Homeworld 3 Review: Worse Than It Should Be
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- Опубликовано: 26 май 2024
- Homeworld is one of my favorite franchises of all time. It's extremely painful to share my largely negative review of this game. We can only hope that Blackbird Interactive will internalize player feedback and get things back on track. As things are, continuation of the franchise is extremely unlikely.
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watched a LP by drproof. i would say there is to much game in the cutscene or with other words: the campaign is to short and quite stilted. so theres a good chance that someone might be able to fix it with mods.
@@Irobert1115HD a bit like evo in for homeworld remaster
long mod but great modif of the entire gameplay
About the story - 'I'm very confused about how this could have happened'. Just count the number of writers this had...
I have toppled an empire, slain a mad Emporer, defeated marauding hordes, stopped world-destroying super weapons, and tamed progenitor demi gods with Karan Sjet. And now she tells me that she scattered her fleet and hidden all THREE HYPERSPACE CORES as a desperate measure because some egomaniac wannabe Hyperspace Queen threatens her? What the fuck? Whoever wrote this story has never played Homeworld 1 or 2 from beginning to end. Also, all the Hiigaran Navy ships lack personality and unique in comparison to their predecessor. All the Frigates and Capital Ships look like boring Tofu Blocks in space.
I could imagine a way in which a small fleet gets trapped and overwhelmed, but it does all feel rather contrived as you said.
@@NakamuraRTS the worst thing is how the baddies didn't "find" for decade, the only vertical object in the whole ice shelf.
As someone put in another video, it feels like a game made by people that googled what homeworld was like.
It's also weird that for one, she's had her empire for a 1000 years yet no one has ever noticed her, or that we have this hyperspace telepathic conversations now, or that in the lore the three original cores were the only thing that could open the hyperspace gates, yet this DEI enslaver was able to do it because...reason, and the ending she is let off like that. Every HW game the bad guy got what was coming to them, but here because of (we all know the reason) she gets let off.
@@Shadowdrag00n Unfortunately this is the state of modern gaming. Lazy ass storytelling bent to fit certain agendas. This is what happens when you hire activists to write a story instead of real writers that understand the lore, know the lore and respect the lore.
I waited 20 years for a sequel to finally end the trilogy and leave room for more but after this failure of a story I'm afraid that it's so over for this franchise.
@@rosumparat Which makes this even more painful, they took a beloved franchise, built everyones hype level, then shat out a modern turd at the finishing line. I do believe they had good intent from the start, but activists as usual wormed their way in and did what they did best.
People are either too beaten down, or just don't know what quality games are now, as some are perplexed why a lot of us are annoyed at this title and i think it comes down to people content with bland product and not with quality. As yes this game looks and sounds amazing but HW games are made by their narrative driven stories, a quest back home, a race to close pandoras box these are what made HW games, but thinking you can put good set piece battles held together by a bland story just doesn't cut it, not by HW standards in any case.
The plot sounds like something from a little girl would write. When my daughter was young she had Darth Vader and The Emperor killing monsters together all the time. Afterward they would have picnics with the dead monsters.
Once she drew me a picture of a new Star Destroyer the Emperor built for Darth Vader for his birthday. It was pink.
Now all this is fine for a small child, and I actively encouraged it. But you can’t expect people to pay actual money for a product like that.
It was all far too cozy, you're absolutely correct. I think Homeworld needs a certain degree of grit. It was quite well done in Deserts of Kharak, so it's not like BBI is unaware of this.
Diversity Equity Inclusion my friend, that is the reason why.
Sheev is a thoughtful man in his own twisted evil way!
Loved your comment. Thank you. A++
@@bertholdbach4959this story being shit has literally nothing to do with diversity. The story is shit because it’s written like a Disney movie
I hate that a Homeworld game is an example of my crusade to stop people from pre-ordering games. :(
it really IS a shame. Everytime I see the beautiful graphics I feel tempted to give it a try anyway, but having seen the actual gameplay and its issues it really is a hard sell.
