My impressions from playing the game:
Your Character: You start off as a junior officer in the position of ship's captain. Your character can be Tactical (tank/dps), Engineering(utility) or Science(buff/heal), and this largely determines your ground combat role, but your space captaining is seperate. Standard races are included as packages for character look, but you can do all sorts of things to your appearance and I've seen some strange things/people in spacedock. You also can customize your uniform to a degree. XP are invested in skills, which give you powers.
Bridge Officers: BO's are pets on a planet, and powers in space. They level up and can be given specific training. You can get new BO's in the same way you can get gear, buy, mission reward and so on. Not all BO's have the same capabilities. They come in three general flavors, Tactical, Engineering, Science, with similar functions to the PC versions. In space, BO’s allow you to do special things with your ship, like fancy photon torpedo spreads and emergency power to shields. BO’s may be equipped with gear just like your main character.
Your Ship: You can customize your ship’s look a good deal. Depending on your preference you can have a Miranda from WoK, something more TNG, or mix and match because you really just like the way those particular nacelles look. There’s also gear for your ship. You can install that disruptor array on your Fed ship if you like.
Ground combat: It’s okay, but not great. However, if you’re ST fan the words “phaser rifles” will probably do it for you. The little phaser has a stun attack. Also, the default unarmed attack seems to be that palm-strike-to-nose thing.
Space Combat: It’s ship combat, not fighter combat. Firing arcs, weapon charge, shield regeneration. Battling a single comparable ship is not intended to be quick in this game. You’re intended to fight an enemy that will try to shelter it’s weak shields and you’re expected to do the same. Many fights are against more numerous small opponents (the Orions deploy fighters), and the management of your weapons and powers is where your time is spent. It’s not about movement, it’s about management. This appeals to me for ship combat of this type.
Quests: The training mission above is what it is, newb training. I never really felt like I was taking on the Borg, but rather like I was helping out after the fight, then joining the big ships to push them out.
The other missions seem much more like ST episodes. Travel to a system that's having a labor disptue as the Fed representative. Discover pirates in the system and clear them out. Beam down to resolve the differences. While the diplomatic options are too simplified and need serious work, I think they've done a good job of replicating the ST episode in game. Things begin "Stardate bla...we are escorting so and so to a Vulcan monastery..." and end with the ship warping out of system or the crew beaming off planet.
It feels like the game will have a story, with missions that are a part of it.
Kirk vs. Picard: Definitely more Kirk. Myabe you could call it “Enterprise-E Picard”. In the Sol area there are public quests that involve Klingon incursions, and I killed a whole lot of Klingons in that Vulcan monastery. Sure, you’re expected to talk to people. Angry Federation workers are an example of people to whom one is expected to be diplomatic. The pirates in orbit you’re expected to explode. It’s a post-Dominion War post-Wolf 359 Federation.
GOOD: It’s Star Trek. Travel around. Meet new folks. Talk to some. Blow up Klingons. Uncover strange anomalies. Meet the alien of the week (probably a PC). Beam in, beam out. Go to warp. Cue music. I also like the ship combat.
BAD: Load screens. Too many load screens. It’s a major failure of the game. Combat pacing and dynamism needs work, but the load screens are a much bigger hurdle. Also, the warp travel seems like it was mishandled. I know what they were intending, but the execution seems off.
Overall, I think it’s worth looking at. A large part of your enjoyment of the game will depend on your enjoyment of their brand of Trek. Many of the rough edges will be polished with maturity (except those darn load screens). If you’re expecting EVE, why are you even reading this?