Star Trek™: Judgment Rites

The quintessential pixelart 90's adventure game, and the last time the entire original cast of Star Trek contributed to Star Trek media. Gameplay is very 90s and doesn't hold your hand, but if you have nostalgia for this type of game, you'll find no better example of it than this.

This interface is atrocious.

Good game. Wish I had kept the run through I had back when I first purchased this game.

If, like me, you grew up watching Star Trek on a small black & white Sony TV, then you will love this game! The crew of the Enterprise are all here from TOS, with voice acting from the original actors, and sound effects just like you remember!

Each mission plays out like an episode from the TV series, so you will visit various planets and encounter a wide variety of situations. Note that the game can be challenging at times, so don't feel bad consulting a walkthrough if you get stuck!

Judgment Rites and its prequel, 25th Anniversary, are must-play games for any fan of the original Star Trek!

The controls are awkward. Depending on the function of the cursor, you can only move it to certain areas around the screen. Using the star map requires use of the manual, otherwise you might end up in the wrong part of the galaxy and have to fight a hostile race.

Following the play and story elements of 25th Anniversary, Judgment Rites picks up right where it's prequel left off. Expect more of the brilliant storytelling and dialogue branches for an incredible Star Trek experience. The player should have no trouble transitioning from 25th Anniversary to Judgment Rites as the player interface and controls are practically identical. The original characters are also voiced by their respective voice actors, including the voices of familiar villains.

Storytelling maintains the high bar set by it's prequel, with it's first mission throwing you into a high-stakes struggle against a familiar villain to avert a genocide. All missions require studying your surroundings and solving problems. Your crew also have skills that will be necessary to complete your mission. While attacks do still happen on away missions, they are much less frequent than the prequel. When you start a new game, ship battle difficulty can also be adjusted or removed altogether.

The missions are once again deep, exhilarating, and executed masterfully. The game does have a few bugs in a couple missions, but nothing game-breaking as far as I know. If anything, the bugs had humorous effects to the game. (Such as a phaser beam completely missing it's target, but rendering it unconscious away) Also, the puzzles are reasonable enough that I was able to complete this game without needing to use a walkthrough.

(EDIT: On the final mission "Though This Be Madness," it is possible to soft lock your game file if you give fruit to the young boy in the play room without speaking to him beforehand. This sequence break will make it impossible to obtain a mission-critical item from him. Beware!)

Bottom line, if you enjoyed 25th Anniversary, you WILL enjoy this game as well!

Classic Star Trek and a very nice follow-up to 25th Anniversary. Takes a if it isn't broken don't fix it approach, with identical gameplay as 25th Anniversary, and the original series cast doing voice work adds to the immersion. Missions are slightly more difficult than 25th Anniversary, but you can opt out of the space combat this time around. Being able to use Chekov, Uhura, Sulu, and Scotty in some mission was a nice touch. Just a very fun adventure game to play.

If you enjoy the discussions and banter of the TOS crew then this is an easy game to recommend. There is lots of well-written dialogue, it's fully voiced by the original cast, the mission plots are interesting, and the puzzles are (mostly) satisfying to solve.

This game is very similar to the previous game (Star Trek: 25th Anniversary) but features the other cast members more often, and the space combat sections aren't borderline impossible this time, and can even be skipped entirely via difficulty settings.

Now for the downsides:

Like with the first game, you will need to look in the manual to know which star system to go to at the start of each mission (might be included in the game files but can also be found online).

Also, the quality of the missions/puzzles is a bit uneven. Most of the puzzles feel fair and satisfying to solve. But a minority of them can feel somewhat "illogical", sometimes boiling down to using the correct random object/person on another random object, or interacting with a part of the game world that you can barely see or that doesn't look significant. The penultimate mission felt the worst in this regard. Luckily there is a solution to this problem - the UHS Hints site - which you might do well to use when you feel like you've exhausted all options.

