Star Trek: Armada II

Original Release: 2001
Developer: Mad Doc Software
Publisher: Activision
Platform: PC

Expanding upon the first Armada, this game adds an extra dimension: you can now move up and down. It’s a bit fiddly to do (hold shift while moving the mouse) and when playing against the AI, it doesn’t really make any difference to the game. When playing against other players, you can use it to your advantage by hiding ships underneath other ships and hoping your opponents are using the default view.

Armada 2 also has a fancy tactical camera. While you can play the game in this view, it’s a bit fiddly and more for admiring battles. There’s more resources to collect: on top of dilithium from asteroids, you’ll need heavy metals from planets and latinum from nebulae. Along with this is also trading with outposts. There are also more options for how your ships act, you can have them chase enemies over a long distance or let them flee, and how often they use their special abilities.

On paper, Armada 2 sounds like it’s an improvement over the first, but something just feels…off. Battles against other ships are short, but bases seem much tougher. The singleplayer missions seem to really drag, many with you slowly whittling away at the enemy base with a load of ships, knowing you’ve won but waiting for the game to accept it. Ships also blow up much quicker, leading to massive squadrons of the top tier ships being a necessity.

In the singleplayer campaing, you play though stories where the Federation fight the Borg, the Klingons fight Cardassians (with some Romulans) and the Borg build up their stranded forces and stopping species 8472. The Cardassians, Romulans and 8472 are playable, but only in skirmish. The story is quite basic, but there are some nice lines, particularly from Picard.