Visually, the game outdoes itself, nothing comes even close. The gameplay needs a lot of work.
As someone who bought the game for this exact reason, don't. It's not worth it. And it's a damn shame, because every time I see the beautiful graphics, I feel tempted to install it again, but then I remember how after 10 hours I had basically done everything there is to do in SP and MP and just abandoned it.
Yeah, I'll end up buying on deep discount. Considering the ratings it will happen rather sooner than later, and the franchise is then dead.
@@NakamuraRTS Yeah. Real shame that this is all it has going for it. The fact that it could have been something great makes it all the more tragic
I am with you there. Except I got it based on the graphics and liking some the early campaign level design. Then I found out about the gameplay. Then I found out about the story development. Then I regretted paying full price. :/
Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is on the way! August.
Looking very forward to it.
Gotta be honest, the Sins trailer looks just as unimpressive as the Homeworld one. I got a feeling the game will be another disappointment for me. I hope i'm wrong though.
@@Lt_Rik Yeah looks like just a reskin of the first one with minimal changes.
@@doltBmB For having tried it... its really not. List of changes (beyond the visual and balance/individual unit changes):
-the option to have some planets orbit the star, creating opportunities for timed attacks from routes that didnt exist before: also interacts VERY interestingly with things like phase gates or novalith cannons as now they can move around the map; note that maps tens to still give a handful of planets that stay connected to your capital at all times, and a button allows you to see in advance how the planets will move for the coming real-time hour. But you can still have the static planets of the first game if you choose to.
-the addition of exotic minerals, rare ressources that drops from capital ships once they die, from planet exploration (except for one type thats reserved for endgame items), and are made in factories at a cost, and are used to buy capital ships and some of their modules; leads to sometimes building ships you wouldnt otherwise purely because you have the exotics already available, while planning ahead of your future exotic needs speeds up production (as is using logistic space
-Capital ships are more customizable than before with the new module system, especially true with the Vasari that can have EVERYHTHING except for influence and ressource extraction put on their capital ships at the price of combat-related modules
-Each race now has an extra unique mechanic; TEC uses trading, which they can customize to tailor their income to what they need to a degree, Vasaris have phase resonance, giving their ships large buffs for a duration after having jumped; the Advent will have Unity as their mechanic.
-Missiles are way different: its possible to bodyblock them, and they can be shot down by point defense; they are WAY stronger than they used to be however
-turrets being physicalized means trackign can be a factor, though in my experience this has little impact.
-neutral factions are more impactful, being something you can invest in for special abilities you can use across the map. they also hold the trade system, meaning its possible to detroy parts of the market by killing NPC factions, or have parts of the market missing on smaller maps with few NPC factions.
-lastly, the damage model is fully reworked: no more shield mitigation, but shields now recover a chunk of health after a while when they are downed. Armor is its own health bar, with a damage reduction that cant be countered but overall doesnt really recover in combat. Capital ships and fortresses that hit zero hull have an extra health bar (critical health) with which they cannot attack or use abilities, but gives you a chance to retreat them for repairs. And ships all have an unmodifyable "durability" value affecting ALL health bars (shield, armor, hill and critical) and acts as damage reduction, which is countered by the pierce value of weapons ignoring part of it, leading to some weapons being better than otehrs against capital ships or fortresses despite lower DPS thanks to their high pierce values (and the stats being unchanging through the game means you always know what will be effective against what, without debuffs changing things on the fly or upgrades changing unit relationships)
Overall, plenty of changes beyond the cosmetic to be had, and i think Sins 2 will be good, and maybe considered to be better than its predecessor. And it shows this in its unfinished state (that mainly misses only the advent ships)
@@doltBmB Thats what most of the Sins fans always wanted though (me included), i want the same core gameplay just better and improved with better game engine. BUT, we shall see.
Fun fact:
The emperor from HW1 and Makkan from HW2 were also navigators.....
In HW3 why they are suddenly so rare......
