In preparation for Star Trek: Infinite I played a couple of different civilizations in Stellaris with all the minor and major DLCs. While I think it’s a pretty good game, especially now that it has been expanded through countless patches and expansions, I always seem to run into the same issue: total statement and lack of a real purpose. After a while, the galaxy just seems to stop, and kinda “settles in” with nothing major going on, and with that stopping your own civilization’s purpose (this is with roleplaying in mind). The sandbox nature of the game can only take me so far, and I can’t say the silly randomly generated civilizations you meet help much with this. This is where Star Trek: Infinite comes in.
Beam me up!
While these two games share engine and gameplay, the Star Trek: Infinite campaign format in a known universe with set lore feels much more engaging. You see, this game will always take place in the alpha quadrant in the Star Trek: Next Generation (Deep Space Nine, and Voyager) timeline with four civilizations to pick from (Federation, Klingons, Romulans, and Cardassians). What this does, especially if you are a big fan of Star Trek – is that you will always have a clear purpose for your playthrough, with complementing lore events that follow a strict storyline – however, viewed out of the eyes of the different factions depending on who you play.
That’s not to say that there aren’t any sandbox elements, because there are – considering you still pick who to ally and who to go to war with. However, with the more zeroed-in focus, the gameplay feels much tighter with less meandering. A big bonus is that you don’t have to put up with human devourers or something silly like that! This works best if you are a huge Star Trek fan, not very surprising perhaps. Otherwise, the game might feel like a lesser version of Stellaris, and it seems many people fell into this trap – hence the poor reviews on Steam. If you think you would appreciate a tighter experience with Star Trek as the theme, you can’t go wrong here, but you must set your phasers correctly before jumping in.
Differences
While the majority of the gameplay remains Stellaris, there are a few key differences. It’s a much slower experience, as it doesn’t run for as long, and you will probably not be able to amass the same ridiculous fleet power. Battles will involve fewer ships in general, but I managed to have a couple of massive battles if we go by Star Trek standards. The ships also need officers now, beyond just steel and energy. Officers are pretty slow to replenish, at least when it comes to individual ship crew, but when you have a couple of planets running you will not have to worry about manpower too much. It adds another resource to keep track of, and above all, something to consider in tactical combat since a ship with no crew will not be able to defend itself. I like it, and it makes sense in the setting, as officers & crew have always been the focus of every conflict in the show.
More differences are that spies and espionage are not abstracted like in Stellaris. Here your spies get a ship that you will have to send out on specific missions to planets, or space stations – to subvert populations, steal credits, or sabotage. Starbases don’t have a limit, so you can build and upgrade as many bases as you want. I assume this was changed since you don’t travel in lanes anymore. You can go wherever you want, as long as it’s in your “logistic warp range”. This can be increased by research, or just expanding the empire.
There are many minor civilizations in the alpha quadrant, but what makes these different from the normal main four, is that they are mostly there for the Big Four to absorb in one way or another – or to guarantee their independence to annoy your adversary (or to provoke war). They do have some autonomy, however, they will never reach the same kind of power as the Big Four. When I played as the Federation, I adopted them peacefully into my fold through diplomacy and doing missions for them. As the Klingons, I staged coups and eventually enslaved the population to work in my mineral mines. I find these minor factions and their role in the galaxy pretty interesting, as their existence outside of lore and flavor is to create animosity between the factions. For example, the Bajor civilization is a big thorn in the side of both the Cardassians and the Federation that will cause some friction of “fun”.
The last, but absolutely not least addition, or change (however you want to see it) is the “mission tree”, that sets up missions for you to do. If you complete them, you get bonuses of the varying kind. However, they don’t follow a strict linear path, sometimes you will have to pick between two, which will exclude the one you didn’t pick from ever getting completed. Beyond the bonuses, these missions are mostly a fun thing to do that adds story flavor, but now and again they come with more. For example, to get the legendary ship and crew of Enterprise, you will have to complete one of these missions for the Federation. Just make sure to prepare the Earl Grey.
All in all, I think the gameplay reaches a very nice symmetry with the changes and additions working very well together. The only big issue is that the AI seems a bit passive, and is too easily placated through diplomacy. I highly recommend playing on a higher difficulty where they get some bonuses (even if I consider it cheating). This is so they actually dare to venture outside of their comfort zone, and maybe even strike back after you have their envoy decapitated in a Klingon honor duel.
The Star Trek look
When it comes to visuals and general art, I find Star Trek: Infinite stand-out quality. The event pictures are very pleasant to look at and truly immerse you into the world of Star Trek. The music and sound are of a lesser quality, though. It works, but it doesn’t always feel Star Trek, since the voice acting sounds a bit phoned in, and the music muted. The announcer also acts confused – as he or she, appears to announce the wrong things at times puzzling me as to what is going on. I hope this, and some other issues get fixed, but as far as I can tell the developers are constantly patching the game.
Conclusion
If you enjoy Stellaris and like Star Trek (specifically The Next Generation), it’s a good buy. But, as mentioned, you must realize what this is, and what it isn’t. It isn’t a sandbox take on Stellaris with a Star Trek skin – it works more like a (RTS) campaign with set rules and story. If you don’t have any problem with this, I highly recommend Star Trek: Infinite. I’m having a ton of fun exploring, warring in space, and essentially living the Star Trek life. This is the best game Paradox Interactive has released in a long long while according to me, so hats off to the dev team at Nimble Giant Entertainment. I hope it’s a success, and we get to see some DLCs in the future to expand the gameplay.
Thanks for reading.
/Thomas
Tom's Gaming Blog 