Well I bought the game and fired it up this evening. My first impression has been one dissapointment after another. First the menu selects are hyper sensative. Each press of a selecter will result in 4 or 5 presses being recognised by the game resulting sometimes in a selecton simply cycling around and returning to its origional setting. Downloaded and installed the patch and the problem remains.

Then when I began a skirmish on the easiest setting, I was in for another suprise. One single enemy Warbird was able to destroy my Klingon Negh'Var 3 times in a row with minimal damage. While I am a quite new to the game, I was able to land far more vollies on the enemy than he was on me and still I seemed to be killed with ease. I figured that perhaps the Warbird is somehow superior in this game so I gave it a shot. It lasted a little longer than the paper thin Negh var did but the AI still seemed to have quite a wide margin of advantage.

Perhaps Im missing something (and i really hope so considering how long ive been waiting for the games release) but as it stands now im too disgusted to even start the game again..

Anyone else had a similar first experiance? Any tips on surviving a little longer/maybe making a kill?

Well im starting to get used to the controlls a little. Im finding that the controll layout is a little unnatural. Double clicking will select a target but once a target is selected, double clicking again (while trying to fire) will set a course and ruin whatever manuver your were trying to pull.

The graphics are comparable to ST:Armada II from several years ago. Honestly, modifications for ST:Bridge Commander make for a much better looking ship textures and damage effects than Legacy was released with. Also once ships are given orders, they like to "forget" them and do thier own things.

Unfortunate that the graphics have not been improved since the era of Armada, although the series was excellent for it's time. From the screenshots, it reminds me more of the Dominion Wars game with slightly better shaped contours then it originally had.

As far as it sounds thus far, your two biggest problems are the interfaces and the AI. Is it possible that you are supposed to customize or upgrade your vessel before you go into combat?

Nope. No upgrades or customization is available. It seems there are scraps of these kind of features here and there in the scripts but the devs decided not to implement them. Damn i feel like i got ripped off when i bought this game...

Well, that sucks. At least you got a little chance at customization in Armada, if you don't get a chance to upgrade a fleet to your tastes, I feel like this game is more a light version with better graphics on that older Dominion game for sure.

If only that one played on the XP. Thanks for the warning with the buy, though, I might go and get it when it hits the bargain bin.

Ahh. The screenshots are a little misleading. The in-game graphics were another dissapointment I quickly discovered. Most of the textures look only slightly better than armada. Maybe its my rig (it aint bad right?) but there are alot of very poor looking effects in the game.

When a ship decloaks, the underlying layer of the model remains visible for about 10 seconds (frames and corridors and conduits and what not). When the skin finally returns, flashes of the underlying layer can still be seen in strips randomly all over the model.

Also when something like a nacelle is cut off a ship, while a copy of the severed nacelle can clearly be seen floating off into space, the ship still has a nacelle attached where it was cut off.

Another thing is the destruction of large ships and stations. The structure will break up into several large geometric pieces (way too angular with no rough burning edges like in bridge commander) and spin into each other (no colission between pieces). Again tho, the origional structure still remains in place in addition to the debris untill the explosion is done and the station disappears awkwardly. This begs the question how does a destroyed object spawn all this debris while still remaining intact?

I found a rather informative review of the game. While Ive always wanted to support Bethesda and the Star Trek franchise, I wouldnt reccomend ANYONE buy this game for any amount at all unless the games many serious flaws are cleaned up in the coming patches (or you find a copy in the dumpster behind your local computer game store). So far the official forums are completely devoid of help from any of the devs or support staff (if there is any). In fact the moderators have started closing threads they deemed to be "unhelpfull" or derogatory to the game or parent companies.

Its looking like Maddoc and Bethsoft are gonna push this one under the rug and pretend Legacy never happened..


Legacy Official Forums:
http://startrek.bethsoft.com/forums/index.php?showforum=17

ST:Legacy review by Victor1st and Katherine "Barbarella" Venra:
http://www.startrek-gamers.com/legacymain.htm

Maybe this game will be playable after a year of patching and modding.

Man i hope so. Mines serving a sentance of shelf-pergatory untill then. If the Bridge Commander modding scene is any indication of the modding capabilities of the trek community, im sure theyll get this game to shine.

