15 a month but also put up a micro-transaction store in which you have to pay real money for some of the things missing in the game! If you buy this you are falling for their ruse.... just say no and move on!… Expand

Very fun Space Combat hampered by very simple difficulty. If you're not good at the "harder" levels of games in general, even you can be a god in STO's version of the galaxy. The developers have stated that they want to add a difficulty slider (like in Cryptic's STO template Champions Online), but like CO it will feel like a bolted on hack allowing you to choose between stupid easy and pretty darn easy. The Ground Combat is generally simplistic, and again... easy. Coupled with endless bugs... it's pretty dismal overall. The remainder of the "decent" in this game is Character customization, which on a visual level is amazing, but in all other ways very shallow. There is no "Star Trek" in this game outside of looks, names and combat. No diplomacy. No exploration. Nothing Star Trek... just kill that, kill that and kill that. Where the bad really sets in is at a "server" level. They've made it so you don't have to choose a server by lumping everyone into the same "shard" (or cluster of servers acting as one)... but if this one shard starts having the inevitable hiccups that all MMO servers have periodically, it all goes down for everyone. It's a flawed design in a subscription service, and the people that sold the investors on it have done every subscriber a very large dis-service.… Expand

It could have been a solid 6 star game but unfortunate the Zynga-isme business model detracts at the very least 5 of those stars which then just barley grants this game a single lonely star.

Lets start with how STO earned it's 6 starts before then rapidly losing 5. It's a pretty descend MMO thou without any doubt somewhat dated and lackluster. One of the biggest complaints (a side from the Zynga-isme which we'll get to in a bit) is that the game is compiled of a series of endless instances which in turn means you'll spend a good amount of time going through loading screens which truly can break immersion.
As a PvE experience you going to have a good time if you're a Trekkie as a Sci-Fi fan you'll be happy too if you can glance past the countless bugs and hiccups you are sure to encounter during your missions.

Now lets get to what this game has degraded to since it took up the infamous Free 2 Play business model. Rumor has it that the executive producer Daniel Stahl once upon a time was a intern at Zynga Inc. and Oh Boi did he pick up a neat trick or two. You can now describe STO in a few simple concepts *1. Narly gambling (lock boxes) *2. Endless grind (time-gated reputation system) *3. The Ultimate MMO Power Trip (starbases provides insane value both in terms of time spend and real world moneys).

PvP is straight up Pay to Win and since there isn't much else to do once you reach end-game you are going to have a bad time luckily you can choose well at least as a federation character to stay clear of any PvP mischiefs.

My hope is that the future of gaming will be about creating great game mechanics and giving players unforgettable experiences and the period of how to manipulate game-play and thus players for maximum profit will became a brief and shameful footnote in development history.… Expand

GRIND GRIND GRIND!

I was so excited to finally be playing the famed Star Trek Series online. But after 3 months, the games fees very 2D... Very shallow, and very unworthy of the Star Trek title. The game amounts to grinding for weapons and upgrades and then attempting to take on elite battles against NPCs or other elite human players just to find out that the past 3 weeks of grinding to upgrade your weapons was not nearly enough... I have repeated this trend in the game 20-30 times and have had enough. OK, that sums up space combat...
Now for ground combat. Is there anyone who does not think that diving behind cover should then allow the NPCs to continue to fire through the cover and kill you? Really? The engine is a hit or no hit engine without any critical hit areas defines on the body map of the player. So head shots mean nothing. Ground cover means nothing. Just grind grind grind to get a better weapon and hope that your skill set matches the mission you are about to take on for the 100th time...
And wait! $200 for a lifetime membership to the game??? Really??? Good grief. I cant believe someone actually smoked crack and paid that much for this grind fest.… Expand