Star Trek Conquest - PS2

Whats with a second Star Trek game? They were on sale in the bargain bin. I like trying different games and when they are so cheap. It really doesn't matter if they are horrible and if they turn out to be good, then bonus.

This one was so much better than the Star Trek Encounters. Not even in the same playing field.(what ever that means, but it sounds right) I had alot of fun playing this game and thats what games should be, FUN! Even bad games have things that you can do that weren't meant to be done. Josh is Fantastic at doing things in a game that probable weren't meant to be done. Such has his last post on GTA4 and Assassins Creed.

Encounters is a RTS( Real Time Strategy) You choose from 6 races with everyone out for themselves to see who can take over the Galaxy and wipe out the competition. You have the Federation, Klingon, Romulan, Breen, Dominion, and Cardassians. Each with their own set of unique strengths and weaknesses. Each race gets 3 classes of ships. A scout, Cruiser and a Dreadnought. It doesn't sound like much. But its enough to keep things interested. Like I said before each race has different strengths for their ships, their economy, research, weapons, movement. Alot of stuff, not too much that I don't have a frikken clue what does what or how something else effects this or that. But enough that it keeps me entertained.


Now there is no story mode in this. You pick a race and choose your settings. If you like to start out with 3 opponents or 5 , choose the level of difficulty and that determines fog of war and starting credits. After that you just start the game and try and take over the different worlds. You have a limited number of moves that you can do many things, buy, build, attack, reinforce, upgrade, etc. After that the computer has a turn and it goes around until two races meet in space. Now here you choose to do 1 of 3 things. When 2 races meet in space with a fleet of ships, you can choose instant, which the computer will instantly decide who wins based on your stats, no waiting. Or Sim, where you can see your ships lined up like old Final Fantasy games, take turns shooting at eachother. Or Arcade, where you control your whole fleet and take on the ships yourself by flying around and blasting stuff with phasers and photon torpedo's. CHOOSE ARCADE. I lost every battle when I choose sim or at least lost almost all my ships. But arcade gives you way more control over your fleet that you can command all of them to shoot at once at a certain weakened shield area. Much more gratifying to see a flood of torpedo's stream towards the enemy.

Like Encounters, they did a good job of making the ships feel like star trek ships, blasting eachother out of space. This one does it even better. Its pretty cool to see 12 ships all flying around eachother, phasers and photons flying everywhere and colliding with shields and hulls. A great job in my opinion. After you beat the level with that particular race you are rewarded with a new world to fight in or a new race. You can unlock 3 new races, well 2 really the third is a new set of federation ships. The other 2 are the Borg and the Xindi. Oh, I guess I should say that this game takes place in the Generations era. So all ships have the look and feel of this particular era. You can fight other races aswell, but you can't unlock them to play. Such has the Orion's and the Ferengi.


So after you beat all the worlds with each race you unlock everything and then you choose to go to skirmish and choose to set up a onetime battle with whatever race and whatever planet you want. This is my only gripe with the game. With everything unlocked, this would be a fantastic game to play online or with a group of friends. I can see a group of people having a great time with this game, its just too bad that they didn't go so far and put that in. I don't know why, its a great game overall. But a mulitiplayer option would make it full marks. I had alot of fun playing this. I don't know if you need to be a Star Trek fan to play this game or if you like playing RTS's, but watching the space battles has a kid and now playing in one is kinda cool. I recommend it to anyone who falls in that category. Its dirt cheap. I got mine for $6.00. well worth the money.
The trailer does a nice job of showing you the basics.

8/10