Star Trek Conquest Review

Reviewer: Chris "ChessMess" Koerner
Written For :
TrekMovie.com - The source for Star Trek XI, Trek Remastered, and all new Star Trek
Star Trek Games - The worlds largest site dedicated to the realm of Star Trek games

Score: 83% / 100%

Pros: Conquest is a fun game that provides a nice dose of strategy and action at a good price. Casual gamers who fancy themselves Star Trek fans will get some extra enjoyment out of this game, but pointy ears are not required. Its far from perfect but with its low cost and short learning curve its one of the stand-outs in a world filled with so-so value titles.

Cons: Repetitive voice overs could cause minor insanity over time, no multi-player in any form, graphics lag during some battles on the Wii, and a few bad choices in the application of Star Trek keeps this title from achieving a captains rank.

For more information on the game and a large selection of screenshots :

• Star Trek Conquest Screenshots
• Star Trek Conquest Information

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Gameplay

Once the game loads the player is presented with the options to choose Campaign or Skirmish mode. Campaign mode provides the mixed turn based strategy and arcade gameplay that is the backbone of the game, while Skirmish mode allows the player to run arcade mode ship battles between races of their choosing. Skirmish mode is useful for practicing your ship combat tactics and thats about it. While campaign mode unlocks some new items for skirmish such as a new set of Federation ships or the Borg race it just doesn't hold as much interest as the campaign mode. Even less so for those who prefer the slower navel style combat inherent in Star Trek rather then the arcade style employed in Conquest.

Conquest presents its strategical elements in the forms of military capability, economy, technology, and territory. 4J Studios indicated the game was not intended to be as complex a strategy games as say Civilization, so the number of variables in each of these areas is not particularly deep. I found that overall they did a good job of balancing depth vs. ease of play and there was no shortage of new strategies to try across the range of options available in order to best (or be bested by) enemy empires.

When you begin a new campaign you are presented the options of race selection. All the races are known Star Trek races and include Federation, Breen, Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian, and Dominion. Selecting a race means adopting a certain strategical and tactical play style because each has their own strength and weaknesses. In Trek lore the Klingon's are a warrior race, known for strength in ships and weapons. This is reflected in the race's attributes and thus promotes a more aggressive style of play. The Romulan's attributes lend to to a less aggressive strategy, preferring to wait and attack when conditions are more favorable, such as after two races have attacked each other and are at a weakened state.

You can select from 1 to 6 enemy AI players to go against. So if you want to recreate a classic Federation vs Klingon battle you can. Unfortunately its every race for themselves and things such as diplomacy or alliances are not an option. This means that you can't create a DS9 scenario such as Federation and Klingon vs. Dominion and Breen, which is unfortunate.

There is no multiplayer in the game, neither online or on console. This is really a shame because it would have greatly enhanced the games replay value. A result no doubt due to the game being a 'value' title. Given its turn based nature it wouldn't have been overly difficult to implement multiplayer on the console level at least where you simply turn over control to another play when its their turn.

Once you have selected your race and those of your opponents, play begins. At the start of each turn you are presented with summary report screens that display information regarding military, economy, and technology aspects of your empire. During your turn you'll spend the credits you've earned from mining, create new fleets or build special weapons and move your fleets to better their positions or to try and capture new systems.

The game board is laid out as interconnected nodes, each node representing a system and the entire board representing the galaxy. The map is static and each race's homeworld represents the starting position of that race which never changes from game to game. The static nature of starting positions is a missed opportunity which would have given the game more variety and improved its replay value. The actual number of available nodes in a game depends on how many other races you are playing against, as sections that belong to races that were not included as opponents are mostly blanked out and not available (save the Federation nodes because they are located smack in the middle of the map). While not my first choice I think this was a good alternative as it provides a bit of variety in map layout and gets the player into combat against the other races more quickly.

Systems and fleets are selected using the Wii-mote, in much the same manner as you would click on things with a mouse pointer, with the A button selecting a fleet that is located at a system and the B button putting the player into the system where they can build stations or, if its their homeworld, purchase new admirals or build special weapons. I haven't played the PS2 version of the game but I can feel pretty confident in saying the wii-mote would probably beat using a typical controller. That's true of the map interface, however for the actual arcade battles I'm less optimistic as I'll discuss in a minute.

