And so, after months of waiting and countless hours of patching and login-ques, it is finally here; Legacy Of Romulus expansion for Star Trek Online.
LoR brings a whole new type of gameplay to the table, along with a completely revised UI, animated and voiced communications, interactions with your bridge officers and a lot more, and that’s not even touching the Romulan faction yet!
We started off as everyone starts off, creating our new characters. We choose to make new versions of our existing Federation characters, Izona and Morph. Izona, the Romulan woman who worked her way through the peaceful refugee camp as an exterminator in the fields and Morph as the Dantarian who left his homeworld to help the Romulans with whatever tinkering they needed done.
Everything from that point on just blew our minds! I can only say so much without spoiling the story, and it is a story well worth experiencing for yourself, because it had me sitting on the edge of my seat all the way through.
During the 5 hours it took us to get through the basic Romulan campaign, up to the point where you get to choose if you want to fight alongside the honorable Klingons or explore the universe with the diplomatic Federation. To get on your feet, you get to start at the refugee camp where you’ve lived most your life. You are introduced to the peace-loving civilians through a series of basic quests made to teach you the basics of this very advanced game, but it never feels like a tutorial. Everything is brought to you through the story and through interactive dialogues and even though no choice you make can be the wrong one, each of them will shape the story for you, making each playthrough unique.
As the story unfolds, you will have people joining your cause in the form of bridge officers, all of them customizable to your hearts content. It is your ship and your crew and the game lets it be yours and only yours if you want to, or you can chose to skip all the customization and just run into the action if that is your style. Each of the characters you have with you are unique on their own.
During the campaign you will be introduced to the unique playstyle of the Romulan space fighters, with stealth and maneuverability valued high. You can even cloak mid-combat if you want to quickly get away to recuperate or wait for that cooldown to tick down without taking too much damage. Be careful thou, the cloaking device on the Romulan ships are tied to the shields, you can’t be both cloaked and have your shields up at the same time, so the shots fired at you will hit your ship directly. It might be worth it though, because for a few moments right after you decloak, you get a bonus to all your attacks.
The ground combat is also unique, with more focus on mobility than strength or stealth. It requires you to think in a new way when fighting with a Romulan character, but the payoff is a versatile fighter who can surround the enemies quickly, taking advantage of those flanking shots or outrunning those melee opponents.
The story revolves around a small group of Romulan rebels who wants to settle on a new planet, dubbed New Romulus. In your way is the dreaded Tal’Shiar, the remnants of the old Romulan government who have claimed the rights to all Romulans, Remans and all other of Romulus old allies, using conscription as their main recruiting method they take what they want and they have spies in every corner. If you oppose them, they will make sure you’ll regret it. As a peace-loving people, you want to be free of the Tal’Shiar oppression and in order to truly become free, you must ally yourself with the two other main players on the field; The Federation and the Klingons. Both sides have their ups and downs and it is up to you to find which you find the most helpful for your personal goals.
Morph and Izona are stationed with the Klingons, which side will you chose?
Star Trek Online along with Legacy Of Romulus is free to play and can be found on their website.