I played the demo twice and even rewatched the Voyager pilot "Caretaker" for comparison. I will say that I found the pilot episode to be a lot better on this rewatch. There is some clunky acting but it does a very good job of introducing the characters, the premise, there is great world-building, and we get a very Trek like first contact with strange life.
I saw a review online that described the game as 100% Star Trek, 50% game. I think that is an apt description. From the demo, I can tell the game will ooze "star trek". The downside is that the game mechanics seem pretty basic. The decisions don't seem very deep. I pretty much figured out how to play the game after 2 playthroughs of the demo. Granted it was just the demo of the tutorial but the away missions seemed super easy. It was obvious to me what characters to take in order to maximize your chances, ie take characters with the same icons as displayed in the mission so that they have the right traits.
I think the best part of the game will be the nostalgia factor of revisiting events in the TV show, especially for long time fans of Voyager. I really look forward to being able to visit different planets or events from the TV show, like doing your version of "Basic" or "Scorpion".
I do wonder about replayability. I know the map is randomized but there is only so much newest once you try different paths. I know from the demo, it seemed there were only a couple different paths, like you can recruit Chakotay first or Torres first, but the story still followed the same basic path. So I wonder that the game will just be small variations of the same storyline.
What might work in the game's favor is that it seems the player will be able to play as short or as long a game as they want based on their decisions. So you can choose to use the array and get home right away if you want to play a super short game. Or you destroy the array and stay in the DQ but a few sectors later, you find a wormhole to get home in the equivalent of "season 2". Or you make different decisions and play on to the equivalent of "season 7" before finally getting home if you want to play a long game.
Also, I think after playing the game a few times, we will likely want to skip the dialogue. Even just playing the demo, I wanted to skip the long dialogue scenes and just get to the "action".
Personally, I would love it if they added the voiceovers from the actors but I understand that could be too costly since there is a lot of dialogue in the game. And they would need to hire the entire main cast. But I do hope we at least get the Voyager theme. That would add some nice atmosphere and nostalgia.
So overall, I will buy the game just for the nostalgia factor. I think it will be fun to revisit key episodes from the TV show and try different decisions. But it will likely be a game I play through 4-5 times and then put aside.
The Caretaker pilot was better in the sense that VOY never really had a choice in leaving the DQ early.
The ship suffered original damage from the pull to the DQ, then some auto-repairs helped get it into fighting shape while the crew was onboard the Array for 3 days, then it gets into the fight with the Kazon (and Tuvok said he would need several hrs to access the system and return the ship to UFP space - by this time the ship already fought the Kazon when Chakotay rammed his ship - with a second wave of Kazon reinforcements on the way, VOY would have to fight them the SECOND time around, survive, and then also somehow survive the transition back to the AQ).
Point is, the option to go home early wasn't there at all... the game should probably better reflect this - allow a person to make the choice to access the mechanism, but it would never survive the transit back home - or it would be forced to leave in the middle of the combat after suffering damage - allowing the Array to fall into Kazon hands (which could have caused problems down the line) - or it could 'just barely' destroy the Array if the torpedo launchers weren't knocked offline - in the Pilot, VOY didn't use any photons on the Kazon probably because their weapons array was hit (As Chakotay mentioned in Caretaker).
It does seem, the game is intricately limited in choices and how deep they run - which means, you can't for example go up to the computer and ask it stuff to see what's available in SF/UFP database to make your own creative R&D (they could have leveraged generative AI for this in a procedural capacity with what's known from Trek itself and give us much more autonomy).
I can confirm that I got the hang of the game after 2 playthroughs.
Managed to preserve the Maquis ship too on all occasions (and won against the Kazon too) - but morale (at first playthrough) suffered, and I couldn't make a cargo-bay or power it because it didn't have enough crew - so, some of the goalposts for raising morale are a tad... cumbersome - not relevant if you do other things right.
The ship to ship combat is - definitely reminiscent of ST: Timelines - as are the overall away missions.
So it looks like the devs just mostly took Timelines as a baseline and ran from there - would have been good if the combat was time sensitive and gave us more control like Bridge Commander.
I don't think we will have character voices though - its possible, sure, but doesn't seems likely.
Like you, I'll get it and play it to explore the game in more detail... but my hopes of a more 'creative/personalized choices' flew out the window with the Demo (its unlikely the core mechanics will be drastically altered - although its possible)