During each turn the player accrues credits and research that are largely dependent upon the number of mining and research stations stations they own. Each system owned allows the player to build a research or a mining station, but not both. I really like this because it means you have to carefully consider the strategy you follow. Based upon your races strengths and weaknesses, what upgrades you can research, and how quickly you'll start encountering enemy fleets you may want to focus more on research then on economy. A strong economy means lots of credits and you can push through systems faster because you can replace your ships and admirals more easily, as well as building the strongest defensive structure, the advanced starbase. On the flip side choosing to climb the tech tree quickly means faster and more frequent access to special weapons and upgrades, which means the forces you do have will be stronger, especially if your research plays against the weaknesses of an enemy, but it also means ships and structures are not as expendable because you won't have the credits on hand to easily replace them.

Each player can have a maximum of three admirals that control up to seven ships each and are used to move about the map to capture systems. Admirals are broken down into specialties that confer a bonus to the ships under their command. Depending on your race you'll have one or more of the following types of admirals: Attack, Defense, and Movement. Admirals gain in experience as they engage and destroy enemy ships which increases their bonus modifier. A fully experienced movement admiral can move up to six times in a single turn. Like wise an attack admiral maxed out is an absolute nightmare. I've had attack admirals cut through systems like a phaser blast through tissue paper. This is another area where Conquest shines because the premise of admirals and experience are simple to understand but provide added depth in gameplay. Nothing stings like losing a well experienced admiral.

The ships that you can assign to a fleet consist of three classes; scout, cruiser, and dreadnought. Its a bit reminiscent of a rock, paper, scissors setup in that the tougher classes are hampered by their slow speed and turning ability while being strong in shields and weapons and the scouts are fast and nimble but suffer from weak shields and weapons. Cruisers sit in the middle with decent shields and hulls and decent speed and maneuverability. Players who think they have an easy win simply by loading a fleet with dreadnoughts will quickly see that fleet turned to dust by a fleet with a few scouts. I admit to playing up to this biggest is baddest theory at the start as I'm sure most new players will, but quickly learned my lesson. A dreadnought fleet works great against systems where they only battle stationary defensive structures, not so well against other fleets that have scouts and cruisters in their fleet.  The AI does a decent job of mixing its fleet which is good, though reacting to a sweeper fleet of dreadnoughts created for system conquing and not direct fleet combat didn't seem to be treated any differently then any other fleet. A human player however would have easily seen the strategy and set into motion a fleet of scouts to wipe it off the map, which is why multiplayer is so dearly missed.

When you move a fleet into a system that you don't own you'll engage the race that does, or one of two races that serve as neutral entities that you'll battle for the unoccupied system, the Ferengi or the Borg. Pull out your alternate universe theory again, your going to need it. The first time I warped into a system occupied by the Borg and found my small fleet of cruisers and scouts face to face with four cubes I was sure all was lost. I was amazed that I made quick work of them with nary a scratch. Thats because they follow the same rules as all races with Cubes being dreadnoughts, Spheres being cruisers, and small rectangles being scouts. Makes sense for the game but not for Star Trek. The developers really shouldn't have used the Borg for obvious reasons. Its a minor nitpick, but it tends to reinforce the feeling that Star Trek is just a wrapper around the game.

For battles you select one of three modes in which to engage the enemy forces; Instant, Sim, and Arcade. Instant does a quick odds calculation and shows you the results right away. You don't want to select this mode unless the odds are stacked in your favor. There is no chance for withdraw from an instant battle, its an all or nothing proposal. Sim mode allows you to set your ships in an aggressive or defensive posture and plays out over a short period of time in an automated fashion. This mode does allow you the chance to withdraw from the conflict if things begin to go badly. Finally the last mode is arcade which puts you at the helm of your ships to control in real time. This is the mode you'll want to select anytime you think you don't have a decided advantage.

I found arcade mode semi-enjoyable and semi-frustrating. Using the Wiimote you position a floating crosshair on the screen and when you fire your weapons they will shoot in direction of the crosshair. Steering your ship is accomplished with the thumbstick located on the Wii's nunchuk. Aiming using the crosshairs was a bit of a challenge at first but I soon had it down. Steering the ship proved another matter entirely. Using the nunchuks thumbstick to steer you'd think it'd be a simple left-right-up-down for directional control but its ends up feeling more like steering RC cars on top of a frozen pond. Top that with the ability to do 'speed boost' for short periods of time and you just don't feel like your commanding the massive starships seen in Star Trek. If you are of the kind who prefer the slow navel style of starship combat that Star Trek is famous for then your not going to like the arcade style Conquest presents. If your of the mind that slow navel battles are boring then you'll enjoy this.