Highly illogical...
~Mr. Spock

Long story short, Star Trek: Judgment Rites is a direct sequel to Star Trek: 25th Anniversary. Which was, like, the very best thing ever happened with the original Star Trek series in the world of video games. In case you forgot (psst! Check my review for more details!), Star Trek: 25th Anniversary was surprisingly deep and complicated take on point-and-click genre which also tried to simulate the Star Trek experience to make you feel like you're actually diving into your favorite show. Players were supposed to use tricoders, investigate some mysteries and even participate in space battles. All that while controlling the legendary characters such as Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, Lt. Uhura lieutenant commanders Montgomery Scott and Hikaru Sulu, and ensign Chekov. Fully voiced by the original actors from the actual show. Well, at least as long as we're talking about the Enhanced CD-ROM Edition. The one that we have in Steam nowadays. Star Trek: Judgment Rites follows the same exact formula. Which kind of destroys the entire purpose of me writing this reviews, since, well, it's pretty much the same thing. You loved 25th Anniversary (if you did not, you must be a Klingon and I don't want to talk to you) – you'll love this one too. Simple like that. And yet, there's a few things that, I think, may be interesting to mention. So, here goes.

First of all, the story this time is much more than just a series of separated episodes. It's kinda fun, but Judgment Rites takes a motif from another Star Trek game, First Contact (developed by Micromosaics and published by Simon & Schuster Interactive in 1998) and copies it almost exactly. Sure, Judgment Rites is way bigger, way more complicated and comes with a lot of juicy details but... let's just say that if you've played First Contact before, it'll be impossible not to notice the same exact motif. Heck, even finale here is almost identical to what we had in First Contact!

Talking about the finale, by the way. Like with 25th Anniversary, what we have here is the Enhanced CD-ROM Edition of the game. Which... usually is a good thing. Not this time, though. Not this time... See, unlike 25th Anniversary game that only provided extra cutscenes and voiceover on CD while leaving those who didn't have CD-ROM drive behind (yes, kids, a lot of people back in the days didn't have CD-ROM drives since those were considered some sort of luxury), Judgment Rites decided to please everybody and released extra movies and sounds both as a part of Enhanced CD-ROM Edition and as an add-on for the floppy version, which was sold separately. And that's where the weird things begin. See, even though technically, the add-on for floppy version was released before the CD (the CD version has a pretty weird series of re-releases but the earliest version I've seen was from 1995) and included five more floppy discs (in addition to eleven from the main game, as long as we're talking 'bout the US since the number was different for some regions), the CD version actually... had one cutscene removed.

Among the other things, so-called Movie & Sound Pack added an extra cutscene before our usual intro from the TV show. It introduced us to the main idea of the game and gave us some hints of what to expect in the end. And, like I said, it was completely removed in the CD version. With no explanation. Sure, it was less then a minute long, but I must say, I always liked it. It totally added to the atmosphere of the mystery. Now, here's a question – did they put it back for the Steam release? I mean, years later we finally got a chance to get easily accessible version of the game with all the voices and cutscenes, without any need to deal with all of those nasty floppies. Unfortunately, the answer to that question is – what we have in Steam is just our regular CD-ROM version. With our usual basic DOSBox and no changes whatsoever. They just took the CD image, added the DOSBox and called it a day.

Like 25th Anniversary, this release comes with a new title screen (no idea why they've decided to add it but whatever), but... that's it. No extra cutscene here. And it's just... highly illogical. To say the least. Seriously, Interplay, why? I know that you're lazy and didn't want to bother much. But wasn't it really that hard to just use floppy version instead of the one from CD? Do you even care? Do you even know about your own game? No, you know what? I don't want to know. Sure, I'm kinda overreacting here. It's a pretty short scene and you can easily find it on YouTube, but still, as long as you're a die-hard Star Trek fan, you may end up being a bit disappointed here from just how lazy this release is.

Which, of course, doesn't make the actual game any worse. Star Trek: Judgment Rites comes with everything that was cool about 25th Anniversary and improves over it. The story became more complicated, the puzzles became more complex, the missions became more non-linear and so on. And, of course, it's impossible for me not to mention the fact... that we finally got difficulty selection. Remember those nasty, nasty space battles that were hard even for Wing Commander veterans? Well, now you can make them way, way easier or even turn them off completely. Which isn't really a good idea since you'll miss a lot of fun that way and the easy mode actually makes the battles very user-friendly (just make sure to change the warp speed often while repairing your shields and you'll be fine), but still, for those of you with 25th Anniversary trauma, there is such an option.

