Star Trek: Armada II (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.5 stars Very good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 7.1 (3.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Greg Kasavin
• Reviewed on: 11/26/2001
• Updated on: 05/30/2003
• Released on: 11/12/2001
• Originally published on GameSpot: Star Trek: Armada II (PC) Review

Released in early 2000, Star Trek: Armada was a well-built, graphically impressive real-time strategy game that let you command the famous ships of the Star Trek: The Next Generation television series. The game wasn't overly complicated as real-time strategy games go--the object was to quickly try to gather enough resources to field a large fleet of starships powerful enough to dispose of all the enemy forces. Still, Armada was paced well, had some tactical depth, and was essentially fun to play. Some Star Trek fans felt its fairly simple gameplay didn't do justice to the source material, but most found Armada to be a refreshing change from the typically lackluster Star Trek games that had come before it.

At any rate, there was certainly room for a good sequel. Some sequels simply expand on the concepts of the original game--they introduce new graphics and a few new features. Other sequels are more ambitious in nature, and Star Trek: Armada II is one of these. You can't tell just on first impression--the look and basic design of the game remain largely identical to its predecessor. However, a number of new complexities have been introduced in Armada II, which make it seem more compelling than the first game from a strategic standpoint. Unfortunately, in practice not all of these new features are successful. In fact, if you enjoyed the original Armada, you might find yourself nostalgic for that game while playing Armada II.

Armada II is the first product from Mad Doc Software, a company founded by one of the key individuals behind some of Activision's successful real-time strategy games, including Dark Reign, Battlezone, and the original Star Trek: Armada. On paper, Armada II sounds like a perfect sequel. In addition to the Federation, Klingon, Romulan, and Borg playable factions from the first game, Armada II also lets you play as the cruel Cardassians and the enigmatic yet decidedly hostile Species 8472, though these two are only available in the skirmish and multiplayer modes. New ships and technologies have been added to each of the returning factions. There's a new, linear campaign consisting of 30 single-player missions--10 for the Federation, 10 for the Klingons, and 10 for the Borg. New tactical options are available--ships can be set into a number of formations, and battles now play out in true 3D space. By comparison, in the original Armada, battles took place on what was essentially a flat 2D playing field. Armada II also adds more layers to the original game's resource model.

Not all of Armada II's gameplay additions are effective, even if they sound attractive. For example, the ability to move your ships in a true 3D environment is just the sort of feature that some of Armada's fans hoped to see in a sequel. Unfortunately, the ability to do battle in true 3D space is really of negligible benefit to the game and actually introduces some new problems to how it plays. Though you can zoom the camera in for a close-up view of your ships, you'll spend the vast majority of your time with Armada II looking at your fleet from a top-down perspective, much like you'd find in most any real-time strategy game. Thus having the ability to move ships "up" and "down" relative to this perspective can be a tricky affair. It's easy enough to do--you use the Shift key, much like in the popular outer-space strategy game Homeworld, to set a destination for your ships along the Z-axis.

The problem is, at a glance, you can't really tell what's where. What looks like space debris might actually be a fleet of powerful starships too far "down" for you to notice. Meanwhile, ships sent all the way "up" can fill the screen. This can be used to devious effect in multiplayer matches--the relative sizes of your units can be carefully concealed by moving them along the Z-axis, so that even at resolutions exceeding 1024x768, it can be very difficult to tell what sorts of ships you're dealing with. There's a "tactical" view mode that lets you see the action from more of a side angle, which gives a better sense of relative distances between ships, but this view is otherwise disorienting and mostly just adds some cinematic flair to the action. It's not an ideal perspective for actually playing the game. At any rate, the addition of the Z-axis may indeed add a new level of strategy to the combat, but since much of the strategy revolves around taking advantage of flaws in the game's default perspective to trick human opponents, it's not the kind of depth that's entirely welcomed.

In any case, battles just don't last long in Armada II. For one thing, you'll find yourself bringing more ships to the fray than you did in the original game. In Armada, a well-balanced fleet of about a dozen ships could easily sweep across the map. In Armada II, most ships are produced very quickly, but also seem to get destroyed more easily, which means you'll use greater numbers of them. It also means you'll probably ignore the weaker ships and try to work your way up to the stronger, sturdier ones as quickly as possible. This isn't really satisfying--the first Armada gave a pretty good sense that you were indeed commanding powerful starships. When one of your bigger vessels was destroyed, that was a real blow to your force. In Armada II, ships are more expendable. Considering that most of Star Trek is about the drama that takes place aboard these vessels, the idea that they can be thrown wave after wave to their deaths seems misguided.

Armada II's ships fire and turn very quickly--they seem to have little mass--and their jerky motions further diminish the sense that they're actually huge spacecraft with hundreds or thousands of crewmembers aboard. Ships apparently take damage differently depending on their facing, but in practice this doesn't seem to mean much--a few ships bearing down on a single target can usually decimate it in no time, regardless of what direction it's pointed in.

Armada II lets most ships travel at warp speed, another new feature. They'll seem to elongate and will travel at a much faster rate across the map. In this state, ships are more vulnerable and their line of sight is reduced. It's a nice way of balancing out an ability that you'd expect most any Star Trek vessel to have. In practice, it's great for when you need to quickly reinforce a fleet engaged in battle or defend a vulnerable base. Maps in Armada II can be quite large, so being able to traverse them at high speeds is a relief. Actually, warp speed gives you a lot of leeway that you don't get in other real-time strategy games, where you need to have your units in the right place at the right time.

Warp speed isn't the only new feature that makes Armada II's combat seem rather forgiving. Since the pacing of Armada II's battles is much quicker than before, the designers added some options for allowing units to autonomously fire their special weapons. The special weapons in the original Armada worked just like those in games such as Warcraft II or Starcraft. Basically, you could spend resources to research special weapons for your individual ship classes, and then you'd need to manually trigger the attack when the time was right. Some have criticized this approach over the years--the idea being that manual dexterity shouldn't be a factor in a strategy game. At any rate, by giving you the option to let your ships fire off their special weapons autonomously, Armada II makes this hot topic a nonissue. In doing so, it penalizes those players who actually like the challenge of having to manually use these attacks, since the computer will always be quicker on the draw. Then again, the computer will also be prone to wasting the attacks on insignificant targets. Overall, much like the addition of the Z-axis, the option for greater unit autonomy in Armada II is something that's not quite successful in practice. It feels like a compromise, because it is one.

Continue reading