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What you need to know about Star Trek Armada 2

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: January 25, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Revised Star Fleet Recon Report,
post-patch (01-28-02)update:

Technical Stuff:
The game is nearly bug free, but if you are running XP and/or an ATI graphics card get the patch that will fix issuses with those two things, then buy two copies from Amazon! Have your drivers updated and have 2 Gigs of open space for the game/swap file and any Admiral's Logs and screen shots you save. There have been reports of the game freezing up during missions but not with everyone so it may be specific situations. Some have reported trouble playing on the internet but the reasons why vary. The game design is sound and it runs out of the box and better for some after the patch is applied.

Graphics, sound, and all that jazz:
Looks good, sounds effects great, music repetitive, interface a little large but it can be minimized in part or whole. TONS of options in MP and Instant Action, game can be edited beyond that in root directory (ODF's, AI, etc.) Reinstall function is nice for when you mess something up as it does not overwrite your mission progress or preferred settings.

Plot and missions: Takes place after Armada 1 and before Janeway's return from the Delta Quadrant. 30 missions, final battle is an apocalyptic confrontation between a combined Federation and Borg fleet vs. Species 8472 in Fluidic Space.

Trek Canon:
If you are looking for 'trek canon' this isn't it, Galors are stronger than Galaxies and Defiant-class vessels are not very strong. Cubes are not unstoppable, but Fusion Cubes are mighty tough.

Gameplay:
All six races are supposedly equal, although the Klingons seem a bit to strong. Each race's tech tree may seem daunting at first but you will gradually get use to it. Ship upgrades do wonders.
This game is about fleets, so don't fret if you lose one ship, just build more. The Officer cap limits the number of ships you build (settings are 300, 600, 800 and 999 officers). Species 8472 only needs piolets, no crew, but they only have so many of them (1/4 as many as the officers for any other race).
ALL races depend on resource gathering, you MUST gather what they need or you will lose. The ships build fast, you just need to get the stuff to build them, the game is won or lost on the economic front sometimes before the battle ever takes place. If you are using one of the four Alpha Quadrant races take advantage of the trading stations. The Borg, use the Recycler. Species has its own unique ways to economically dominate. Don't get soft playing on infinite resources all the time, that is for beginners and 'fooling-around'.

Notes:
The Sovereign-class ship for the Federation is just about worthless without the Corbomite Reflector, so keep building Galaxies. The Galor-class for the Cardassians is strong and has great firepower. The Keldon's special is frighteningly powerful. The Negh'Var is good. Borg Fusion Cubes are expensive but once you destroy 20+ ships in one battle with one you will not mind the resource burden. Standard Cubes are good. The frigates, science ships, marine ships, and artillery ships are worth building as they can save you warships if you use them right.
Specials are hard to utilize by hand so use the autonomy settings to compensate, the computer may waste them sometimes but it is either that or get destroyed before you get it fired off. Unless you want your ships wandering all over the place set the movement autonomy to medium or low.

'Artificial Intelligence',the Computer as an opponent:
The patch fixes this so the game's value is not all MP on the internet. The computer still falls for just about any trick you can pull on it. But it can manage resources and defend its base better than before the patch. The AI still needs a handicap to give you a run though and this is why it doesn't get five stars.

Conclusion:
The game is good, the patch is welcomed, but the AI is not as good as it could be. But then again this game can be modded so the AI may start trashing people after some tweaking.

Jason out.

Star Trek Bridge Commander

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 14 / 21
Date: March 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I downloaded the demo of the game two days ago. I went through the little bit of the game that is provided and played with the instant action mode, man it's fun blowing up a Galaxy class ship!

Space mode: The Ship graphics are great and the damage graphics are very well done. The smoke trails are a little hokie that puff out of the ship when it is damaged. The stars that float around between you and the ship take away from the immersion aspect. I do like the fact that the destroyed ships float around in pieces; I just wish they weren't translucent! It would be nice to be able to tractor a piece of a destroyed ship and use it as a defense or offense against enemy ships or just throw it into a star and watch it burn.

Bridge mode: The characters are terribly rendered. Picard looks like a marionette! The fact that the crew doesn't blink is unnerving too. The ship is exploding around them and they don't even grimace. Standing and moving about the ship would be a nice feature too.

Overall I was disappointed in this product. I have purchased all of the previous Star Trek games and I must say that Starfleet Command is much better. The ship graphics are as good or better in Starfleet Command too.

