A bland space conquest game that doesn’t capitalize on the Star Trek universe.
Star Trek: Birth of the Federation is a 4X game – explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. It’s a genre that is especially suited to players who want a more cerebral experience that the standard real-time strategy rush can’t offer. The only problem with Birth of the Federation is that it ends up being pummeled into mediocrity by lots of little problems, from bugs to interface quirks to mismatches in the universe it portrays.
Birth of the Federation is a good game, if you are willing to forgive the interface and the amount of micromanagement required.
You can find hints that there’s something wrong just by the official title – Star Trek: The Next Generation Birth of the Federation. Besides simply sounding weird, it’s also an oxymoron. By the time of The Next Generation, the Federation (and its associated enemies) were going concerns. The game, however, starts early in their histories, yet all of its visual and many of its functional trappings are from far down the Star Trek timeline. It’s jarring to a Trekker to see an Enterprise with the designation of 1701-A wearing the body of a Galaxy-class vessel; it’s also a gameplay problem when you can’t quickly tell that the Romulans are really still sporting an old Bird of Prey while you’ve upgraded to better vessels.
As just a game, it’s got many of the components you’d expect from a 4X space empire builder: exploration, research, production, diplomacy, espionage, and space battles. Noticeably absent from this list is ship design, something that some hardcore 4X fans may miss but that really doesn’t detract that much in the overall scheme of things. On the surface, the design isn’t bad. Maybe not a grand advancement to the genre, but certainly quite competent, very enjoyable at times even for those familiar with the genre, and probably very good for people new to this category of game. You can play one of five Trek “races”: Federation, Klingon, Romulan, Ferengi, or Cardassian. One of the high points of the game is that each of these races really does feel quite different from the others: a Federation player must use diplomacy (and is good at it), while the Ferengi player can buy himself a pretty darn strong empire. This alone strengthens the game quite a lot.
The research system is simple but effective: six categories that combine to give you different Treknologies, structures, and ship types. Diplomacy is a bit above the norm for 4X games, although it still basically boils down to bribery and, to a lesser extent, threats. One very nice feature is the inclusion of an alliance win. Production is also fairly straightforward, although there is no way to set rally points for vessels you produce. Espionage seems to be nearly pointless, but this may depend a lot on your style of play.
The tactical battles could have been a lot of fun. They are turn-based, with each turn being executed in 15-second chunks. You select from a neat rock-paper-scissors-like set of orders for each of your classes of vessels, set targets, and hit go, watching the 15 seconds play out in 3D. Sounds good, but things fall apart. Almost all battles are resolved in one turn, maybe two, usually using simple tactics—only once was a full-up, multi-turn space battle encountered… and that’s a shame, as it takes away a lot from the gameplay.
There are multiple camera angles, but you’ve got to chose them during the turn replay — no way to set up your favorite angle before the battle. The 3D rendered ships are nice enough, but as the rendering is in software it can really chug when you’ve got large fleets. The idea is good enough, though, that it would have been nice to have some large battles you could play separate from the main game.
Much of your time is spent on the main galactic map, sending ships hither and thither to perform various risky tasks. The map is fairly nice looking, and you can set filters to determine what’s shown. Unfortunately, there is no mouse scroll to the map, and scrolling via the arrow keys is a shockingly slow affair. You can zoom the map out (nice for the big picture), but the game becomes almost unplayable as the map gets busy — orders are often not registered, something that’s not always immediately obvious.
These problems, while many, aren’t enough to kill the game outright. At its best moments, Birth of the Federation does have that ‘one more turn’ factor that is so common with addictive 4x games, even though it doesn’t bring anything particularly fresh to the table. But its problems are hard to ignore, and in the end you’ll find that the fun will slowly get sucked away like starlight in some distant black hole.
System Requirements: Pentium 133 Mhz, 32 MB RAM, 160 MB HDD, Win95
Tags: Free Star Trek The Next Generation Birth of the Federation ISO Download Full PC Game Review
Star Trek the Next Generation Birth of the Federation was released in the same year as the movie, Star Trek Insurrection. It is not tied down to that game, but they both came out in a similar time frame, a few months if I remember correctly. I am a massive fan of The Next Generation, that was the Star Trek that I grew up with and as my dad was a fan too, we always would get the new Star Trek games, PC gamers had it made with Star Trek games back in the day and this is one that often gets forgotten about.
Rule The Galaxy
The main game mode sees you get to take control of one of five different civilizations. You can play as The Federation, The Klingons, Romulans, Ferengi, and Cardassians. There are a ton of other races/civilizations in the game as well that you will have dealings with. Everything in Star Trek the Next Generation Birth of the Federation is themed around The Next Generation so if that particular form of Star Trek does not float your boat, you may have a tough time getting into this. The goal of the game is to be the supreme force in the galaxy and to do this you have to deal with the other civilizations in various ways. You cannot just steamroll your way across the galaxy, you must use diplomacy and also develop your own civilization with various technologies and so on as well.
Captain Pickard Did Not Have It Easy
In order to reign supreme, you have a lot of work to do. There are many different tactics that you can do in this game. You can wage war, you can try and get along and you can even dabble in a bit of espionage as well. In order to get the best ships so you have a chance in battle, you will need to research technologies. There is a great deal going on and I feel that one of the strengths the game has is that everything is easy to figure out and you learn by playing.The only issue I really have with Star Trek the Next Generation Birth of the Federation is that the more areas of the galaxy you take control of, the more micromanaging you have to do. I found myself getting a bit bored the further I got into the game and while I did finish my playthrough as The Federation I never felt the desire to go back and try with a different civilization.
Engage!Articles Of Federation Star Trek
The battle system in the game is very simplistic, when two ships meet you can battle and all that happens here is you will be giving orders and then watching as they happen. The AI here is not very smart at all and if you just bombard them, you will win 99/100. The battles are over very quickly. To me it is like they were an afterthought, you can move the camera around a bit if you like, but the game is not exactly a looker so I am not sure you would want to!
There are many Star Trek strategy games out there and for me, Star Trek the Next Generation Birth of the Federation is not one of the best ones. It is not a bad game by any means, it handles the strategy part pretty well. However, it is not a very exciting game and I say this as someone who loves The Next Generation. It gets rather boring and I could never see myself playing through it will all five factions.
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Final Score
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Download LinksSystem Requirements
Processor: PC compatible, P-100
OS: Windows 9x, Windows 2000 Windows XP, Vista, Win 7, Win 8, Win 10.
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Game Features:Single game mode
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December 2020
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