Pretty sure in DOK you find ships that hyperspaced into rocks and such.
In HW1 you had hyperspace blocking technology.
Enemy also had it.
In HW 1 and 2 MP, you could do small hyperspace at the cost of money as a tactical option.
But could be also hyperspace blocked.....(the device costs RU too).
In HW2 fleet reverse-engineered progenitor movers....
.
Why does no one in Fleet use that stuff in HW3.....many decades later.
Why does the HW3 fleet ditch its Corvette designs for a single one......
why there are craptons of progenitor "space cover" and no one cares or comments from the fleet.
Why Karan Sajet who had the Dreanaught and even the Sajuk ship did not appear.
She could have used those ultra-strong ships when traveling with her fleet.
Why did the defensive frigate get scraped and new fleet has nothing like that even tough after HW2 they had peace times?
Where have they gone??????
Why does the incarnate simply not hyperspace a planet or part of her fleet into the player's mother ship or into the player's fleet?
So they can kill or capture the mothership.
Is that explained anywhere?
They are already hyperspace kill planets.....
I have no idea who did the writing......
Did they play the previous HW games???????
What happened with the plot?????
Unrelated to this.
In all HW games destroyers were hard to capture.
Eg. you needed 4 salvage corvettes in HW1R +they could be killed.
Marine frigates needed time or realistically you needed multiple ones to cap one.
Why you can use 1 collector to easily cap one destroyer in the campaign.
There is a mission where they make 1 at a time and you easily capture like 50 then the campaign difficulty is over...on hard...
Why on EVERY nonurgent mission you not do a manual hyperspace to repair the fleet, or do stuff.
Why are strong against all ships in ANY RTS game.
Destroyer kills all but also dies easier to smaller ships......
In previous games" super capitals" were slow and could be engine or sub-weapon disabled and had big trouble hitting small ships.
Small ships would take forever to kill them.
Why is the mothership faster than a scout?????????
Why did almost all upgrades get removed?
Even basic things like +dmg for X ship mean you need to prioritize RUs on your chosen build.
Why super capital customization options are gone.
Eg you had a carrier for fighters and platforms or for boosted research speed and fire control tower-
Why they did remove many core features from the series?????
Do you really think most of these issues can be fixed? The game is basic and limited, but its issues don't feel like the devs put them in by accident and will fix them next patch. The game appears fundamentally flawed by design. You'd have to rework several systems from the ground up to fix some of the issues it has, and devs don't accidently delete major game mechanics like subsystems or targetable components.
You can't fix it all in 1 patch. Like I said it will take hard work, with dedicated people making fixes and tweaks and reworks happen throughout the 1 year roadmap.
@@NakamuraRTS explain to me how they're going to remake the entire campaign.
lol
@@nonyabisness6306 They're not going to. We're talking about core gameplay stuff.
@@NakamuraRTS Well then who cares.
Homeworld without a good campaign is not worth the buy.
Judging from the devs early concepts for the incarnate (actually they planned them back in homeworld 1, the planet killers are actually a race dubbed TMAT in the notes, and the incarnate are obviously the exact same. The leader Tia'ma is, however, not nearly as evil and threatening as she should be. Shes inspired by Tiamat of sumerian myth which is also present as the leviathan in the bible, in fact this primordial sea serpent of chaos is present in most mythologies, and isn't this lonely figure that just needs a friend or something, its the personification of chaos and evil itself. Why would Karan also have to sacrifice herself to send her to oblivion? And sonce the games story are heavily inspired by biblical prophetic events, why didnt this take place nearly a thousand years later? I still dont understand why they changed Karan to Imogen. So many thinga got chambed for the worse in about a year or so of development its crazy.
Cant wait for a mod that salvages some of the poor story beats. It's not horrible but some of the ending choices are just baffling.
Still waiting for the mod that salvages HW2 story beats. It is horrible and it's not going to be fixed.
