Armada I vs II

[ALF]

I just dug out my old Armada I cd, installed it and was blown away by how great it is.

I'm wondering if I should play it through again, or just pick up a copy of Armada II at a used shop and go for that.

What are the big differences? Also, is there any way to zoom in the 1st version?

And what of fan mods? Where's the best place to go for that?

I'm a Bridge Commander fan through and through but I was blown away by how well Armada II holds up. I wish there was a ENT/TOS style version.

 

[TexasNightt]

Goodluck finding any copies of armada 2 anywhere. I had to Con my copy off someone. Im still looking for a copy Of FULL THOTTLE. ARMADA 2 is awesome, But some things about ARMADA are way better, I cant think of anything specific, but atleast i wasnt any help what so ever.

 

[daedalus5]

ARmada 1 has a better storyline and better cutscenes. They also had a fantastic trailer. The opening movie cutscene is awesome:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3ID9UdGtFc
I love the music in it.

Armada II is a bit disppointing in terms of storyline, but is ok to play.

I like the multiplayer aspect of the game (although I played by myself vs the PC), but then you can do silly stuff like building loads of torpedo and phaser cannons targeted towards a narrow necked asteroid field and si back and enjoy. Playing as the Borg is also great fun!

 

[AdmiralGarak]

Armada II isn't a bad game, but it fails utterly to live up to its predecessor. Armada I was less comlplex and much shorter, but vastly superior. The crippling problem with Armada II was that so much was added that failed to improve on anything.

Moving along the z-axis? Pointless, other than to clutter up the view with ships flying too high or to make ships impossible to manage when they're flying too low.

Added resources? Pointless. It just adds more resource management when resources are rarely a major concern. Modern games trend toward reducing pointless resource gathering, not quadrupling it.

Added ship classes? Pointless. Only big ships were worth shit in the game. Battleships can literally destroy entire fleets of smaller ships, and nothing lasts long enough to bother to use boarding tactics on.

Added missions? Pointless. The original game had so much variety with its missions, but not the sequel. Very few missions deviated from the formulaic "build lots of ships, destroy enemy base" model.

Added playable races? Mostly pointless. Why bother to add the Cardassians and Species 8472 and not give them their own campaigns? As awesome as Martok is, I would have much rathered a Species 8472 campaign over the utterly pointless Klingon one. It was completely shoe-horned in, having only a passing connection to the Federation and Borg story.

 

[TheGodBen]

Armada II had a very poor story in comparison to Armada I, in the first game each empire had four missions and there was a great variety in missions. For example, the villains for the four Federation missions were the Dominion, the Son'a, a Klingon rebel and the Borg, yet it all come together as a cohesive story where each mission felt important. In Armada II each empire had ten missions but they all felt the same, nearly all the Federation missions were about attacking the Borg, and then 8472 began to show up towards the end. Each mission felt like another brick in the wall, rarely did it feel like an important piece of a puzzle.

And the music in the second game did not work. For example, I think that in both games the Klingon music was best, here's the Klingon music from game 1, here's the Klingon music from game 2. The first track is vigorous and exciting, exactly what you want from an RTS game, the second track is a nice piece of music but it doesn't scream action like the first one did.

Armada was one of my favourite games when it came out, so Armada II was one of the biggest disappointments I've had in gaming. I'm still a little bitter about it.

 

[ALF]

I guess these reactions help explain why there was never an Armada III developed.

 

[SilentP]

That and, IIRC, Activision losing the rights to make any more Star Trek games, may be wrong on that point though.