DS9 Featured Series Review

I just finished the last episode of the DS9 Featured series in STO. Overall it was fun. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I had the previous FE’s, but I also didn’t have SWTOR to compare those too. That makes a difference.

The biggest downside with all of them were the cutscenes; the voice over work and the animations were terrible. As boring as the pop-up windows are for most of their communication, at least they don’t detract from the experience. The cutscenes made things worse.

The basic story itself was pretty good: DS9 falls to the Dominion fleet that was thought lost in the wormhole. It helps wrap up the Deus Ex Machina from “Sacrifice of Angels” DS9 episode. It always felt like a cop out to just have the wormhole aliens save the day at the last minute.

However, the execution of the story had some issues. There were a bunch of logical flaws, poor characterizations, bad acting, plot holes,  ugly sets, and unbelievable bad guys. One of the episodes involves going to collect the Founder that has been imprisoned since the end of the Dominion War so that she can tell the Jem’Hadar to stand down. Good idea. But then, the Jem’Hadar refuse to listen to her. It’s a fundamental precept of the Jem’Hadar that they are genetically programmed to be incapable of not listening to a Founder. Yet, this one does and there is no explanation for it.

Cryptic is real good at having things happen in missions that don’t make any sense. During the final mission, an otherwise really cool mission, a Bird of Prey appears while you are spacewalking along DS9, gets blown up, and crashes into the station. No explanation for why the Klingon’s just sacrificed themselves, or why the ship’s debris scatters all over the stations hull, instead of being blocked by shields. It also makes little sense that once the ship has crashed, and it’s reactor blows up, there’s any station left.

But, enough complaining about the series. There were quite a few good parts. To start, the NEW environments were awesome. Bajor, the detention facility, and space walking outside DS9 were all very well done. They looked great. Props to the art team.

It was nice to have another shuttle mission added to the game. There are quite a lot of shuttles available, and was only one mission designed for them. This double that. Flying around outside DS9 in a runabout is fun.

The rewards were also very cool. A Jem’Hadar bridge officer was able to replace the one I made with the alien generator. Some themed duty officers were also nice. Two new themed sets, one space and one ground, along with a collection of new space and ground weapons. It’s nice to have a more accurate Jem’Hadar rifle alone with a way to get nice Polaron weapons. My science alt will need to do the series since she uses Polaron weapons.

The ending, aside from the Jem’Hadar ignoring the Founder,  was fun. Infiltrating DS9 through a spacewalk, and fighting in Ops was cool. All followed by an epic space battle.  I loaded into the battle and immediately got slammed by Charged Particle Burst so started with no shields. Made it a challenge.

The new Enterprise showing up at the end was cool. Very “First Contact” feel. Though, I’m not sold on her new captain. Nice to have a non-Human commanding, but the Andorian was kind of an idiot in the first mission. But I blame the stupidity of the mission.

So overall, more positive than negatives. The negatives deal more with the poor engine and low budget than anything else.