Wow, just wow. If I have any complaints with Star Trek: Legacy, it's that the game is too short. I am a Star Trek fan, and have played just about every game ever released under the Star Trek license (remember The Next Generation: A Final Unity anyone?), and Legacy is in my top five! I loved the Armada games when they came out, and this has the feel of Armada with an interesting storyline. The game timeframe spans from the Enterprise television series all the way through Deep Space 9 and beyond. And, luckily for us, Bethesda brought Shatner, Stewart, Mulgrew, Brooks, and Bakula back for their corresponding roles in the game. This really helped the game achieve a more authentic feel. Unfortunately, they did not bring back any of the bridge crew, so other then the major characters, the voices are fairly generic. I am not normally a person who goes back and plays through a single player campaign, but I have caught myself playing through this one again, simply because the game is so fun.
Graphically this game is top notch. The ship models are very well rendered, and closely resemble the actual models from the series. The backgrounds were a little bland in a couple of missions, but hey, it's space! Space is boring! The developers managed to add enough detail into most of the maps that they felt unique. The ship damage models were impressive. I loved finishing up a tough fight and seeing my poor ships spilling atmosphere and leaking fire into space. The only things that were a little lackluster were the larger objects (like space stations). When you destroy them, they would break up into maybe 4 or 5 pieces, then explode. Not horrible, but the breakup animation looked a little cheap.
The flight physics left little to be desired. The ships handled about how you would expect. The smaller ships offered fairly fast maneuvering, whereas the larger ones felt like the titanic. If it wasn't for the backgrounds, you would feel like you were sitting still. The one thing here that felt a little off to me was the large object collision. You can only get within a certain distance of a planet, or a space station before the ship deflects off the object. It looks like you're running into a Nerf ball! If you are not directly controlling the ship and you have it targeted on a planet or space station, the ship will self adjust and go into "orbit" around the object. The major problem was the object scale, I think. Take a Borg cube for example: the larger cubes (think Star Trek: First Contact) should be massive compared to your ships. I took a Defiant-class ship in for a strafing run in one of the later missions, and the dinky little Defiant (which was scaled correctly against the other Starfleet ships) bumped into the cube, bounced off, and flew away before coming back and doing it again. It just felt off, and really was the only major complaint I have about what otherwise is an awesome game.
The gameplay is very enjoyable. You control up to four ships at once, either as a fleet, or singly (you can give separate orders to each ship). The ship AI is excellent; the ships you are not controlling do a good job of defending themselves and of carrying out their orders. The interface isn't bad either: one stick controls your camera, and the other controls your turning. You can also lock onto a target, and your camera will stay focused on the target until you either destroy it, or you move the camera stick and break it loose. This makes targeting much easier. The ships have firing arcs which you need to align with your target to hit them, so being able to focus on the target makes it much easier to take enemy ships out. Each ship has its own set of firing arcs: you will see a major difference between say, the original series Enterprise and the newer Enterprise from The Next Generation. You also have an overhead map view you can use to give orders quickly to your fleet. This is invaluable in the later missions, when you have several objectives to accomplish as quickly as possible.
The ships have their own damage control, which you manage with a couple of button pushes. The only issue I had with this mechanism is that you have to switch between ships constantly to make sure the repairs are being completed. If you're not careful, your ships will be almost dead before you manage to get the repairs competed. Additionally, when a subsystem is damaged (for example, the ship's engines), the ship will lose that function until it is repaired. There were several times that I was able to save my badly damaged ships simply by focusing on repairing the engines, bringing warp online, and warping away to a safe spot to finish repairs, while the rest of my ships kept bashing away. Overall, the ship to ship combat is extremely entertaining (and challenging at times), and is honestly one of the best Star Trek combat simulations I've seen.
One more thing I need to mention is way you acquire new ships: as you advance through the missions, between each you will have an opportunity to "purchase" new ships with the influence you gain by completing missions. The ship lists for each generation of Trek aren't huge, but overall you have a big variety of ships to play with.
The storyline manages to tie all the series together almost seamlessly. I honestly was surprised to see a pretty original story arc used here. I don't want to give too much away, but the Borg are involved. Need I say more? The only thing I didn't like with the campaign was the length. I finished the game in less than 12 hours of playtime. I just started to come into my own with the newer ships, and was really starting to enjoy the higher difficulty of the later missions, when the game ended. I saw it coming, but didn't think it would happen quite as fast as it did. Then again, it's nice to play a game that flew by, instead of one that makes me wonder "is it ever going to end?" If you like a good space combat sim, or enjoy Trek as much as I do you should check it out. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
