Star Trek: The Next Generation - Birth of the Federation

The Good
I wish there was some way to scale this game back. I really enjoyed some elements of it: building armadas and defending my territories was great, opening diplomatic relations with new species was interesting. However, making sure the people on one planet were entertained wasn't.

This game would have worked if the scope were limited. Every aspect of the game looked good, sounded good, and played well, but having to deal with incredible amounts of minutiae every turn really bogged the game down.

But I will complain more later.

I really liked the interface. The interface resembled the computers used by the various species in ST:TNG so the Federation interfaced looked like the Enterprise computer's, etc. The sounds were great, ranging from familiar beeps and whistles to the thunderous impact of a proton(photon?) torpedo. I also like how you could adjust the parameters of gameplay as far as how much of the galaxy you had to control.

The Bad
Remember Star Wars: Rebellion? The controls of BOTF are better (infinitely better) but BOTF could have improved by lessening its scope, or by offering some level of automation.

The game was turn based which isn't terrible, but later turns (80+) had incredibly long load times.

There was also a fundamental problem in BOTF commented on by another reviewer, the Next Generation universe was a poor choice for this style of game. Within this time period, you already know too much about the different species and technologies to make a first contact type game viable. This would have been feasible in the Enterprise universe (referring to the series), but it doesn't make sense to have ST:TNG level technology when you are just leaving the earth.

Also a cute randomizing factor (which you can toggle) allows the Borg and Doomsday devices to show up and destroy everything. Hmmm, great idea.

The Bottom Line
Light years beyond Star Wars: Rebellion but just as flawed. Actually does too good of a job on every aspect, resulting in slow, tedious gameplay.