The Best Star Trek Game Yet!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 19
Date: September 24, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Star Trek Armada 2 looks really great. The Galaxy class seperation saucer and the new warp drives are going to make moving an entire fleet easier. Also you can occupy planets. The Borg now have a fusion cube that looks unstoppable! And the new species 8472 bio ships will give the Borg hecka problems. I'm also keeping an eye on the new Intrepid class for the Federation. I can't wait till November! You gotta get this game. Reserve now or you might not get one!!!

Based on the Full Version

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: March 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Excellent game so far (I haven't hit the end of it yet, it's actually rather long)..the plot is developing nicely, with some interesting twists (and I still haven't managed to even venture a good guess as to some of the things that are going on, it's good at being mysterious.) The graphics engine is good enough to get the job done, the bridge/characters are it's weakest component, it does really well at rendering the ships during combat. You get some of those cinematic moments where you fire a shot from your rear tubs right into a hole in the hull of a cardaissian ship and watch it blow the ship apart. Speaking of which, the damage modeling is AMAZING, you can literally cut parts of a ship away (which is a rather effective method of destroying a large number of subsystems at once.)

Although everything is not 100% canon to the show, it is necessary to make the game balanced and fun. All in all, it's a fun game (which is what really counts, no?) and I highly recommend it to anyone who has always wanted to command a starship.

Can be a bit tedious

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 13
Date: January 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I've played SFC1, Dominion War and Armada. If I were to rank these games in order of which I enjoyed the most I would say: 1. DW, 2. SFC3, 3. SFC1, 4. Armada

SFC3 is, as the other reviewers pointed out, a great simplification of SFC1. I don't have much patience for all the detail in SFC1 any more so I find the simplification in SFC3 welcome. This and the excellent tutorials will make it very easy to get into the game. I especially like the fact that FINALLY I can command the Next Gen ships, and that during the mission your crew has a voice. This increases the sense that you are commanding a ship.

However while I enjoyed playing SFC3 initially I can definitely see this game getting tedious pretty fast- and a lot of it is due to its over simplification. The battles are much much more drawn out than the other games I've played- and they are not drawn out in interesting ways. It's like watching 2 exhausted fighters weakly slapping each other in the face hoping that one of their slaps will eventually knock their opponent unconscious. A campaign that would have lasted 10 minutes in SFC1 lasted over half an hour while I circled 3 enemy freighters trying to align my phaser arcs with openings in their shields. Eventually it was my shuttle crafts that destroyed all 3 of the freighters- sad!

Still, after not having played SFC1 for 3 years I did enjoy SFC3 despite its tedium.

I will probably try and play this with my Microsoft voicepad controller to see if using voice commands make it more fun. Maybe I can set the self destruct command as: "From hell's heart I stab at thee!"

Better then SFC and SFC2 combined!!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 16 / 26
Date: February 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I love this game. Now, I'v got starfleet command 1 and starfleet command 2 and I have to say that this is far better then both combined. One of the things that got me realy mad was that in starfleet command 1 and 2 you had to purchase a new ship because it had better weaponry or better shields. Well now in starfleet command 3 you don't have to worry about that. All you have to do now is buy a ship and upgrade the ships armorments, shields, and various other systems.

Another thing I like about this game is that you get to create a customized ship. You can make a ship in any configuration as you wish.

The campaign modes are also reasionably challengeing with different types of missions that have to be preformed.

Various mods can be downloaded to this game. You can download these mods on various cites, it shouldn't be to hard to find any. My personal favorite is the Generation(s) at war Mod. This mod includes ships from STARFLEET COMMAND 1 AND 2!!!!!!!!. Not only that but ships that weren't even in any SFC game or star trek series. Like the Excalibar class Challenger class, freedom class and at least 150 more ships.

With all the different new features in this game I would say that it surpasses most star trek games. If you are a true star trek fan this is a game you must buy.

Could be Better

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 14 / 22
Date: April 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is one of those games that could really be great, if but for a few serious disappointments. While I would never call myself a Star Trek fanatic, I did enjoy this game... for a while, at least. It is generally a decent game, but has a steep learning curve and can be extremely frustrating at times.

The first and most obvious problem with the game is bugs. LOADS of bugs, and many of them very serious (i.e. game breaking). Fortunately, the SFC 2 community has been working to address these problems, and is still active and helpful. If you get the game, definitely get the latest patch. It will save you a great deal of pain.

