Posted on: September 9, 2021

zerodin

Games: 505 Reviews: 86

You ARE the Captain!

This is probably one of the biggest wish fulfillment games to ever come out of a popular franchise.

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Posted on: September 15, 2021

grammarye

Verified owner

Games: 440 Reviews: 8

Frustrating, flawed, missed potential

At first glance, Bridge Commander is an interesting fun take on the Star Trek & capital ship command genre, yet it quickly pales in comparison to other games even of the same era. Your bridge crew are incompetent; you have to manually pilot the ship to achieve any useful outcomes, which makes a mockery of the command aspects of the game that the initial tutorial spends ages pointing out. Yet there is no stick support, which leaves you punching the keyboard trying to control the myriad aspects of a starship while trying to fly as well. People tout mods without mentioning the little detail that the major mods that remain 20 years later will break or dramatically alter the single player campaign. On normal difficulty I found that the combat was pretty random. The same scenario could play out with my ship getting destroyed or easy victory, with little to suggest what if any startling command I had displayed. In other words, random chance and whether a torpedo impacted appeared to matter more than any player agency. The lack of intra-mission save points makes repeating the same annoying mission sections deeply frustrating. The game is desperately lacking information to make clear why you're succeeding/failing. The most aggravating aspect is that it has such potential even in 2021. It needs a flyable control scheme, crew AI that understand 3D and support you by doing something useful, and perhaps most of all a plot that was more in-line with what Star Trek was about, instead of thrusting you into repeated one-sided combat. Other games do space combat better and the developers had an opportunity to make starship command be more than just shooting stuff. Klingon Academy does the single player and control schemes far better (and it's a crying shame that that gem isn't available on GOG). Starfleet Command does the capital ship command & control better. I-War offers more realism in the flight models. I really tried hard to like this game, but it's just not that fun.

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Posted on: November 15, 2021

rex_butler

Verified owner

Games: 113 Reviews: 68

Overall, a decent Star Trek game

Star Trek: Bridge Commander (STBC) is a very dated games and feels like such, but for the price it is worth a try for any Star Trek fan. The graphics are passable, the music and voice acting are fine, and the game mechanics mostly work. However, do be prepared to do much of the piloting of the ship and all of the fighting, which is a shame since it breaks the immersion of being a starship captain commanding a competent crew. The game consists of a campaign and skirmish mode. The campaign is long and includes eight chapters with multiple parts (missions). The missions themselves are a mixed bag. There are some good ones, bad ones, easy ones, frustrating ones, and plenty of confusing ones. I would recommend playing the campaign on easy difficulty during the first playthrough. Since you cannot manually save the game at any point and the autosave kicks in very infrequently, you will end up replaying missions from the beginning in many instances. There are some decent walkthrough guides and cheat codes available to help you get past some of the frustration, but I have to dock the game 1 star for not having a save feature. After getting through the campaign, you can do some skirmish scenarios with ships from various factions but that's about it. The combat itself can be engaging, and I found that the keyboard and mouse work well enough. The UI is also pretty easy to get used to. I do not play online and would be surprised if there is much of a multiplayer community at this late date. I would, however, suggest trying out some mods. Most of the ones that I tried were buggy and unstable. While crash-prone, the Kobayashi Maru mod seems to be about the best available and offers a nice graphical overhaul of the game (though the Galaxy Maps 2.0 campaign was unfortunately crashy and would not let me save my progress after awhile). Overall, for $10, I can recommend STBC. However, be ready for a bit of frustration during the campaign and not much to do after it's over. 3.5/5

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Posted on: May 2, 2022

Bloodrunsclear

Verified owner

Games: 1219 Reviews: 143

Works fine and gives you the ST feel

I'm a giant nerd so the sheer amount of Star Trek in this game is very welcome! You aren't just controlling the ship at the helm, you're deferring to your crew who each have a role in running the ship. Want to warp to a location? You can select a drop down menu or push a hotkey, but you can also tap your officer on the shoulder and ask them to lay in a course, half impulse. Every officer can be asked to report on their status which is a fine way to remember your mission objectives. Combat is similar. Contact your science officer to adjust scanners, you second in command to go to red alert, your munitions officer to target the enemy and redirect the shields to counter incoming fire. This is a pretty linear experience, but because of the tight structure there's voice acting for everything and a lot of incidental touches to the animation. Drop by a space station to refuel and repair. Fly to a planet to deal with a distress call. There's a variety of objectives and it really does get across the old school Trek feel of professionals calmly dealing with more and more dangerous situations. This is not a very fast paced game but it's no slouch for action. There's some timed objectives, dogfights, and even given the dated character graphics the space action is colorful and accurate to the show. If you want to go on a little ride in the Next Generation universe this is a fine choice. Thankfully you can at will make a lot of decisions and work out some things for yourself. Also you're not just shooting the crap out of aliens because that's not what StarFleet is supposed to do!

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Posted on: September 10, 2021

SuperFriendBFG

Verified owner

Games: 118 Reviews: 2

A fantastic, buggy Trek game

This is one of those games that was released before it was truly ready. There are bugs, memory leaks and other problems. It is also a very, very unique game, letting you command a massive ship, which feels massive to control. The Star Trek setting is just a juicy cherry on top. I would recommend this game with one big disclaimer. You may, or may not run into issues trying to run this. Getting this to run in Widescreen Resolutions can potentially be a chore. Modding Multiplayer and Single Player are also quite different, while carrying risks of their own. The game will crash, that is almost a guarantee if you attempt to play through it. So save often and be prepared to close and restart the game every few hours. Please do not knock on GOG with these issues. They sometimes can and do fix game compatibility issues, however this particular gem of a game also happens to be a broken gem of a game, and I strongly doubt there's anything GOG can do that the community hasn't already tried in the last 15+ years.

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