Here is what yahoo had to say about the PSP version.
Bethesda brings a decent Star Trek experience to game systems for the first time in ages with this shooter.
yahoo
By: Russ FischerPosted: 24 Oct 2006
Star Trek fans have been cursed not only with cancellations and some missteps on TV and the big screen, but with a load of rather terrible games. Bethesda Softworks, fresh from the success of Oblivion, is trying to change the losing streak. On the PSP, the company's weapon is Star Trek: Tactical Assault. The name is slightly misleading, since this isn't a turn-based strategy game played on tiles. Instead it's a real-time space combat sim, and it's also much better than you'd expect.
You'll take command of a series of starships, either in a Federation campaign or an unlockable Klingon series of missions. Acceleration and turning are simple matters of hitting the d-pad, but you'll have to cycle up to red alert to raise weapons (shields go up at yellow alert) and then wait for them to charge before firing.
The combat is a matter of circling enemy ships and eating away at their shields. Phasers charge quickly and are plentiful, but are weak at anything less than point-blank range. The reliable photon torpedo is great, but not if you miss, which is very possible when firing while turning. But this is Star Trek, after all, and fighting isn't always the only way. Diplomacy can get you far.
For instance, in one of the first missions you'll be called to assist a mining system being plagued by pirates. You can fly in and destroy the pirates, no problem. Or you can hail them and have a conversation that leads to you escorting them back to the mining system, where the corrupt governor will then take reprisals against your command. That's the Star Trek experience in a nutshell, and Tactics gets it right most of the time.
A couple of limitations keep our enthusiasm from going into overdrive. First, collisions between ships aren't factored into damage calculations. That's a disappointment, seeing as how colliding starships have been put to good use in Trek before. But the controls and velocity physics are such that players would be ramming themselves to death all the time, necessitating the negation of collision damage.
Worse, then, is that the game takes place essentially in 2D space. You can't dive or fly along any axis, instead being limited only to turning left and right. Since so much of the game has you endlessly circling other ships looking for an opening, it would be a big advantage to be able to fly in more than two dimensions. You'll also find that the relative size of objects isn't on target, with capital ships being far too large against some of the game's planets.
But it is the PSP, after all, and in general Star Trek looks and sounds better than it has in recent console incarnations. The graphics are a little jagged, but the ships look great and the interface is well designed. And the sound is excellent, from the sweeping symphonic score to the spot-on weapon systems. In total, the blend is more than Trek fans have been able to boast in a long time, and that an entertaining title in the Trek universe exists for the PSP is still a difficult fact to grasp.