I was more than a little surprise when Star Trek: Conquest hit the office door mat as, being a closet Trekkie, I’d heard very little about its development and wasn’t expecting such a sudden and muted release.

It’s vibrantly clear from the packaging alone that Conquest is an out and out strategy title, and albeit a little thin on story, it’s also quite a decent one. One of the real problems with such a fanatical mythos as Star Trek, however, is continuity – the fans both demand it and thrive on it, so the premise of the galactic battle is very important to capture the correct audience. Unfortunately, it’s extremely vague (especially for a Trek tale) and makes use of a flimsy pretext to quickly and indiscriminately pit six factions (Federation, Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian, Dominion, and, rather obscurely, the Breen) from across the Alpha Quadrant (yes, I know – the Dominion is from the Gamma Quadrant) against each other.

Again, it all works rather well, but this initial shrugging of the precious Star Trek method will be nigh on unforgivable for an ardent Trekkie, who’ll heatedly find themselves questioning why the Federation would take to interstellar war so vigorously, and why Star Fleet seems entirely populated by humanity for that matter (calls of “For Earth!” when heading into battle seem significantly inappropriate). That said, it’s the outer space, warp speed conflicts that we want and expect from our Trek games, and those are certainly delivered.

Very classical and straight forward in its approach to turn-based strategy gameplay, Conquest gathers together all the expected elements you’d expect from its SNES grandparent of 10 years hence; with little in the way of increased gameplay depth. This isn’t the initial critique it may appear to be, however, as anyone who spent hours in the Next Generation captain’s chair on the classic Nintendo console will vouch. What we have here is a proportional upgrade in terms of scope and graphical ability, but nothing that’s going to make the modern super-console’s bat an eyelid.

Taking command of the various fleets in turn, the strategy is thick and the action sedate, until those brief moments during a skirmish mode when you’re invited to take command of the actual, warring spacecraft in a quite excellent shoot-‘em-up sequence. The rest of the galaxy is fairly motionless, playing out more akin to a board game or table-top RPG than anything else. The various quadrants of space all offer different tactical and financial benefits, and many will become rabid battlegrounds due to the strategic importance of their part in the war.

Defensive, mining and research colonies – often in the shape of space stations (including DS9, Trek fans will be pleased to hear) – are established and used to further a player’s war effort and when used appropriately can really add depth to the conquest. Equally, each race has significantly different attributes which affect the style of play; from the cheap and savage Klingon Bird’s of Prey to the expensive, yet powerful Romulan War Bird’s, the entire Roddenberry Next Gen canon is accurately represented.

Graphically there are some nice planetary effects, and the ships and their weapons fire is very decent, though there seems to be issues with processing power as a full on skirmish puts serious load on the aging PS2 console. Frame rates are seen to stagger and action slow, though this doesn’t affect a hardcore strategy game as much as it would most any other genre (as luck would have it).

A lack of any kind of multiplayer is something of a surprise (not even a two player mode) which, coupled with the shallow plotline, makes for a severely reduced replay value. Whether this is offset by the budget price of the game itself is up to you to decide, though it certainly does help to some small degree.

Ultimately we’re seeing a great and complete strategy game that you’d expect to find floating around the net for free, as part of a student collective’s open source portfolio rather than an officially boxed and licensed product. This fan fiction build quality is apparent in the finished game and makes Conquest one for hardcore Trekkies who’re ideally serious strategy fans as well, but its appeal to the casual gamer is limited. A worthy attempt that feels to be lacking in developer enthusiasm just a little too much to become the excellent game it carries the potential for.