Article Index
AbleGamers Guide to Star Trek Online
GamePlay
Controls and Accessibility
Final Thoughts
All Pages

Star Trek Online (STO), the latest offering from Cryptic Studios, was officially launched last week to a fair amount of buzz -- both positive and negative.  While certain of Cryptic's business decisions quickly earned the ire of many players (such as the selling of uniquely available race options through their "C-Store"), the overall opinion of most of the gaming community has been surprisingly positive.  That's not to say that the game isn't without its frustrations; like any MMO immediately after launch, STO has its share of buggy or incomplete content.  It's still a highly fun and unique gaming experience, though, and definitely in a league of its own for the time being.

Getting Started

Review for Star Trek Online

6.8

A great break down of the accessibility of Star Trek Online

Click here to read the review

When you first create a character for STO, you're limited to building characters for the Federation -- one of the game's two factions at the time of launch.  The second faction, Klingon, brings an entirely different, more PVP-centric style of gameplay, and only becomes available once a player has progressed to a certain point in the game with a Federation character.  This initial obstruction of a faction shouldn't feel limiting, though.  Players are offered an extremely high degree of character customization within the Federation faction.  One can choose from a number of pre-existing species from the Star Trek universe, each with their own set of two or three unique "traits" and the ability to add one or two more.  Alternately, a player can choose the "alien" species, which lets them craft their own unique species from the ground up using the game's impressive visual character creation system.

Beyond your character's appearance, the only other initial decision to be made is your character's career.  This is really STO's take on your average MMO's class breakdown.  While everyone who plays STO is a captain of a starship, there are three distinct career types that one can choose: tactical officer, engineering officer, and science officer.  Each of these careers puts its own spin on gameplay by affecting the type of approach your character will need to take to any given situation.  Tactical officers are somewhat analogous to your typical "tank" class.  They're concerned with maximizing how much damage they inflict on enemies and keeping an opponent's attention focused firmly on them.  Engineering officers, by contrast, may not be the hardest hitters out of the gate.  They make up for this, however, by being the best there is at short-term self-buffing to get every last drop of potential out of their ships and themselves.  Last, but certainly not least, science officers are STO's truest "support" class.  Whether they're healing party members, debuffing enemies, or providing tactical combat support by holding & weakening an attacker, science officers are arguably the most critical (and arguably the most challenging to play) class for any party.