So... yeah. Despite the fact that it's a lazy release and Interplay should be really ashamed of themselves for not caring enough to provide the old fans with the best experience possible, Star Trek: Judgment Rites is still a fantastic game. Probably even the best one based on the original Star Trek series (because yes, difficulty selector makes a big difference). Years later, it's still one of my most favorite titles out there and, let's just admit it, you can't call yourself a TOS fan without finishing this gem at least once. You didn't play it yet? Forget about everything it pick it up. Just make sure to find a couple of minutes to silently judge Interplay. The guys deserve it. Dixi.

It remains a good game but you need to be prepared for the 1990's point and click interface.

They called these "Pixel Hunters" for a reason, you can easily overlook a small cluster of pixels on screen that turns out to be an object or switch vital to solving a puzzle. At times the mechanics of the game can be punishing and not intuitive. Playing pre-Internet it was easy to get stuck and get frustrated but now there are some good hint systems online (Like universal hint system) that give you a clue when you need one and keep that feeling of making progress alive.

If you are a Star Trek or adventure fan this is a fun, and challenging game but I preferred Star Trek:25th Anniversary overall.

I can verify that I have had no problems playing this game on Windows 10.

Fun point an click adventure, with all the main actors from ST:TOS voicing their characters.
I had the other Star Trek point-and-click when it first came out (now called Star Trek 25th Anniversary), this is similar with some improved graphics (particularly the cutsceens) and the option to cut out ship-to-ship combat, which some people didn't like but I found fun.

Keep in mind, this is a game originally released in 1993, so set your expectations on the graphics accordingly. If you have a nostalgic love for ST:TOS and point-and-click adventure games, you'll probably enjoy this.
If not, it's probably not for you, but if that's the case why are you even reading the reviews?

Note: there is an old style copy protect system - you need to pick destinations from an unlabelled star map. The labelled map came with the game manual. You'll have to print it out (it comes with the electronic manual when you get this game, or just Google it). The game won't be too happy if you open another window to check the map, because it runs in Dosbox, which isn't really for multitasking. You can get it back to fullscreen by hitting alt+enter if you do minimize it.

Judgment Rites picks up right where the 25th anniversary game left off! A major plus to this game, is the option of no ship combat, which was a major issue in the previous game. Judgement is such a good game and incredibly challenging. This is not a game that hands you clues to solve puzzles all the time like most modern games. This will be a challenge. You may get sick of scanning everything with a tricorder but the dialogue between characters will make you forget it!

This is a great game. Like 25th Anniversary. I remember playing this a long time ago and it was one of my first games I got as a Trekkie. I had the DosBox Version vor a long time, until I noticed that the game was available on Steam. Of course I got it right away. Like 25th Anniversary, the game is relatively short, but quite difficult. Getting a good rating in all missions requires quite a lot of thinking and probably several attempts.

Even after all the years, I have not managed to get beat the game on hard difficult and with 100% on all missions.

I would give Judgement Rites a slight edge over its previous game, Star Trek: 25th Anniversary, just because it has a little bit better graphics and a little tighter storytelling. Both games are great and I would highly recommend them for any Star Trek fan or fan of point-and-click adventure games. Both games comprise the unofficial 4th & 5th years of the USS Enterprise's 5-year mission.

Fun trip down memory lane for anyone who either played this in the '90s or is a fan of Classic Trek. Puzzles are enjoyable, employing actual logic to solve as opposed to most adventure-genre games. The stories are more enjoyable than many actual episodes of TNG, and the dialogue spoken by the original cast is fantastic.

Only drawback is that sometimes you aren't sure what objects in the environment to click on because the graphics are so pixelated. For example, I got stuck on one puzzle because there was a pillar-type thing I was supposed to interact with, but I thought the pillar was part of this machine I had already been clicking on. They are two different objects but look like one. So sometimes you will know what to do but have to click on random blotches or pixels.