I think the problem with the Homeworld 3 story, is that the writers were trying to do two different stories at the same time and just ended up with mud.
We could have gotten a story about a galactic level threat, an enemy leading a fanatical horde of space barbarians who have somehow/ someway learned or advanced understanding of hyperspace to be able to hyperspace into solid objects or send astroids into planets. Let the motivation be one of defeating the incarnate queen or shattering their ancient hyperspace engine which enables the hyperspace sorcery that they are using to threaten the galaxy. I feel like this story was let down by the scale of the game. I never felt like we were fighting over the fate of the galaxy, and I never felt any urgency over these conflicts.
On the other hand, there is a story about personal stakes and conviction, a battle of wills. Karan S'jet and her fleet have disappeared in space, and Imogen is leading a mothership out to find her because *this is personal, damnit*. Make the motivation strong and apparent. Not about Imogen having doubts or insecurities, but about Imogen growing from a hyperspace number cruncher into a hyperspace artist, about learning that there is magic in the science and that the numbers can’t and don't tell the whole story. This was also a let down, I was hoping to learn more about the mythos of hyperspace and the cores, to see how the image and legacy of Karan S’Jet had changed, and the way that faith and belief shapes the cultural differences between the Hiigaran and the Incarnate, but it all felt shallow.
What made Homeworld 1 resonant was the conviction of karan S'jet in the face of overwhelming odds and the sense of urgency and importance of the goal. We didn't need to be told about people's feelings or connections in Homeworld 1 because we witnessed it, we felt it ourselves and the stakes were our stakes. I think a huge reason homeworld 3 falls flat is that it commits the ultimate sin, it tells us there are stakes instead of showing us the stakes.
There are some vocal critics who will reduce the shortcomings of the game to wokeness, as if a poorly baked cake proves that cake is an objectively bad dessert, but I think there were good ingredients here and it was the execution that was disappointing. For the price of the game, I think people probably deserved more. I understand that inflation is brutal these days, and we can’t expect to get the same quality out of $60 today than we got 5 or 10 years ago, I also understand that the price really didn't make any difference to the criticism. If the game were $40 or $50 I don't believe more or fewer sales would have happened given the criticism the game received. I don't regret buying it and I'll enjoy playing it (especially if the mod support really takes off) but the game deserved better and I hope the team at blackbird are able to give the game some more love and polish over the next year or so.
For me, wokenes is not a much of a problem, but the bastardization of lore, story, and world is. Did you saw the first mission which is happening on Hiigara (that is it description), but in reality we have deserts of Kharak full of dust clouds and with running here and there obsolete Base Runners hailing from Deserts of Kharak game (how many years or decades passed between events of that games?)
Moreover where is Sajuk? Its not only a ship, its an object of religious worship and zeal, so it cannot be destroyed, scraped or replaced, so where she is?
Well, some guys are saying that it was scraped and added to Khar-Sajuk mothership (its spinal lance), but as I said, it would be sacrilegious for Hiigarans! Also, that lance could be parts of Progenitor Dreadnought that was added, but... it looks almost as devs forgot about that ships (depending on your play in H2 one of them or even both survive Balcora), so again its pointing to, that Sajuk was scraped!
There are more inconsistencies, frozen tech progress, lifeless Hiigara, lifeless interiors, wrong color pallets (Hiigaran is a caste society composed of Kiths) and so many more. Its almost looks like the game story was planed as something else (start on Kharak for some reason), but it was scraped afterwards and replaced by what we have now... which is wokenes and shallow story full of disappointment and that's why you, me, and others feel that something is a miss, something is allover the place and game story don't know what it want to be and in which direction it wish to go.
@@rohenthar8449 The way Karan and Incarnate are put on a bus at the end of the game definitely feels like season 1 of a WB show that has 2 or 3 seasons planned but haven't filmed them yet.
Thank you for making this well thought out comment. I particularly resonated with your points about "show, don't tell".
@@XerrolAvengerII Indeed, it almost felt like "End this sir, spare the shame".
