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Z. Barrett
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re: STO on Consoles-A Quick Review

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For those who have been curious, I have had the opportunity to try STO on the console, specifically the PS4, due to an extremely merry Christmas. Much of my motivation comes from the fact that Cryptic has decided to give the DX9 version of STO the axe on March 1st, which would force me into reserve status due to the fact that I am hardly in the position to fork over 2500 bucks for a new gaming rig. Considering my experiences with STO over the years, I really did not have high expectations with the console version.

 

For the most part, I was, and still am quite surprised by the extra bit of polish on the console version. Cryptic actually put forth effort to rebalance a good deal of the combat in the game. While it is still not perfect, it is a huge step forward. Ground combat, which I have personally reviled since STO came out seven years ago, felt as if it was completely overhauled. While I am only up to the beginning of the short Borg arc prior to the New Romulus missions, I never felt the slog that I did with the PC version. The biggest factor in that being that only higher ranking units have shields. While I will withhold my final judgment until after the nasty Iconian ground missions, so far, ground combat is actually much more manageable. Your BOffs start with much more useful abilities and are slightly smarter at using them. The AI is still not perfect, but there is less "cat herding" than on the PC.

Space combat was also rebalanced. Unlike on the PC, the console version never gave the impression of hull tanking the way it is on the PC. Even with basic phasers, I felt like I was actually accomplishing something in space combat. I remember how utterly jarring it was back in June of 2015 when I returned to the game and all of my Mark X weapons felt like I was firing Nerf darts at the scrubs. There was no such impression here. Again, I will withhold final judgment until after the Delta missions because I want to see how re-balanced the Vaadwaur shield rip is.

The radial menu and the auto-firing abilities are very nice. There is a lot less micromanaging of skills and knowing that the triggers will cause skills to fire on their own allowed me to focus on other things.

Mercifully, there is a lot less vendor trash dropped from enemies. However, the game still loves to drop food items in combat, which are only useful for tribble breeding, which I personally do not care for since it takes up precious inventory space.

On the flip side, there are also some things that the console port really doesn't get right. First and foremost is the inability to lock on target and stay locked on in ground combat. It is very irritation to target an enemy to have a stupid BOff or drone get in the way and become the new target and thus waste shots and time. Likewise, the new target transition is very temperamental and is likely to not transition without hitting L2 again, assuming the prior issue of targeting stupid allies is not a factor.

A second fault in the console port is the fact that you cannot customize the radial menu. The game has a nasty habit of rearranging skills on the radial menu at a whim. This means that developing the muscle memory needed to minimize micromanaging skills to chain fire manually is impossible. Likewise, as nice as the scripted auto-fire ability for skills is, skills have a habit of not firing when conditions are met.

A third, glaring fault is the fact that there are no icons for buffs or debuffs. You never know what has or has not been applied to your toon. At best, you only see the expertise icon (???!) with a number listed in green or red to indicate the number of buffs or debuffs applied to a toon. In space, there is nothing to tell you anything. It is very easy to lose track of how much time one has left for a buff because there is nothing to tell you how long you have left.

One final, major fault is that the content is limited. A good number of ships, missions and reputation trees are noticeably absent from the console version. This is a bit personal for me as I want my Arbiter, which is not available.

 

Overall, STO on the consoles really is a good port. At the very least, many of my gripes from the PC version are gone, but one frustration is traded for another. I know that the 7th Fleet has no current intent on console representation, but anyone who has a PS4 or an Xbox One should give it a try. It really is a fresh experience, which did help me since I have been kind of burned out over the past few months, which is why the Fleet has not really heard from me since winning that jackpot at the Dabo table. image



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