Star Trek: Legacy
Command Federation starships across four Star Trek eras.
Star Trek: Legacy is a 2006 real-time tactics space combat game for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360, developed by Mad Doc Software and published by Bethesda Softworks. It is notable as the first project to feature all five actors who portrayed the captains of the five Star Trek series up to that time: William Shatner, Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew, and Scott Bakula. The PC version received mainly negative reviews, while the Xbox 360 version fared slightly better with critics.
Quick Facts
- Developer
- Mad Doc Software
- Publisher
- Bethesda Softworks
- Composer
- Jason Graves
- Genre
- Real-time tactics
- action-adventure
- space combat
- Modes
- Single-player, multiplayer
- Platforms
- Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360
Facts from the source article.
Gameplay
Players control a squadron of one to four 3D modeled starships, engaging in battles against other starships. Movement is controlled with pitch, yaw, and forward propulsion, along with a straight-line warp capability for rapid map traversal, all within a fully 3D pizza-box-shaped environment. The player operates a single starship at a time, controlling weapons fire, movement, and repairs, and can switch between ships in the squadron. A top-down 2D tactical display allows issuing specific commands, such as ordering a ship to warp to a point on the map. Viewpoint can be locked onto an opponent, set to look straight forward, or rotated around the selected ship. Starships are classified by weapons strength and maneuverability, each assigned a point value. Players earn command points during missions and spend them between missions to select new ships. In addition to the linear campaign, a customizable skirmish mode lets players choose the map, number of ships per squadron, command points, race and allegiance of AI players, and their own squadron makeup, including non-Starfleet vessels such as Borg, Klingons, Romulans, and Dominion ships. A later-added coop wave mode has a player (with up to six other squadrons) guard a station against increasingly difficult enemy waves. Bethesda released a mission editor tool for custom missions.
Storyline
The single-player campaign spans three eras: Star Trek: Enterprise, The Original Series (including elements from its films), and The Next Generation (including elements from Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and the Next Generation films). In each era, the player uses a fleet of Federation ships from that period to combat the Romulans (ENT), Klingons (TOS), and Borg (TNG). The eras feature captains Jonathan Archer (Enterprise NX-01), James T. Kirk (USS Enterprise and USS Enterprise-A), Jean-Luc Picard (USS Stargazer, USS Enterprise-D, USS Enterprise-E), Benjamin Sisko (USS Defiant), and Kathryn Janeway (USS Voyager). The story begins in 2159, about four years after the events of Demons and Terra Prime, as Captain Archer searches for a missing Vulcan science ship. Enterprise is attacked by Romulans, then finds the Vulcan ship Seleya under attack. After saving it, its captain, Commander T'Uerell, asks Archer to escort her to her research station Gravenor, which is also under Romulan attack. T'Uerell docks to evacuate her people but breaks radio contact and disembarks seconds before the station explodes, thanking Archer for defending her while she recovered her protomatter. The damaged Enterprise returns to Earth.
Reception
Critics were largely unimpressed with Star Trek: Legacy. The PC version scored 57.14% on GameRankings from twenty-two reviews and a 56 out of 100 on Metacritic based on twenty-five reviews. The Xbox 360 release fared slightly better, earning 65.20% on GameRankings from forty-two reviews and a 64 out of 100 on Metacritic from forty-one reviews. In 2016, Den of Geek placed it among the five worst Star Trek games, though Screen Rant later ranked it tenth best in 2020. Most criticism targeted the PC version’s controls, which were described as unresponsive and unintuitive. Players could not zoom the single camera view, save more than one campaign, or save during missions. Multiplayer was buggy and slow, skirmish mode lacked options to customize AI fleets, and the 3D space had no z-axis movement. AI allies also failed to assign repairs automatically. Graphics, promoted as a selling point, suffered from glitches like a disappearing cursor during energy management and repairs, choppy shadows, and broken damage models. Reviewers also noted camera issues and the inability to choose captains, despite Bethesda advertising that feature on the game’s website as late as a week before release. The promised system where victories earned command points to personalize fleets, ships, and captains was replaced by random captain assignments and random ship names outside the campaign. IGN’s Steve Butts called the controls the first and most frequent aggravation, GameSpy’s Allen Rausch labeled them simply atrocious, and GameSpot’s Jason Ocampo said they were a nightmare to learn. Action Trip’s Uros Pavlovic specifically highlighted the PC version’s unresponsive and unintuitive controls as one of its most annoying aspects.
More in Ubisoft Games of the 2000s
Spotted an error? Know more?
Reader corrections go straight into our review queue. Suggest an edit · How this site is sourced