@@rohenthar8449 why not a problem? wokeness is the main reason things turn to shitty
Incarnate are available in War Games but you have to play a while to unlock their fleet.
Good to know! I admittedly didn't play the mode much.
I've seen commentary regarding the ballistics about bullets doing u-turns instead of passing by ships and going into the void which reeks of homeworld 2's dice-roll-to-hit ballistics. I'm super curious if they decided to make everything so obnoxiously close range for 90% of combat because it's utilizing the mistake that was 2's damage model and BBI/Gearbox are just attempting to cover for it.
As for the rest, I'd already written off HW3 when it was announced as another "Age of S'jet" followup to the grotesque disappointment that HW2's story was.... and after how much of a botch-job that hw1's remaster was (Ther's still a page worth of bugs that render ships half-functional nearly ten fking years later.) didn't exactly fill me with hope.
I mourn for the series but I absolutely do not mourn for the developers at BBI nor Gearbox who, instead of doing what barking dog did with cataclysm, decided that only nostalgia sells, cementing a spiral of increasingly awful storytelling from the heady highs of those first two games. I'll always love classic HW1 & Cataclysm but dear god the rest I'd not mind memoryholing.
Sadly homeworld series has been stuck in stagnation and worse since cataclysm and has never recovered, from the game mechanics to the story bits, the remasters had the chance to fix the mechanics but they didnt do it.
So now when hw3 came it was obvious it was going to follow the sjet legacy again, Didnt help that Kharak was also a sjet story with minimal mechanics
Hello I'm here to destroy this misconception about HW2. Every projectile in HW2 is 100% physically simulated just as in HW1, the %chance you are talking about is really a chance-to-aim, rather than chance-to-hit, a slow projectile will still miss a fast moving target even with a 100% aim solution. And a stray projectile can still impact something unintentionally with a 0% aim solution. What this does allow is for weapons to be more finely tuned to have a specific effectiveness against fighters compared to other ships, which was something that was nearly impossible to balance in HW1, and the balance in HW2 is more refined as a result. For example, the beam defense weapons on the battlecruiser are noticably worse against fighters than the minigun weapon on the carrier and mothership, making the BC more vulnerable against bombers without escort. Thank you.
Why some of the fans of HWC stupid space zombie apocalypse story can’t bear the high mysticism of HW2? HW2 story was actually very good, delivering the intergalactical scale to HW story, along with expanding its timeline boundaries
@@makaan5516 The mysticism isn't the problem, the lack of consistency is. HW2 is a beautiful game, it just doesn't make any sense.
@@doltBmB I don’t think there were any large scale misconceptions, from what I read there are only a few minor details that fail to link to HW1. Also, the prophecy or myth should not necessarily be historically accurate. It may serve as a reference point to Karan and Fleet intelligence to solve what’s going on and what Makaan tries to achieve. As if the HWC space zombies make a ton of sense, but game was still quite brilliant
Can we talk about the greatest sin of removing the ion canon sounds
Honestly from what I seen, it looks like they forgot the mistakes of HW:DoK aka spam groups, uninteresting units that are copy pasta of one another across factions, and the gameplay depth of a lawn sprinkler. Not mention the story itself is sleep inducing, while trying to go in two different directions with no coherence to lore or plot. I'm not even going to attempt to go into the headache inducing of the ending, other then if you want to kill a franchise/brand/story, that is one way to do it.....hey, wait a minute, did any of the writers happen to be involved with the mass effect 3 ending? 🤔🤨
SteamDB verdict: two weeks since release and the game went down from 10k players online to 300-500. It's final I fear...
It's pretty much a SQ: KtJL speedrun.
The game is already dead, and it has not even been three months since release.
There is zero chance BBI is going to stick to their roadmap long term.