On the plus side the game implements multiple shield facings and primary and secondary weapon bank recharging. A fully charged attack can provide a nicely focused barage of multiple phaser and photons to knock a hole through enemy shields quickly. Once through your attacks go against the hull and when those goes so does the ship or station. Keeping your weakened shields away from the enemy while maneuvering your ship to bring your weapons to bear can be quite challenging and has been a core element of Star Trek starship combat since the beginning. Conquest has all the right elements, just with a bit more speed then necessary.

During the real time battles you can take control of any ship and you can issue basic commands that will cause your other ships to assume one of two formations around you or just attack targets at will. At first I simply let ships attack at will and you can get good results that way, but once you start using formations and see how effective they are you'll use them all the time.

Special weapons play an important part in the game, allowing you to cause damage to enemy ships and stations in distant systems, weaken the bonus modifier of enemy admirals, create temporary wormholes between systems, and instantly repair all damages to ships and stations in a system to name a few. They add a good strategical element to the game. Since you can only build them at your homeworld and only after you have accumulated enough research it makes them a scarce item in the early stages of the game. Even more so if you tend to focus more on building your economy. Each race only gets a select few of all the possible weapons and they are pretty well balanced. No one weapon will ensure a win for the race that has it.

As the game proceeds and you and your opponents fully upgrade the difference between races becomes much less pronounced. This means the longer you wait to engage your enemies the less chance you'll have to exploit any of their particular weaknesses. Also with enough research stations you'll have upgrades and special weapons practically every turn. Still you can find yourself thinking you have a decisive lead when suddenly an enemy fleet will pour through your systems and you'll find yourself scrambling to recover. I can't say for sure but there were times when I watched the enemy AI not attack easy targets that were owned by other AI players, and then to have both attack me as if they had formed a secret alliance. I'd wager the AI has a bit of a cheating element incorporated, such as reduced chance of AI to AI attacks when the player rates as a higher threat, but its hard to say. Whether that is or isn't the case you will find that the game remains challenging throughout the course of the game which is exactly what you'd want.

Graphics

In terms of graphics the game does a pretty good job of it. The ships and stations accurately depict those seen in Star Trek. Backgrounds are have nicely animated, though at times some of the effects made seeing other things such as shields around ships a bit difficult. Conquest reuses elements from two previous titles from Bethesda, Star Trek: Legacy and Star Trek: Encounters. Its pretty obvious that Bethesda is trying to squeeze every last bit of juice out of these assets. Each race has its user interface elements surrounded with its own boarder style, a simple and acceptable way of giving a bit of visual variety between them.

One issue I did find is that when things got heated in real time combat the game started to lag on the Wii. The game speed halved which made targeting the enemy ships difficult since you often have to lead your target. This seemed to happen when dealing with the Dominion, so there might be a bug with some Dominion models that caused this. In some ways I didn't mind this because it felt more Star Trek with things slowed down.

Sound

Here is where Conquest really has a warp core breach. Apparently someone thought it was a good idea to have near constant voice overs playing during battles. This in itself isn't so bad, but when you limit the voice overs to just a few, and they are bad to boot, then it becomes incredibly annoying. Hearing the Federation voice overs constantly say "For Earth" makes you wonder why any other race out there would ever want to join the Federation if that was the only planet they seemed to care about. Each race has about 5 different things they'll say during a battle, and they will say them over, and over, and over, and over, and over.. you get the point. If you think its bad to listen to while you play, you'll soon find people in other rooms telling you to "play something else" as they get tired of hearing it.

Sounds for phaser, warp, photons, user interface and most other aspects of the game are fine. If you've played any previous Bethesda Star Trek titles you will recognize nearly all of them from Legacy, Tactical Assault, and Encounters.

Conclusion

As I said in the beginning I think for the price Conquest provides a good gameplay experience that is worth its reduced cost. For a budget title there aren't any real show stoppers and as long as you can ignore some of the conflicts the game has with how it depicts the Star Trek universe I think you'll find it an enjoyable game.

Chris "ChessMess" Koerner