01-052026

Star Trek 25th Anniversary

Review and Discussion

Star Trek 25th Anniversary does an exceptional job at replicating The Original Series into video game form. Everything that you would expect to see in an episode of the show is represented in some way in this game. Each mission begins on the bridge, you can talk to each of your senior officers, access the ship's computer, transporter, and the ship's defences. Each mission usually begins with being hailed by Starfleet or the leader of a party or civilization. They will give you your orders or request what they need help with, and you as Captain Kirk, can respond. Sometimes you are given a few different dialogue options to choose from for how you want Kirk to respond. These options can either lead to just asking different questions for further information on your mission, or can give different ways to respond or introduce yourself to a character. These options add a bit of flavour and player choice into the story and let you decide what type of personality you want Kirk to evoke. However, if you pick any rude or violent options, they can lead to a decreased final score, or even death.

The ship is not just for show, you can fly, orbit planets, and even engage in space combat. The flying mechanics are relatively simple. You have a throttle control which has 10 levels and full stop, with each level of the throttle controlled by the numbers on your keyboard. You can then maneuver the direction you want to fly with the mouse. The ship combat however is very difficult due to the slow and in-percise controls. Flying the ship is fine on its own, flying and trying to track a moving ship while also firing phasers and torpedos, however, is not. The ship combat is easily the weakest aspect of the game, and is unfortunately forced upon you at numerous occasions. The rest of the game is just lovely though, so I can forgive it. Thankfully, the sequel gives an option to opt out of the ship combat entirely and also lets you pick a difficulty option if you do chose to indulge in it.

When your ship is orbiting a planet or parked near a station, and you've gathered all of the intelligence you need, you're ready to beam down the away team. Once you're on the away team mission, the game plays more like a traditional point-and-click adventure game. Your away team consists of Captain James T. Kirk, First Officer Spock, and Chief Medical Officer Leonard McCoy. There are also sometimes a couple red shirt Ensigns with you. You can control each main party member who each as their own uses and abilities, which are needed to complete each mission. Interacting with the world is quite intuitive as well. The dreaded action of pixel hunting that many older Sierra adventure games suffered from is not present here. It is usually quite clear what you can interact with and what you can't. When utilizing one of your interaction options such as looking, picking up, use, scanning with your tricorder, and so on, the icon will be highlighted when hovering over an interactable object or environmental area. This helps point out the interactable parts of the environment.

Running On A Modern PC: ST25 is a DOS game, so it can be ran through the DOSBOX emulator. It should work fine on any pc and I personally never had any problems with it. If you buy the game digitally on Steam or GOG, it will come pre-packaged with DOSBOX. Final note, the game runs great on steam deck. Once you get the controls configured, it plays fine. The ship combat can be a pain still, but as long as you use the trackpad for the mouse, it should be do-able.

Red Alert! Links ahead

Purchase the game here: Steam or GOG

A good walkthrough with controls and the star map here