Recent reviews by Kestrel

I can't recommend this game for a new player.

That said, if you're looking to get into Star Trek Online then you should be aware of some major things:

While not exceedingly difficult to pick up at the base level, the game doesn't explain its core concepts very well. Core gameplay is divided between a space component and a ground component. Most people prefer the space component, which is fine, but you will need to do both quite commonly if you're going through the story, and very few aspects of either are explained to the player up front. As such, If you want to do well at endgame, you either need to seek out this information externally, have it explained to you by knowledgeable people, or spend a bunch of time on trail and error in a system that hides or doesn't explain the relationship between different gear and abilities and what best synergises.

There is no 'RPG Trinity' despite what the character class system might appear as. All content is DPS focused, with an admittedly wide variety of methods of achieving that DPS. Tactical Captains (Tacs) Usually boost their damage directly. Engineering Captains (Engs) Indirectly boost their DPS and survivability. Science Captains (Scis) usually debuff enemies to boost their own DPS.'Tanks' and 'Healers' don't commonly exist in game, since while tools exist to facilitate those roles, all content still needs things to die moreso then having people tank or heal.

Outside of the core gameplay, you have a loosely 'Star Trek' themed MMO that will probably appeal to you if you liked the shooty combat parts of Star Trek moreso then the philosophical navel-gazing parts. You can fly virtually any ship in Star Trek canon you can think of, but depending on what ship that is, you might need to spend either significant time grinding out the resources for, or a decent amount of money buying outright, the ship you want.

Ships at endgame are priced at $30 USD for a single ship at baseline price. Sales happen, bundles exist, etc. that let you mitigate costs but for the most part any given ship at endgame is gonna be at least that expensive when no sales are currently running.

You don't really need endgame ships to succeed in most content, thankfully, but if you want the most powerful builds, you will need to buy several ships for the gear and abilities they can give you.

While you can grind out the currency used to buy ships in game, this is a time consuming process that needs significant startup resources to get to be at anywhere resembling a decent income rate. Starting this process from nothing can take you literal weeks of playtime to get to a decent point of income on the resource.

On the brighter side, however, the game typically runs 3 events (Anniversary, Summer, Winter) a year that give out an endgame level ship for doing some daily task or another for a few weeks. These tasks usually take a few minutes, and don't need to be ran on consecutive days.

Character customization is fairly decent, but most outfits will cost you money to acquire, even if many are account-wide unlocks you only need to buy once for your account. The age of the game also shows in many aspects here, however, as despite all the options you can't really do too much with faces.

PvP is virtually non-existent. The devs haven't made it a focus in years, and whatever sort of shenaniganry they put out for PvE use is never checked for what it does in the PvP scene, so if you're looking to have unrestricted PvP that isn't an over-the-top pay to win mess, look for a different game.

All that said, the game is Free To Play if you wan't to try it yourself, but if you want to truly excel at the endgame, you'll likely need to pay out either a decent chunk of money or a significant amount of time.