NOTE: I've seen some reviews complaining about the lack of a star chart: there is a Steam community guide with a chart or you can get a guide from somewhere like GameFAQs.com which tells you where to click to start a mission.

Ahhh the good old days. When games by todays terms would be outdated by miles. Yet what they lacked in graphics today, ppl back in those times made up with a good story. That seems the issue with all new games lately. Fear not Steam was cool enough to bring back this gem of a game. And if you like Star Trek, getting this is a no brainer. Shame Steam hasnt gotten a hold of better past gems like Dungeon Keeper, System Shock, Ultimas', etc. But Ill take what I can get. Runs fine on Windows 7. (Heard Windows 10 may cause problems). My only complaint is a lack of in game manual. Just google it and its there. And to quote the alternate Spock, " The needs of the few outweigh the many that missed what was needed" lol. Peace

Any fan of the original Star Trek series and rpg puzzle games will enjoy playing Star Trek: Judgement Rites. I've been looking for this game for years, and once I started playing, it didn't disappoint.

"Personal" text to this game

I did not believe that this would ever happen - but yes, it did. Judgment Rites makes its glorious return.

I played this game long ago and still have the original CD stored next to my computer.
At that time, i was stuck on a level and had no chance to look up a solution - the level with the red baron airplane that shoots you "down" at the start of the mission. I was frustrated and then stopped playing it after multiple attempts. The time passed by and before i realized it, the game did not work anympore on the newer computers. I then lost sight on the game, but it survived multiple relocations and i kept in touch with multiple Star Trek games.

Well, by sheer luck i saw the 25 year anniversary stuff here on steam and clicked it - then i saw it. Star Trek - Judgment Rites. I was like "Whaaat the f***? Is someone trolling me?" ... 6€? Slept over it a night ( i don't know anymore why i did hesitate at first) and then HELL YEAH i bought it.

It looks amazing. No, really. At a time where we start going into the VR phase of our RL - Oculus Rift and stuff - these "simple" graphics do give us what we need. The environment feels just "right". Sound is also fine and you get a ton of the good "old" trekkie stuff like the comments from Spock and Mc Coy aka. Bones.

This is indeed a "must have" for every Trekkie - and interesting for everyone else who can afford the 6€.

Ratings

(MIGHT be influenced by my affection for Star Trek and especially for this game ;)):

Graphics 9/10 (some scenes could have been done better, the quality of the cutscenes and videos differes)
Sound effects 8/10 (mostly amazing, but sometimes not as good as it could be, even at that time)
Story 9/10 (almost perfect, but you really have to look out for everything. You might sometimes find yourself stuck because you miss something cause you did not try out all spots with all items - that can lead to frustration)

WARNING: This game has NO tutorial! And since you don't have the small book that came with it originally you MUST look up the key bindings on the internet since you CANT look them up ingame! *edit* You can find the original book here --> http://www.mocagh.org/miscgame/judgmentrites-manual.pdf

SERIOUS WARNING: You should SAVE from time to time. This game does NOT auto-save. If you FAIL you will have to REDO the whole mission you are currently doing (or maybe the whole game, but i am not sure at this moment). So SAVE AT LAST EVERY 10 MINUTES!

Btw: YES is does work on Windows 10, it opens a DosBox. You can Fullscreen by holding ALT and then press ENTER.

Just as with Star Trek 25th Anniversary, I remember playing this game on my old 486 DX2 back in the day. This game STILL holds its fun. All of the original cast member voices are in this version. If you are a fan of TOS then you should pick this up.

The graphics of this game may be outdated but that doesn’t matter to me. It is very challenging and has a great story. In my opinion, it is worth every cent!

Restless James Tiberius Kirk with his fellow friends again boldly go to ... you know where.And if you dont know you have a great chance to discover it yourself.Fully recommended.

And i made some changes in config file -dosbox_stjr.conf- ( it can be found in the game dir.) to wide the screen

fullresolution=output
windowresolution=output
output=overlay ---- you can put -ddraw- if you got green dots on screen edges.
scaler=advmame2x ---- makes picture a bit softer
aspect=false ---- try setting -true- if screen is too wide
cycles=34000 ---- optimal speed for me