15 Years On Star Trek Conquest Was A Waste of the License

Star Trek: Armada — look, I know I’m not here to talk about that but hear me out — released in March 2000 and was a real-time strategy game that many people loved, and it got a sequel the following year.

Then on 20th of November 2007, 15 years ago today, 2J Studios and Bethesda Softworks released a strategy game to PlayStation 2 & Wii based on the same franchise: Star Trek: Conquest. And somehow they made it bad. They had two clear wins from Activision to copy, and chose to just throw absolutely no money at this. This isn’t the collectible card game from 2000 Star Trek: ConQuest Online, no, so don’t think I’ve gotten mixed up somewhere.

There is no story. Not as in “it’s vague or bad”, there just isn't a story mode. You have the option of Campaign Mode or Skirmishes. Campaign Mode has you pick the species you want to represent (Human, Cardassian, Dominion, Klingon, Breen, or Romulan), how many enemy species you want to fight, and which species they are. So it’s “campaign” in the military sense, not the story mode sense.

Taking opposite sides of the map, you have to build up to three fleets worth of ships and take them system-by-system to defeat the enemy. There are three ship types per species, so you can choose from smaller but weaker craft, mid-ranged ships, and big cruisers. Build mining facilities, starports, whathaveyou, to support your fleets going forwards, and you can build more things in each system you take over.

Upon arrival in a new system you’ll have to fight off the enemy that is there, which is usually Xindi or Ferengi. This is done in your choice of two ways: automated fight where you just watch the numbers go down and some lasers, or actually do it yourself. The second one is much more interesting, and honestly the one highlight of this waste of a license. Your fleet arrives in the system and you’re given a paragraph of Star Trek lore about it, then you control a ship (and can swap between them) as they fly around the area destroying the enemy in an isometric view. The controls are simple and easy to use, but it’s a good bit of fun.

Skirmishes are just that second “control the ships” option, but you get to choose who you’re fighting as, which enemy you’re fighting, and how many ships you both get. So rather than having the boring turn-based stuff that is visually unimpressive, you get a tailored challenge that you can make boring or too difficult.

So it’s not a great game, but why mention the license? Well you may have noticed I said “lasers” earlier. That’s because Star Trek: Conquest doesn’t feature any sounds from Star Trek. The phasers and disruptors have generic sound effects, the voice acting is done by voice actors not even trying to mimic the named characters, and there are three admirals for each species whose profile photo is a poorly chosen still from the show. Out of the Starfleet admirals that 2J Studios could have chosen from, they went with two who died in season one of The Next Generation, and a guy who was in one episode of Voyager when Species 8472 were training to infiltrate Starfleet Academy. One of the Breen admirals is literally made up, because there are so few named Breen in the history of Star Trek. Two of the Klingon admirals only appeared in one episode of The Next Generation each, plus Martok who was basically in every Klingon-centric episode of Deep Space Nine! Because I know you’re wondering, yes one of the Dominion admirals is that Vorta who was portrayed by Iggy Pop.

What’s particularly galling is that Star Trek: Legacy released less than a year earlier and had voice performances from all of the show’s main captains! And it was also published by Bethesda like this was! Though to be absolutely fair, it was developed by Mad Doc Software, who developed Star Trek: Armada, so they clearly had some “in” that 2J Studios lacked. And a budget.

Even he's surprised to be in this game

If you’re interested in playing Star Trek: Conquest for some reason, which I would find illogical and recommend ejecting the warp core instead, it can be picked up second hand for about five slips of gold-pressed latinum. I mean £5.