Star Trek: The Next Generation – A Final Unity

​Star Trek: The Next Generation – A Final Unity is an adventure game by Spectrum HoloByte, based on the Star Trek universe. It puts the player in control of Captain Picard and his crew of the Enterprise D and features traditional point-and-click adventure gameplay as well as free-form space exploration, diplomatic encounters and tactical ship-to-ship combat.

It was released on May 31, 1995 and came out on CD-ROM for both the PC and the MAC. One of the most appealing aspect of the game is that the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation reprise their roles in this game, providing the voices of their respective characters in the game, except for Wil Wheaton who played Wesley Crusher in the series. 

The storyline takes place around stardate 47111.1, according to the opening sequence of the game. This would place the events of the game between the first two episodes of the seventh season of the series, "Descent" and "Liaisons". 

A Final Unity was Spectrum HoloByte's second Star Trek video game, following the 1994 game Star Trek: The Next Generation: Future's Past. Spectrum Holobyte acquired MicroProse shortly thereafter, and continued developing Star Trek games under the MicroProse name. As you can see the box has the MicroProse logo on the back and the Spectrum Holobyte logo on the front.

The majority of the gameplay takes place by controlling an away team on various space stations and alien worlds, which is the pure adventure game part of the game. The away team is selected by the player and is then controlled in a point-and-click manner by selecting the desired command from the interface in the lower area of the screen. Upon completion of the away mission, the team is beamed up, and the Enterprise awaits further orders or acts with the new information provided by the away mission. ​

The manual that comes with the game is quite substantial and heavy. Also every page is in color and has that RPG feel to it, where you could just sit with the manual in a cosy sofa and get immersive with the game without even turning on the PC :) 

Also like many other PC games in this era of Big Boxes, we get a Catalogue of upcoming games and released ones. Which is also a nice touch but you have to remember that getting information like this was not via internet. So you could spend hours just reading and dreaming of your next purchase. 

I would recommend this game to any adventure fan and also Star Trek fan. It was a huge commercial success and sold 500.000 the first year of release. The game was also a runner-up for Computer Gaming World's 1995 "Adventure Game of the Year" award, which ultimately went to I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. Which is no surprise as that game was a masterpiece, but being in second to that one is not a bad place to be :)