Star Trek Legends, recently releasedput on Apple Arcade, plays a lot like Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes, Disney’s Sorcerer’s Arena, DC Legends and many others turn-based mobile RPGs. But without any energy meters or annoying microtransactions. As a result, it feels like a game and not a treadmill design to transport you to a store.
Star Trek Legends involves a large role of characters, both good and bad, of different Star Trek shows. How do they all hang out and fight? each other? The Nexus, that great energy ribbon thing of Generations, is back and Starfleet lets design a special new ship to import it. It’s a slightly thin, hand-wave-like way of setting up the game’s story, but it works.
And once you’re in the Nexus and interacting with other characters, the game takes full advantage of this setup. If you want to Star Trek, which you probably do when you read this far in this post, there are many jokes and references that will make you go “Oh yeah … I know that.” None of the stories in Legends are masterpieces, but they tend to have some nicely written pieces of dialogue with characters who communicate with each other in fun and authentic ways.
The game is pretty standard for these types of games. You have a small team characters, each with their own abilities and skills. You take the team on missions, which consist of battle segments, shortcuts and even a few moments where you have to decide what to do next. Battle is again, nothing incredibly fresh or new, but it works. You attack enemies, turn back and forth until one team stands. Fortunately, you can speed up the animations during the battle. They look beautiful, but in the end I just want to kill the bad stuff and move on.
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What really elevates Star Trek LegendsThe reason I am writing this blog is because the whole game is free of MTX or paid currencies. There is no way to spend money in this game. There are also no ads. This is standard for Apple Arcade releases, but it really makes these types of games so much more fun to play. I’m still playing Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes, but every month it feels like something new has been added that designed me to grind my months or refurbish a lot of cash. And with energy meters, it quickly becomes difficult to play the game unless you pay money. Or wait.
In Legendshowever you can only … play the game. Unlocking characters is fun, not an expensive task. Completing missions is exciting, and not once.
I can not explain enough how strange it is to after years of playing these kind of mobile RPGs just be free to play it as much as I want. It’s delicious. Plus the game is a beautiful celebration of Star Trek, old and new. This is a game built specifically for me. It makes me happy.
Yes I know. This is on Apple Arcade. And yes, I know it means you or some people you know can not play it. What sucks! I think Star Trek Legends is good enough that I would like to see it turn to other platforms. But only if it keeps the mobile RPG crap away.
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