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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!"

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.

Better then SFC and SFC2 combined!!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 14 / 22
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.

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.

Fun for 15 Minutes

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 11 / 18
Date: August 06, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Star Trek Bridge Commander has all the elements of a new screensaver - it's great to look at, fun to learn its features, but, after the novelty wears off, is quickly shuffled to the software graveyard on your pc.

Bridge Commander places you in the captain's chair - something Star Trek gamers have wanted for a while in a computer game - and introduces a clever, intuitive interface for giving orders: you use the mouse to look around the bridge at different officers. Want a damage report? Look to your engineer and ask him for it. The game's in-play training, administered by Patrick Stewart, will have you up and running in minutes.

The graphics are gorgeous. Warp nacelles on ships glow blue and red, running lights illuminate ships hulls in shadowy nebula, and huge starships twinkle with thousands of lights. At times it looks right out of a movie - a Romulan warbird decloaks, fires off a volley of photon torpedos, and you watch them pulse towards your ship as you return fire. Damage effects, however, are mediocre; the bridge now and then vents the mystery gas from broken pipes that frequent typical Voyager episodes, but never really gets banged up - no stations or crew members go up in smoke. The real time damage feature on the outside of the ship takes odd looking nibbles out of the hull, but you never get a nacelle blown off or a Star Trek IIish looking battle scar. The game features a quick combat feature which lets you pit any combos of ships in battle, and this is fun for some quick carnage.

The gameplay, however, quickly becomes boring. There really are no decisions to be made, despite you being the captain - encounters are by the books; hail them, scan them, destroy them. You sit back while your officers execute the commands. If you choose to deviate, your first officer overides you. Getting beaten up by four warbirds and want to warp out? You'll be overidden and forced to fight to the death. Want to investigate another system? Your nav officer only gives you options to go on the current mission.

Previous games like Starfleet Academy did an excellent job of giving crew members personalities, having them interact off duty, and giving you leadership choices to make to keep your crew happy. Bridge Commander needs a heavy dose of this - your crew's chatter is limited mostly to "Aye, aye sirs", and you are never called upon to make any decision other than giving the head nod to their obvious suggestions. Playing the game is more like watching tv - and endless episode of hail, scan, destroy.

Download the demo, enjoy the graphics, but pass on Bridge Commander if you're looking for anything more than eye candy.

The greatest space combat sim ever made

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: November 08, 2001
Author: Amazon User

If you like SFC, this is the game for you. There are 16 possible races to choose from - 8 empires and 8 pirate cartels. No other Starfleet Command product gives you the range of options of this game.

If you don't know SFC, its level of tactics is unequaled in the gaming industry. There is no space simulation game that is more detailed and fascinating.

It takes skill. This is not a shoot-em-up. While not easy to learn, patience and practice will mold you into a feared and deadly starship captain. The online play, supported by the free GameSpy Arcade, is the most rewarding, for you can pit your skills against other captain wannabes. Do not be discouraged. As I said, it takes seasoned skill to win. When you first begin, you have little hope against a veteran player. Your skills will improve in a few weeks, however. Your first victory against another human opponent will be sweet, sweet, sweet.

Buggy at first, with patches it has become very stable. It is a very rewarding game for those who are looking for a game with a little depth.

Armada 2

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: October 29, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Armada 2 is a great game with tons of new weapons: photon torpedos, quantom torpedos and tons of new ships. You also colonize planets, and there are three new resources: metal, latinum, and spieces 8472 uses biomatter.

I think the game being 3-d is a disadvantage, because if you are used to Armada 1 you'll build all your turrets in a 2-d formation around your base and the computer then comes up underneath you.

The Borg are way too powerful because they can fuse 8 tactical cubes to create a tactical fusion cube which has 8 lasers, 8 quantum torpedoes, a ton of special energy, practically invincible shields and can asimalate 3 special weapons from other races. I think the best combo of special weapons is the shield disrupter, corbanite reflector, and weapons enhancer. Every ship in the Klingon fleet has a weapon. Personally I stay loyal to the federation which has lots of new ships including the Galaxy class star ship which can separate its saucer section and stardrive section, which I can not understand the point of doing. The nebula starship fires much faster than it did in Armada 1.

A dream come true for fans

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: June 01, 2002
Author: Amazon User

For star trek fans this game is as good as they come. The fantasies of star trek fanatics who want to be in the captains chair to show Picard that they can do it better will have there dreams come true with this game. I admit that I bought it with a little scepticism after reading other reviews and after playing on the demo, but it has to be one of the most original games to come along in years. You play as the captain and you sit in the famous centre chair most of the time. You can always of course use a consol to zoom out and see the ship from the outside, but that's the extent of your local manoeuvrability.
But who needs manoeuvrability when you have warp drive at your disposal!
There are two main modes of play. The story mode which is like a series of star trek where you go through different episodes, and follow a story line which is half linear with decisions altering the outcome and this is the best mode. There is also a quick battle mode where you can play with teams in the chair in combat situations where you can take on Klingons, Romulans, Cardasians etc, (No Borg I'm afraid, but bet you 1000 bucks that will be an add on pack). The cool thing about it is that the teams are fully customisable, so you can have you and 2 Klingon Warbirds stick two Romulan Warbirds if you like. You could also have a couple of star bases to defend or even take on DS9 in the old Enterprise-D.
Also in this mode, there is no limit in the number of enemies or friendlies you can have, and I mean that, I did a test and had over 30 on each team, and talk about slow down.
I have to say, I have a Duran 800 with 256Mb RAM and I can only have full graphics with four a side.
Speaking of graphics, the single player game runs fine on the above specs, and so does the quick combat up to that point, and boy are the graphics good. So photo realistic and with a sun in the sector the hull shines it back and looks great. The damage effects sell the combat to me though. No exaggerations when I say location damage. It really does depend on where you hit the ship as to where the damage is seen. And I'm not talking about those black smear marks you see. You get a quantum hit your hull with no shields and you'll be seeing space through the gap.
The damage effects are worth buying the game for alone. Its fun to see how much damage you can do to the enterprise-E before it explodes.
Back to the bridge anyway.
Throughout the story mode you sit in the chair and command most of the important functions of the star-ship. The power distribution, the level of alert, the location, the warping, the speed, the tactics like manoeuvres, the position of attack to protect certain shields, the type of weapons used, the subsystem to target such as weapon array or engines, the communication station, the damage repair priority and the view screen position and zoom and more. Of course your officers are consulted to alter these for you, but you have the final word.

These are just some of your options when in command, but the story presents some interesting decisions that have to be made.
The story line is fantastic, it's really fluent, and even through you may think that the mission where you have to stop asteroids from hitting a space station is a little done before, you'll realise why your doing it when the story unfolds.
Patrick Stuart (spelling not sure on) plays the voice of Picard, and Brent Spinner does Data which makes it even more believable.
So up to now the game is seriously worth buying.
The only down side and this is the only thing I found were the bugs. Yes, it appears as though we are the Beta testers again, and you can see texture tearing on the bridge, which can ruin the atmosphere literally (chuckle).
A few other things such as people falling over when the ship is hit seem to never get up, but that's solved in the patch you can download.
Finally, the bridge effects, it's really cool when your fighting, because your bridge sets on fire and shakes and sparks fly around and the control panels flicker, your officers are screaming at you to do something about the damage, and your tactical officer is always telling you how the shields are getting lower.
To sum up... The game has brilliant replay ability with the quick battle mode, the story line is better then some of the real episodes and the effects and atmosphere are as close to the real thing so far. If you like Star Trek, you'll love this, if you don't maybe it's one to miss...

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