This Apple Arcade game is a fairly typical free-to-play loot box game without the micro transactions. You are the faceless captain of USS Artemis which has gone into the Nexus to rescue people trapped there. This gives you an excuse to add anybody from any Star Trek series (I think you start with Michael Burnham from Discovery, Worf from TNG/DS9, Leonard McCoy from TOS and B'Elanna Torres from Voyager).

The main story arc is sending four people on missions where you interact with characters cut-scene-like, use your skills to choose paths (not that big a deal though if you want 100% completion you have to redo missions), and do lots of fighting. The main story is eight episodes of six missions each as you collect people and try to find out who is using the Nexus as some sort of power source/weapon.

You collect Nexus shards which allows you to summon random crew (duplicates let you rank up that crew).

You collect items then upgrade your characters. Kind of like the Marvel combat game I was playing you can:

• level up characters
• rank them up (not sure what it does in this game)
• unlock to the full four abilities on each character
• level up abilities to level 2
• equip four slots on each character
• level up equipment to level 5
• rank up equipment
• equip two particle slots (Nexus particles for bonuses)
• level up particles to level 5

You have three shuttles to send three 4-person teams on shuttle missions which take time and then you get rewards. There is a percentage chance of bonus rewards that depends on the crew so you have to send at least some competent crew. Crew on shuttle missions can't be used elsewhere but it gives you something to do with all the extra crew.

There is PvP and Operations which are basically just 4v4 combats either against players or set computer opponents. Daily goals to keep you playing.

Combat is 4v4 in order of speed. Each character has a basic attack and up to three other abilities (which all have cool downs). There's a lot of buffing and debuffing so combinations are nice. Usually two characters on each side start with some cover and some characters can create cover (and as long as cover has 1 hp it'll completely protect the covered character).

You can let the computer fight for you which is fine for most Mission combats since you overpower the enemy so much. But computer control is not very efficient and characters don't try to synergize.

Overall it's an entertaining game for what it is and not one of the best of the genre. Not really what I'd choose to play but at least in Apple Arcade it's not trying to sell you stuff all the time.