Game is very children friendly and the 2-player couch coop makes it perfect for a parent to play with his child.
I'm having a good time. It's not the best game in the world. Story and side quests are sometimes a bit confusing, Atmosphere is very good. Gameplay is fun and challenging, sometimes a bit much for me, but it makes victory sweeter and the hardest challenges are usually optional.
During the tutorial, my ship got invaded. I was told that I needed to fix something. I don't know how or where. Then a piece broke off. I was thrown in space when I went to investigate. That's when I quit. There are way too many systems to manage. I don't know what half of them do or why they need crew stationned. Resource gathering is p a i n f u l l y s l o w. Graphics are a huge turn off. I wished I loved the game. On paper it sounds really cool. It has lots of good ideas.
The idea of commanding a space ship in battle is great. Have it in the Star Trek universe is amazing. We are even familiar with the mechanics: we know how shields, phasers, torpedoes, transporter works. The idea is amazing! And the veneer is perfect: narrated by Patrick Stewart and faithful to the Trek universe. But the execution.... horrible. It comes down to the control and the balance. I started with the campaign, but the controls are so un-intuitive that I couldn't figure out how to fire the weapons. So I went to the tutorial. From that point on, I was fighting the controls more than my opponent. The interface is ridiculously complicated. And the cooldowns are exceedingly long. What should have been an exciting 5 minute battle took me 45 minutes. And I lost. And that was the TUTORIAL fight! I persevered and went on to the first mission. I tried my best to join the battle, but barely fied my phaser once before my AI friend completed the mission. Next. This time I'm alone against 2+ ships. They are faster, strong, and more manoueverable than me. I spent 1 hour trying to get in position to fire and, on the rare occasion that I was, watched 90% of my shots miss. All the while, the ennemy was always on my back, hitting me consistently, cloaked or not. And even in 2 against 1, it took 1 hour for me to get taken out. The only action I was getting was from clicking frantically on the interface to try to get my ship to do what I needed it to do. But it was pointless. Funless and frustrating.
I've enjoyed this game tremendously. The artistic style is beautiful, the voice acting is superb, the music is brilliant and the controls are fluid. It has been a long time since I have been that immersed in a game and it has nothing to do with the story. It's all in the gameplay, including the atmosphere, for this one, because the story is cliché and simplitisc. It was aimed at a younger audiance (8-12 years old would be my guess). Then again, what do you expect when playing anthropomorphic animals? But boy oh boy! The gameplay! Very simple attacks/dodge/jump that lead to an incredible dance with hordes of ennemies! You get to (almost) fly during long combos. I really felt like an expert swordsman like we see in Japanes animes. The game was rather short (took me 20 hours to get 112% -- max completion being 117%) and to me it's a plus. I hate games that drag you for 100+ hours because they do it with boring stuff like grinding or travelling. Speaking of which, there is a crafting system but the game had a very clever way of removing both the grinding and travelling usually associated with it and I am highly grateful for it. There are some challenging mini-games and there is a hardcore difficulty level if you think the game is too easy. All and all, I'd just turn on this game, relax, unleash awesome combos at my ennemies and have fun. ps: This game was meant to be played with a controller and it plays natively with the XBox controller. I highly recommend you get one.
