First, a confession: I really liked the oft-maligned Starfleet Academy (SA). In light of that, I would presumably be predisposed to like Klingon Academy (KA) as well. Though KA fixes many of the problems with SA, some of the more fundamental issues remain. You'll just have to read the details to see if it would be worth the purchase price for you.
The visuals in KA are pretty good. The ships are very nicely modeled and textured, and they are downright amazing with battle damage present. No other Star Trek (ST) game, or other game that features space combat so prominently in my experience, supports the kind of destructibility that KA's engine handles easily. It is amazingly satisfying to watch a warp nacelle break away from the hull of an enemy ship after a solid hit, debris scattering everywhere as plasma vents out into open space. The inner decks of the ships even become visible as their hull is compromised. The game is simply amazing in terms of destructibility.
All of the weapon effects are well done, the few animations are good, and the special effects are beautiful. The video sequences are particularly worthy of mention. Truly, Interplay pulled out all the stops for this game. The actors do a uniformly wonderful job with their parts, the video quality is high, the computer-rendered elements are fabulous, and so forth. Frankly, the video footage is near-movie quality, and that's as good as anything I've seen done in a game to date.
Where the visuals aren't so hot is in the simple background star field and some of the planets. It's funny that such an ambitious game doesn't quite succeed in what seems to be such a simple thing. But no matter how high I turn up the resolution at which I play, there are things that just look a bit odd. It also doesn't help that the framerate can be a bit jerky in some places (e.g., nebulae, asteroid fields, etc.). Still, these are relatively minor complaints. In my view, the graphics for KA are second to none compared to other ST games and rank highly compared to other space-based titles.
The audio in KA is similarly good. The sound effects are just what the ST fan would expect, while being able to stand on their own for the newcomer. The music is all fabulously Klingon, conveying both brutality and beauty, victory and tragedy, and every other mood necessary to the game. In short, the audio is great. I have no complaints, and that's very rare, as I'm pretty fussy about such things.
The game interface is simultaneously good and bad. On the one hand, it's good insofar as it does make a positively overwhelming number of options available to the player with relatively few keystrokes. It's bad insofar as the game is so deep that even as concise as the interface is, it's just not good enough to prevent player overload.
The voice order system, or VOS, is also very misleading. To anyone who read the pre-release hype, it sure sounded like KA was going to feature a voice recognition system that would allow the player to bark out orders rather than try to fuss with keys. In reality, the VOS ends up breaking commands down into categories and sub-categories. By pressing some sequence of number keys, the player can issue orders relatively quickly. Still, I used Game Commander 2 for voice recognition, and that really made the game more fun.
In terms of theme and quality, the interface is fabulous. I love the Klingon styling, and I often used the various bridge stations whenever possible, simply because they were fun to use! If anything, I wish that it were possible to do that more often, but the AI, for reasons I'll discuss later, really isn't good enough to allow it. Of course, all the menus are well done, control mapping works well, etc.
I did have some niggling problems getting my Saitek Cyborg 3D joystick to work properly, however, so perhaps there are some joystick-control bugs. The problem I had was that mapping some of the buttons didn't "stick"; i.e., I would set the controls, only to discover that they did not function in-game. If I just kept setting them in the options screen, then they eventually "stuck". Once I got my configuration settled, I never had the issue again, but it was somewhat irritating at the outset.
The game mechanics are incredibly deep. The wealth of options available to the player in KA is simply astounding. Almost everything seen in the "canonical" ST films and television series is here. Power allocation makes the difference between victory and defeat. All of the weapons may be tweaked in terms of their power level, and some may be set to a sort of non-destructive fire for capturing vessels. The player can use scanners, tractor beams, and even boarding parties!
I thought SA did a pretty good job of simulating command of a starship. Starfleet Command improved upon that by borrowing heavily from the 1970's Starfleet Battles board game. KA continued the tradition nicely, making for an incredibly meaty simulation of a single starship. In short, the depth of the game mechanics really helps give the player the impression that he is commanding a variety of Klingon warships, and that's a cool feeling.
The most fundamental flaw in the game mechanics, in my estimation, is that the developers did not provide an in-mission save feature. Given the difficulty level of some of the missions, as well as the ridiculous bugs—more on that in a bit—this omission is very frustrating. I see that more and more video games are going this route these days, and I find it utterly reprehensible. It's all the more inexcusable in KA insofar as this was one of the most common player complaints about its predecessor. How about listening to the players for a change? Developers? Are you listening? Hello?
On this point, KA is unrivaled. The story provides a prequel to the sixth ST film, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and it is as good as anything coming out of Hollywood—though that's not exactly aiming high, I realize. The events of KA so perfectly set the stage for the film that I couldn't help a pang of sadness at the end when hearing General Chang's last words, knowing where events would take him next. Frankly, KA brings a depth to the character that the film that follows fails to provide, and it makes a lot more sense out of the events of the film. That is, KA turns Chang into a believable character with motivations clearer than being merely a pimple on the ass of progress, one more annoyance to be swatted away by Kirk and company. You will not be disappointed by the story, whether you're a ST fan or not.