About that learning curve- only a Trekkie who wants to push every one of those funny colored lights on the TV show would ever appreciate an interface like this. There are enough buttons to make starting the game discouraging for beginners, though the tutorials do a relatively good job of explaining things. In single play you can also pause to issue orders, but for multiplay you really have to know the hotkeys. There are more hotkeys in this game than any other I've played- literally the entire keyboard is used.

One of the worst problems with this game is difficulty. I'm not sure how the designers come up with missions for you, but I suspect it's purely random. It's entirely possible you'll accept a mission that is utterly impossible, given the firepower you have at any particular point. Until you have three battleships, it's recommendable you save in a new slot after every mission. My first mission in SFC 2 was a blast- literally- when they stuck my poor little frigate up against a space monster that didn't stop firing plasma torpedoes. The good news is you can't ever get completely wiped out, since they always give you a frigate to play with. The bad news is if you keep getting wasted, you'll never get anywhere and the required missions will quickly become impossible to complete.

Though the game has a 3-D look, it's not really a 3-D experience. You maneuver along a single plane with no Z-axis to speak of. Pretty much all the maneuvering you do is throttle up and down, and steer left and right. You can't reverse or roll your starships. What is kind of funny is that there's no collisions despite the fact that you're all on the same level. You can fly right through enemy ships, and you really should because it's impossible to miss at that range. I can see why the designers didn't allow you to maneuver with depth, as this would make lining up your weapons even more impossible than it already is, but this makes the game play in a very 'fake' manner. It also makes it impossible to hide from enemies, even if you have cloak.

The starships in the game behave more or less like they're 'supposed to,' which does NOT mean that everything goes like it does in the movies. Photon torpedoes seem to have terminal homing problems and almost never hit in 'normal' mode. You can load up your ships with missiles, mines, shuttles, and fighters for more reliable damage, but things largely degenerate to phaser/disruptor slugging matches. Those, by the way, take so long to charge that even an easy battle can last ten minutes.

The game's graphics are good, even for now. Weapons look like they do in the movies, and the ships have good detail. There are enough unique types of vessels to make the game fun to watch, though there aren't actually as many unique designs as advertised. The vessels you see here are largely the older Trek ones- not including Next Generation, DS9, etc. There are also many ships that don't appear anywhere, but Taldren made up. They did a good job modeling them, however, so they don't look goofy.

The game's sound really needs work. The soundtrack is good and the weapons sound like they should, but you'll immediately notice how scarce the voiceovers are. Essentially, you get alert reports, some damage reports, and Sulu's voice in the tutorial. That's pretty much it- the rest is text flashed on the screen in ridiculously small print, and sometimes faster than you can read. Most of the plot is conveyed in this manner, so keep a finger handy on that pause button for these times.

The missions, in addition to being occasionally bugged, are sometimes ambiguous. You are given orders at the start, and it's all or nothing to the finish (no saving in the middle). Some are characterized by long stretches of flying through empty space, which is exceedingly dull. You command up to three starships, but only one directly. You can issue general commands to the others, but they sometimes behave quite stupidly. They also follow you no matter what, which can be good or bad. Sometimes you really want one of your ships to withdraw from battle, but the only way to do this is take command of it yourself and fly off. Unfortunately, the others will also tag along. Then again, this is exactly what you want when you run into an impossible encounter.

My last gripe is the naming conventions. They use a rather counterintuitive system of letters, pluses, and dashes to designate ships. Even worse, each race has different designations for equivalent ships. It's very important to know what the designations are, since you really don't want to charge your frigates at a line of dreadnoughts. The only good way to do this is to spend an eternity in the tech library, which is somewhat less than fun. If Trek ships looked more distinctive, it could be easier to tell the various types apart. I think they do in newer episodes of the series, but these are the old ones and they all look similar.

Though in general I think SFC 2 is a good game, it could have been a whole lot better. I'm curious to see where this franchise is going, and might even get the sequel. However, due to the problems with this one, I think I'll wait for it to get cheaper.

This is the best Star Trek game ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: April 29, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Fun puzzles, great voice acting, great lip-synching, and most emportantly -- REALLY GOOD WRITING. This game captures the spirit and feel of its source material better than any other STAR TREK game has before or since -- the reason: it has a sense of humor and a sense of camradery. The people behind it clearly knew Trek inside out, and this product was clearly a labor of love.

