Star Trek Resurgence – Stop Interplanetary War in a Modern Narrative Adventure

“There are three things to remember about being a starship captain: keep your shirt tucked in, go down with the ship, and never abandon a member of your crew.” – Captain Kathryn Janeway, Star Trek Voyager

Pros

• The story is faithful to the original source material, plausible, coherent, and specifically made with fans of the series as the primary target audience.
• Gameplay variety is good and well-paced; it alternates classic narrative segments with minigames, combat, stealth and puzzles to keep up the interest.
• The characters are well-written, well-diversified with their own identity. They are relatable and likable in many ways.
• Choice and consequence have (mostly) a good impact on how the story evolves, and open up to other runs to see different outcomes.

Cons

• Several side characters, while solid, aren’t elaborated upon enough and soon fall into the sidelines despite their factual importance.
• A few choices and relations with other crew members don’t seem as impactful as they should be, especially with the captain.
• Puzzles are very simplistic and excessively guided; they don’t seem like a complex challenge members of Starfleet would actually face on the field.

Bugs & Issues

• Minor frame rate drops in specific cutscenes regardless of system specs.
• In some cases, sentences get slightly cut or the background music doesn’t play correctly.
• The control scheme, tailor-made for gamepads, doesn’t transpose well on mouse & keyboard.
• Several textures are of noticeably-lower resolution than the rest.

Machine Specs

• i9 13980HX
• 64GB RAM DDR5
• RTX 4090
• NvME SSD
• 3840×2160

Content & Replay Value

It took me around 16 hours to complete Star Trek Resurgence on the standard settings, taking extra time to explore and do extra dialogues / interactions when applicable. Given the multiple branching choices, there is enough replay value for at least another run.

Is It Worth Buying?

Yes. The price of 24,50€ is fair for this amount of content and its very good quality. If you’re a Star Trek fan, definitely buy even without a discount.

Verdict: Very Good

A solid, well-made Star Trek adventure that respects the source material and has many references fans of the series will appreciate. It’s not innovative for the genre, but it’s done right.

Star Trek Resurgence – In-Depth Analysis

Writing & Worldbuilding

This Star Trek adventure takes place more than a decade after the events of The Next Generation arc of the canon series and puts you in the shoes of two protagonists: commander Jara Rydek, a Kobliad, and the human engineer Carter Diaz. Science ship Resolute is sent to a diplomatic mission to escort a high diplomat in order to stop a resource war between two civilizations; what starts like an ordinary Starfleet mission, however, soon will become much more than anyone had signed up for.

In good Star Trek tradition, the plot of Resurgence starts off mildly, only to then escalate to ever-higher stakes while putting the crew between difficult moral decisions and lethal threats to face. Mainly, other than the two main protagonists, the story is centered on the senior bridge staff and also on a couple of members of the lower decks, the so-to-speak “rank and file” of the Federation. All of them are competently written, and show an evolution of character to some extent, in relation to the events that happen, although this varies in measure from one to another. Even so, they’re likable and stand out people that don’t fall flat and all have their own merits in terms of narrative. The story is articulate and varied enough to not be one-sided, it will engage you until the end, despite some turnarounds being somewhat predictable, especially if you’re a fan of the show and know the narration gimmicks Star Trek is all about.

Visually and artistically, there’s a solid attention to detail and fidelity to the show’s source material. Uniforms, ship layouts, sound effects and even the technical jargon about the technology are all spot-on; the developers clearly are true fans of the show, and this has paid off. While ship interiors could be more detailed and lively, alien structures and planetside sections have excellent levels of detail and an immersive atmosphere. Too bad those low-resolution textures somewhat ruin the eye candy.

Exploration & Secrets

You’ll explore mostly on foot through linear sections that rarely have any side areas, although numerous optional interactions exist either to reveal more about the lore and trivia or get minor relation bonuses with other characters. From a narrative adventure, it’s not expected to have great freedom of exploration, but even so, more meaningful optional interactions would have been better. There are no secrets, collectibles or anything of the like; what you see is what you get, without options.

Combat & Stealth

Combat sections in Star Trek Resurgence play out as stationary third-person shooting stages where you’ll have to fight enemies coming from one or multiple sides, and in some cases switch cover to be able to hit them from different directions. Other than that, you’ll need to take cover to avoid fire and time your shots, as being hit three times will result in mission failure, and restart from the closest checkpoint. In some cases, on top of all that, you’ll also have to cover your allies, as your mission will also fail if they take too many hits. Don’t worry though, being a narrative adventure means that these action segments aren’t very demanding in terms of skill, even for those less experienced with shooters. In fact, some more challenge would have been welcome, but with this genre, it’s fine as it is.

Stealth sections involve staying out of enemy sight while using environmental cover and in some cases triggerable distractions, to slip past unnoticed. A convenient indicator, with a rather generous time to fill, will show if you’re being detected, and enemy patterns are rather simple to decipher given their basic AI.

Minigames & Quick Time Events

There’s a variety of minigames, such as puzzles that involve operating various Starfleet equipment, such as teleportation consoles or tricorders to name some, and even pilot shuttles through dangerous space anomalies. These are good and improve immersion in how you get things done organically, rather than being just cutscenes, however, the control scheme made for gamepads doesn’t shine particularly well and makes some of them cumbersome to handle properly. In many cutscenes, there’s a plethora of quick time events to perform actions, such as dodging attacks, shooting people, operating machinery and more. There’s an actually excessive amount of these, and it becomes quite tiresome in the long run to deal with.

Choice System & Relations

The choices you’ll make as the two protagonists will not only impact the flow of the story but also your relationship with your crewmates. This will translate into them either supporting or opposing you when the time of truly critical events is at hand, and this can make the story go one way or another in pretty major ways. It’s an incentive to replay the game and see what would happen if you made different choices. Even so, not all of them feel meaningful in the same way, and in certain cases, it feels like the relation to some crew members, important as they may be, won’t count as much as stated ‘on paper’ in the end. For most of them, though, there’s a good system of action and reaction that feels plausible and works out well.

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