I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m a Star Trek geek. Huge fan of the series, read tons of books, collected the 1st edition CCG game, etc. When I saw they were releasing a game for the 360 for Star Trek my curiosity was definitely heightened. Star Trek Legacy offers fans a chance to take control of their favorite ship and battle it out with the Romulans, Kligons and more. I must note though that Legacy was never billed as an arcade-style shooter. It’s quite the opposite: a real-time tactical space game in which players control up to four ships in their quest to achieve the game objectives.

If you want a good strategic game then you need a good AI and unfortunately Star Trek Legacy’s AI is a bit spotty at best. By pressing the “back” button, players can bring up a top-down level map that shows enemies, objectives and landmarks. Selecting each ship individually or the entire fleet, players can issue commands about which enemies to focus on, which landmarks to warp toward and which planets to hide behind. This can get a bit cumbersome when you’re under attack and want to use your ships to the best of your ability. I also noticed that sometimes the AI completely ignores my commands. In one instance I ordered a ship to attack a Romulan ship that was attacking one of the games objectives, the ship made it to its destination but once there started to fly aimlessly, ignoring the Romulans and their attacks on the ship and the objective. There’s a lot of micromanaging when it comes to the ship in your fleet, and this takes a lot away from the game enjoyment itself.

One thing I found extremely annoying was that there’s no way to save your game mid-mission and there are no checkpoints. This forces you to play the game at least 30 minutes if not more depending on the mission.

One you finish a mission you earn “command points” based on the number of enemies killed and the success in achieving secondary objectives. Using those points you can buy new ships between levels, and the four-ship maximum for the fleet requires players to sell ships, which allows you to regain some command points, as they add better-class ships to the team. It’s pretty novel to see an Enterprise-era battleship flying alongside a Next Generation-era cruiser, but the novelty wears off once you realize just how slow, weak and defenseless the ships are from previous eras.

The story is by far the best part of the game, and that’s unfortunate really. It tells the backstory of how the Borg came to be. It’s really quite a fascinating concept, and the way it weaves itself through the three generations (Enterprise, The Original Series and The Next Generation) is well thought out. An added bonus is that you get the voice actors from the actual series, so you hear the actual voices for Captains Kirk, Archer, Picard, Sisko and Janeway.

I had a lot of hopes for the game, but the tediousness and poor AI really hurts any fun that could be had. Unfortunately this is a game I won’t be recommending anytime soon.