Must buy for all Trek/Strat fans!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: May 06, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Star Trek Armarda II is a must buy for all trek/stratergy game fans. Its like age of empires in space. With a few nice extras. The special weapons are good and the AI capability for your ships is a real help. with 3 races to command in campaigns (pitty they dropped the romulans) it creates hours of fun, its 3 difficulty setting make it good fun for all skill levels. And if you get bored with playing aginst the computer the game expands with the capability for internet gaming over the game spy network, which can put you up against as many as 8 other players leads to unlimited possibilites the campaigns are like training for multiplayer mode. In instant action or multiplayer mode the number of races you can command increases to 6 with the addition of romulan, cardassian and species 8472.

Overall this game is a great buy and will give you endless hours of fun!

EF2 only half as good as EF1

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 15 / 26
Date: October 01, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is going to just be a comparison between Elite Force 1 and 2.

EF1: Lots of varied architecture, including Borg, Etherian, Klingon, etc., with no repeats. Many of these architectures are really gorgeous. This applies to both single-player and multi-player maps.
EF2: Nearly every map uses the same ugly brown industrial style. This applies to both single-player and multi-player maps.

EF1: The ENTIRE cast of voyager lent their voices to the game (although Jeri Ryan had to wait for the expansion pack)
EF2: The only TNG cast memebers to lend their voices are Captain Picard and that snivelling weasel Reginald Barclay. You won't find Worf, Riker, Troi, Geordi, doctor Crusher, or anyone else, despite repeated visits to Sickbay, Engineering, and the Bridge.

EF1: Shoot up lots of different types of bad guys, including Borg, etherians, klingons, malon, hirogen, mirror-universe humans, maintenance bots, and giant bugs, with very little repetition from one mission to the next.

EF2: Shoot up the same damn species of bugs over and over and over and over in every freaking map.

EF1: Overall visual look is simple, colorful, and well-lit, providing a fun and only slightly cartoonish look.
EF2: Dark, drab, foggy maps with no color or texture and WAY TOO MUCH FOG. Most interior areas are too dark; you shouldn't need to use night vision unless it's actually nighttime, or the lights on the ship aren't working. This applies to both single-player and multi-player maps.

EF1: The core Hazard team members have their own distinct and colorful personalities.
EF2: The core Hazard Team members have little, if any, personality.

EF1: FINALLY did away with the incredibly annoying concept of secret areas.
EF2: Brought back the incredibly annoying concept of secret areas. Said secret areas are often impossible to find unless you either go to a website or look at the game code, and many core ideas of the game (like red doors always being locked) are violated.

EF1: Every number from 1-9 was a weapon slot, and every weapon had its own slot all to itself, providing rapid access to an arsenal of truly unique weapons. The Tricorder, not being a weapon, was accessed with the "t" key. No two weapons were alike. Once you grab a weapon, you get to keep it in every mission from that point onward.
EF2: There are 13 weapons crammed into 5 weapon slots, making the right weapon for the job take longer to get to. The Tricorder is assigned to number 6, despite not being a weapon. Many weapons are also functionally identical, such as the Enhanced Compression Rifle and the Attrexian Arc Thingie. The secondary fire modes on most weapons are pretty much the same: a single powerful ball that takes time to reach its target, recharges slowly, and uses lots of ammo. Many of the weapons are also cheap ripoffs of EF1 weapons, like the way the Tetryon Gatling Gun is really just a watered-down (and ugly-looking) version of the Tetryon Disruptor. And to add insult to injury, energy weapons use clips. What the hell!?

EF1: Your decisions affected which Hazard team members would live or die. You actually felt sorry for the redshirts that went down, too.
EF2: The above function is no longer existent. You either save your teammates, or lose the game and try again.

EF1: Lots of maps and lots of character models. In team games, your default team is Blue, the universal color of good.
EF2: Very few maps and very few character models. Capture the Flag got particularly screwed over. In team games, your default team is Red, the universal color of evil.

And the list goes on and on and on, as interminable as EF2's single-player mode.

EF2 is probably a decent game on its own, easily much better than Quake III. However, after playing Elite Force 1 for so long, I was extremely disappointed with the relative lack of effort and thought that went into EF2. After playing this game, I have a whole new respect for the first one.

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