KA features a wide variety of "terrain". The player will fly through the upper layers of gas giants, through asteroid fields, nebulae and so forth. While it does provide some interesting tactical differences from one mission to another, it largely just makes the gameplay frustrating for reasons I'll get to later. In addition to a wide variety of terrain, the game also packs quite a few ships. There are a number of different Klingon vessels to be piloted, plenty of opposing races and ships to face, etc.
Over the course of twenty-five missions, the player will enjoy a variety of different sorts of tasks. Combat features prominently, of course, but some missions involve a fair amount of stealth, scanning/investigation, diplomacy, and so forth. The mission objectives are constrained somewhat, of course, by the Klingon view of the world (i.e., if it moves, conquer it), but overall there is a good bit of gameplay herein. A lot of the game content is pretty good.
Unfortunately, content is also where KA manages to stumble. So many things went right in the making of the game that it's incredibly frustrating to have to say that its content is uneven at best. The first, most obvious, and perhaps most fatal complaint is that KA just doesn't quite "feel" like ST. I expect the relatively small Bird of Prey ship to be quite agile in combat, but, frankly, even the biggest dreadnought feels more like a fighter than a capital ship. Combat is thus rendered more like something out of a flight simulator than ST, and that hurts the whole project.
Second, the AI is, at too many times, dumb as a post. As mentioned above, the different types of "terrain" are largely just frustrating to the player, and this is because the AI insists on dying. Wingmen won't bother to adjust their shields when flying into a gas giant, for example, so they'll just destroy themselves stupidly if allowed to travel too quickly. Similarly, wingmen will run pell-mell into asteroids if not monitored carefully. These sorts of limitations can make completing missions very difficult.
Worse, all of the enemies seem to fight much the same. Ramming is not merely a valid tactic, it seems to be their primary tactic. I realize that combat, in light of the game mechanics, is going to involve a lot of flybys, potentially at high speeds, but I don't think I can even count the number of times I heard the awful sound of my vessel being rammed. You'd think that anyone in command of a ship would be more intelligent, but the AI in KA clearly isn't.
Unfortunately, the friendly AI isn't much better. The player is supposed to be able to switch to a specific bridge station (e.g., navigation, weapons, science, etc.) and let the AI do the flying and fighting. Every time I tried doing something like this, however, the AI did a positively awful job of keeping my ship intact. It was as if by heading to a bridge station, I put Forrest Gump in charge of the ship. No, actually, it was worse; Forrest Gump had a great penchant for succeeding by dumb luck, whereas the friendly AI in KA doesn't have even that much going for it.
Third, there are just too many bugs in the missions. The game feels like it would have been perfect if only the developers had been given another six months or so to polish it. As it is, getting through some of the missions actually requires switching versions of the game! That is, I was completely unable to get past one mission, because my ship would simply explode when dropping out of warp, until I applied an older patch. To then continue on in the overall campaign, I had to apply the newest patch (again) to avoid other bugs. That's obviously no fun. I guess I should be grateful that the patches don't break previous saves, for the game would otherwise have been impossible to complete!
Fourth, completing some of the mission objectives seem simply inscrutable; i.e., one hasn't a clue how to get the job done. In one particular mission, I was required to destroy some freighters, but as soon as they caught sight of me, they headed deep into a nearby gas giant. No matter what I did in trying to pursue them in, my ships would all be destroyed long before I could get close enough to fire upon them—which makes you wonder, incidentally, how those dinky little freighters can survive what utterly destroys warships, but I digress. I tried that mission again and again and again and failed every time.
Finally, I decided to look on the web on another computer while I left the game running. As I was searching for help, the freighters tried to make a run for it out of the gas giant! When they did so, they became easy pickings, and I was able to complete the mission. But how was I supposed to know they would stupidly make a run for it when they were essentially invincible while hiding? I found the right solution only by accident. Even one lousy hint (e.g., "Perhaps we should simply wait, Captain... they must surface sooner or later...") would have helped.
I was never able to find a single person with whom to play, despite repeated attempts and postings on various forums. I guess I should expect that from such a deep game, but it's disheartening. KA is so tactically promising that it would have been a lot of fun to square off against a human opponent.
Overall, I think the game is going to be loved only by ST fans. It's just not engaging enough, in light of the problems, to hold the interest of anybody else. As a long-time ST fan, I find it incredibly frustrating that Interplay forced the game out early for the Christmas season, ostensibly sacrificing quality for sales, and thereby achieving neither. KA could have been a wonderful ST game, but as it is, it's a mixed bag. It's highs are wonderful; it's lows are frustrating. Buy it only if you're willing to work through the latter.
12/29/2000