I was addicted to BC even from 1.0 but some of the latest large-scale mods like Kobayashi Maru and Enemies of Life make Bridge Commander look and play just stunning. Ive quenched my thirst for trek with BC and its mods. Check out some of the shots from BCfiles.com and compare to legacy. Good stuff!

It seems with tons of the recent Star Trek games, including Armada, that the majority of the time it's the mod community which keeps people coming back, and not totally the games themselves. I play both of the Armadas unmodded at the moment, but I know that a ton of people have modded the crap out of their game.

The game also left me with some annoying features. First of all I hate the controls and am extremely annoyed that they don’t allow you to edit the controls like most other games. Their battle damage effects are pretty bad and look just like decals. In fact on the tactical cube you can see through the cracks in the model. Maneuvering in combat is next to impossible as is firing the torpedoes. It took me a while before I realized when I could fire the torpedoes. Also the controls for warping using the center mouse are extremely sensitive. I found that there were sever times in which I found it almost impossible to get out of warp. docking with stations are also very difficult I found you have to press and hold the F key even after clicking the repair button until it enters the ship yard. On the stellar debris level when there is massive debris heading for the planet (too big for weapons to kill) you can lock on to it with a tractor beam and drag it into the other debris instead of dragging the debris in front of the asteroid. The lack being able to save is very annoying as is the fact that you can have only 4 ships no matter how much money you have. The last level is extremely difficult it took my 4 attempts to beat it. Multiplayer is a huge disappointment. First of all no one is playing it over the internet. Also the AI is pretty difficult and the game lacks strategy. Over all it’s not worth the price but its pretty addicting. It was a disappointment when I first got it. It also breaks a lot of cannon in the story line. For example the Borg being around in the time of enterprise. I know there was an episode like that in enterprise but that show also broke a lot of cannon.

quote Alicia n John

Ahh. The screenshots are a little misleading. The in-game graphics were another dissapointment I quickly discovered. Most of the textures look only slightly better than armada. Maybe its my rig (it aint bad right?) but there are alot of very poor looking effects in the game.

When a ship decloaks, the underlying layer of the model remains visible for about 10 seconds (frames and corridors and conduits and what not). When the skin finally returns, flashes of the underlying layer can still be seen in strips randomly all over the model.

Also when something like a nacelle is cut off a ship, while a copy of the severed nacelle can clearly be seen floating off into space, the ship still has a nacelle attached where it was cut off.

Another thing is the destruction of large ships and stations. The structure will break up into several large geometric pieces (way too angular with no rough burning edges like in bridge commander) and spin into each other (no colission between pieces). Again tho, the origional structure still remains in place in addition to the debris untill the explosion is done and the station disappears awkwardly. This begs the question how does a destroyed object spawn all this debris while still remaining intact?

I found a rather informative review of the game. While Ive always wanted to support Bethesda and the Star Trek franchise, I wouldnt reccomend ANYONE buy this game for any amount at all unless the games many serious flaws are cleaned up in the coming patches (or you find a copy in the dumpster behind your local computer game store). So far the official forums are completely devoid of help from any of the devs or support staff (if there is any). In fact the moderators have started closing threads they deemed to be "unhelpfull" or derogatory to the game or parent companies.

Its looking like Maddoc and Bethsoft are gonna push this one under the rug and pretend Legacy never happened..


Legacy Official Forums:
http://startrek.bethsoft.com/forums/index.php?showforum=17

ST:Legacy review by Victor1st and Katherine "Barbarella" Venra:
http://www.startrek-gamers.com/legacymain.htm

Apparently, the first patch released (to supposedly allow multiplayer to work) caused some of the gfx errors like the cloak substructure visibility bug and the "chopped off nacelle clone" glitch. The station and large ship destruction effects have existed from version 1 to the final patch (it has been confirmed by a Bethesda representative on the official forums that there will be no further patches for Legacy).

Some good news tho. That same representative reported that some of the development tools will be released for the game soon. This will give the modding community a big leg up into making this game shine. I'm really looking forward to what the modding community will come up with in the coming months. If the mods for Bridge Commander are anything to compare to, Legacy may turn out to be one helluva game after all!