I loved this game back in the day and now kind of have the urge to replay it.
In reference to the mission with the Hijacked Federation ship, it's very much an homage to "Wrath of Khan", which is why the Shield Override code was the first thing I thought of when I got to that mission(and if you search for different starships in the database, that's the only one that has an override code in the entry, which is a not so subtle hint what you're expected to do). It's the rest of the mission, subduing the pirates while saving the crew and ship is much more difficult. There are numerous ways to complete the mission(and most of the missions, in fact) but only one of them is the best ending. Making the wrong choices(especially in the Hijacked ship mission) will result in people getting killed. In fact, there's one way to utterly botch that mission, where you take out the pirates on the bridge, but it will also result in the ship being destroyed(and possibly the entire crew being killed).
Interestingly, you can still continue the game, IIRC, but StarFleet will chew you out over this and since all the mission scored get averaged out at the end, botching enough missions will result in an ending where you're fired from command.
One thing I wanted to say about the combat(that the reviewer didn't) is how the final starship battle at the end of the game is very difficult, even if you are used to playing flight sims and are comfortably with the starship combat(which you get to do a couple of missions before that). I've beaten the game numerous times, finished the X-Wing games numerous times and the final battle still tends to frustrate me. The people who made the game seemed to notice, because in the sequel, you're allowed to choose the difficultly of the starship battles as soon as you start the game. This includes the option to just bypass them entirely, which ironically isn't needed because only one of the battles in Judgement Rites in is particularly difficult and it doesn't actually matter if you win or lose that one.
