Two games in one

During the first couple of hours back in Star Trek Online I made a lot of adjustments to the default settings of the UI and the keybinds. Some changes were ones I almost always make – I'm left handed and invariably switch from WASD movement to the arrow keys* – but a lot of it is specific to STO. Thankfully the game is very flexible when it comes to customising the interface, which is particularly important since this is really two games in one.

There's no denying that it's in space where Star Trek Online truly shines. A battle between similarly matched vessels often becomes one of attrition, and how rapidly you can recover from damage, or evade it, is at times as important as how much damage you can do to the enemy. As you scramble to get your shields back up or transfer extra power to your engines to get out of range of an attack you can almost hear the consoles explode.

*My set up for space combat in STO actually does use the WASD keys, and diverges a lot from what I use in any other MMO, or for that matter from the set up I use for ground combat in this game.

My choice of starship is, in a way, a continuation from Dungeons & Dragons Online and Neverwinter of my preference for rogues. I can hit hard with my Bird-of-Prey but I definitely can't sit and trade broadsides with a larger ship and expect to survive. I've got the speed and maneuverability and I have to use it, and being able to cloak in combat has saved me from defeat more than once.

By comparison with the action in space the ground combat is neither as complex nor as involving, but it's not bad either. The shooter controls are fluid and nicely animated and I love the intuitive nature of the crouch and aim stances.  Having a full away team to skill up and equip adds some fun to it, and it helps that my officers are competent enough to be useful without being so much so that they overshadow my captain.

It's also when you're away from your ship that the game is at its most glitchy. It's mostly small things like characters dropping out of combat stance or their weapon disappearing, or a scripted event where something is beamed out without the accompanying transporter effect. It's common enough for me to comment on, but not so common as to be annoying.*

*Except for the one where my character remains locked into their last action when a conversation starts, leaving them running idly into walls (if I'm lucky) or halfway across the map (if I'm not) until I click hastily through the entire conversation and regain control. That's irritating, and I rather wish that I'd be automatically halted when conversations start, as happens in space.

All in all neither part of the game feels like a mini-game awkwardly attached to the other. As good as the space combat is the ground stuff still needs to be there, and it features some of the best environments and story moments. I enjoy both.

What can feel a bit like a mini-game is when you're in a small ship. My first defeat in this run came during a mission where I was flying a stolen shuttlecraft, and another mission much later, in which I piloted a different shuttle through the interior of a massive space station, had me yearning for my BoP and my bridge crew's abilities. It also, weirdly, reminded me a lot of a level from an old PS1 game called Fade To Black, although thankfully without that 90s difficulty that would see you explode if you made even the slightest contact with a wall.

Still, it did make for an interesting change of pace and scenery, and was well balanced enough that I could survive the combat encounters on advanced difficulty with nothing more than a default shuttle.

Oh and I've recently finished watching Star Trek Picard, so it was amusing to be exploring a facility where the Romulans have been researching Borg technology in a mission that predates that series.