Star Trek™: Judgment Rites

Judgment Rites improves on its predecessor with an ongoing story arc, much longer, more interesting missions, and a lot more dialogue and reactions from characters, much of it completely optional but highly amusing. The voice acting is improved- Kirk sounds at least a little more engaged, Spock and McCoy sound more like their younger selves, and the computer is properly voiced by Majel Barrett this time. There's more variety in your landing parties- instead of being given a random redshirt every time, the plot dictates who you end up with, including a resentful officer with a grudge against Kirk, a superstitious biologist, or even Uhura, Sulu, Scotty or Chekov. The point system from the previous game returns, with more diplomatic solutions earning a higher score, though oddly, you aren't told how many points you've earned any more- you'll have to infer it, or check the captain's log during the next mission. You can also screw up some missions so badly that you get a game over without actually dying, and can do so poorly during the game that its ends with Kirk being fired, which adds some replay value. There's quite a bit less starship combat than the previous game, and an option has been added to adjust the difficulty or skip it altogether. The game's biggest problem is the dialogue- not the voice acting or writing, but the constant mix-ups. The wrong character's mouth will move, the text words will be different than those spoken (sometimes just slightly off, sometimes an entirely wrong line that obviously belongs somewhere else in the game), a character will speak with another character's voice, and, in one unbelievable example, DeForest Kelley flubs his line and dissolves into giggles... and they USED IT ANYWAY. These issues are especially bad in the next-to-last mission, which must have been extremely rushed, but you're guaranteed to run into a few on any playthrough. Aside from that annoyance, this is a great game, a big improvement, and highly recommended.

decent sequel to 25th Ann. Improves in some respects, but takes a step back in others. If you're a fan of the original series and single player adventure games, it is a must play because of the cast voice-overs. Playability was stable for me on W7 64 One main improvements is the option at the start of the game (can’t change later) to have standard, easy, or no ship-to-ship fights. I selected “easy”, it wasn’t very challenging, but after the final battle in 25th Ann I didn’t want to take any chances. Puzzles are longer, more involved, and generally harder than in 25th Ann (but also does lead to some cons, see below). It involves more of the Enterprise crew as it’s not always Kirk/Spock/McCoy. This adds variety and fun for ST fans, especially the Episode with Scotty. Great dialogue/banter between characters, so keep talking to all chars (and yourself) However, it does have gameplay issues. Few of the puzzles aren’t intuitive, leading to clue book, or walkthroughs. Too many puzzles where a specific char must complete an action, and sometimes it tells you, but sometimes it doesn’t so you think you are on the wrong track. There are many subtle ways to lose score points that are not evident when you are playing (get no feedback), so you don’t know if you selected the best response or action. If you are a perfectionist to get a perfect score, you may have issues. There are no dead ends in the puzzles that prevent you from finishing an episode, so that is good; you just might not get a great score. Some puzzles rely on info from the ship computer, which is a bit clunky to use. The game is a bit unpolished, discrepancies in the voice-overs, or a different character voiced the line than who you clicked on. One thing that bugged me is most of the time the entire screen/background is clickable so you end up clicking on all objects thinking it could be important just to hear the tricorder sound effect and Spock say “Nothing of interest, Captain”

Everything Star Trek: 25th Anniversary edition did is further refined here. You get more of everything, but its all been tweaked ever-so-slightly. If the ship-to-ship battles were too difficult for you, you can skip them in this game. The plot is a much more over-arcing affair this time, with a fan-favorite ToS villain making a return. If you love Star Trek: The Original Series, you owe it to yourself to buy this game and it's prequel.

This is better than 25th Anniversary with more complex missions and three difficulty options for the space combat (along with the new ability to lock your weapons on target - just like in the TV show). The problem I have with this is the CD-ROM version, or at least the Linux version I played (haven't tried the Windows port). I have the original floppy version of Judgement Rites, with the bonus "Movie and Sound Pack" (for a whopping total of 15 3.5" floppy discs!). I figured I would try out the CD-ROM version here and I was... slightly disappointed. In addition to the original series actors sounding expectedly too old to be playing their 1960s selves (except William Campbell as Trelane - the guy sounded like he didn't age a day over 30 years and gave a great performance!) and William Shatner sounding bored with everything I think when they crammed all the voice work on the 700mb CD they must have taken a lot of stuff out too... the opening movie is gone now and I swear some of the music is changed around/taken out in spots. If you already own the original floppy version of this like I do you can probably pass on this. The idea of having the game voiced by the original actors is neat (this was the last thing DeForest Kelley worked on before he died - RIP) but the execution isn't all that great and to me isn't worth it to lose some of the stuff from the original version. If you have never played Judgement Rites though go ahead and get this.

Definitely skip the first game in this series ST: 25th Anniversary due to the awful combat mechanic which makes it unplayable, but I really enjoyed this game which has the option to set combat difficulty making it a much better experience all round. Sure it's an old game and sometimes the artwork could do with being a bit less pixelated (like when trying to find some objects), but it has a strong story focus and it's good fun playing through "episodes" which are voiced by the original cast which is fantastic. There's some amusing banter between the cast members to be found depending on what you ask them to do and how they interact. It does feel like getting some extra interactive episodes of TOS. Loved. it. On sale at the moment, so if you're a ST fan recommend picking this one up.