I'm a huge Homeworld fan, I mean huge. I even helped the devs from Gearbox to balance HWR post-launch and had direct contact with them. As a fan, I refuse to play Homeworld 3. The story is bad, the gameplay is shallow and buggy. They made a very wrong bet on terrain and war games, simply an awful choice. The game brings nothing new that matters and the good part was kinda ripped off. It is the end of the series, at least for me. Kinda sad cuz homeworld made a big part of my gamming history, it is the game series that I spend most hours on for sure. The failure of the series doesn't sadden me more only because I have a new game in sight, which will be my new focus, Broken Arrow.
Well another dead RTS.
Honestly its difficult to remain hopefull to this genre as nearly none of the recent ones lacks quality or audience.
Try Cataclismo they have a demo at steam and playing the shiiit out of that bad boy
I'm not sure that your comment reflects your actual thoughts. You might try reading it again?
Total War took over the RTS niche.
What bothers me the most is.
When will they update and add the Epic Games Spyware.
Like they did with Deserts of Kharak etc.
That's what you get when you gun for the legendary "moden audience" who needs quick gaming sessions and hire a wackjob to write the story to boost.
Double whammy. Female bonding story in a game about massive space battles (in theory), coupled with a misjudged set of gameplay modes that seem to actively penalise any long term multiplayer commitment. This game should have been a license to print money. Instead it’s a massive bomb.
They actually have Martin Cirulis, the original writer for Homeworld 1, 2 and Cataclysm onboard throughout. Only problem is that he reports to the managing director of narrative properties who has a huge influence over his creative expression.
@@JackJack-vj8gf yeah, somewhat it makes the story even worse, because they just forced real talent to sign their ego trip crap.
There's nothing wrong with having different tastes in gaming, but it does seems dumb for HW3 to cater to a different audience than their old fans
@@JackJack-vj8gf He was also just one of many. This game had over a dozen writers.
The defense mission (I believe it was 8 or 9) whilst fun I acutally had some issues with. I realised early on that there was a large section of the map with resources. I expected there to be some flanking attack or something but no... it also made little sense lorewise as the Incarnate could open hyperspace gates anywhere presumably. Though I still had fun with it I think the missions were very simplistic which contributed to how short/easy the camaign was.
As for the pre-rendered cutscenes, there are multiple cases of reused animations, lip sync issues and clipping. They were just badly done.
It really is a mystery how badly this game was made. So many opportunities to make the right decision from research to hyperspace jumping between missions that were easy adds. It's not just a bad Homeworld game, it is a bad RTS game in its current state.
Yeah, the defense mission definitely made you just commit everything to the front, with no harassment at all - that could be an improvement.
@@NakamuraRTS It was weird. I really thought with the mothership fixed in one spot it was an obvious thing to do. As a player and as a gamedev myself I feel like the missions were pretty boring.
Unfortunately, this is the end of the franchise... I speak as a person who played Homeworld1, Homeworld Cataclysm, Homeworld2, back in the 2000s, as a person who spent more than 15 years modding Homeworld2. Gearbox presented us (old fans of the game) with a piece of shit with Sweet Baby propaganda, which totally destroy campaign and multiplayer/skirmish with lack of any elaboration inside, disguising all thus crap, by means beautiful graphics! Waited 21 years to get shit on a plate. But look, the plate is trimmed with gold, right !?
after i play homeworld3.....i decide back to homeworld2.....
It's like the game has been crafted with too much emphasis with the graphics and terrain in space and they neglected almost everything else, i'll mean ship roster, the story, the maps, the lore in the story, and the intervention of GBX in BBI work also contribuited in negatives, there soo many things than are not explained properly, the ending ends in a cliff hanger because the khar-kushan are stranded in the galactic outkirts, leaving hiigara vulnerable by an invasion from someone (Possible taiidan imperialist, new vaygr crusade, the rakkan) the devs has stated than will not do DLC campaign but am think than the SHOULD and MUST, ¿Why? already the cost of the game and the very few perks than have don't justificate the cost, they SHOULD and MUST COMPENSATE the players, just look how projekt red suffered with Cyberpunk 2077 than they was forced to fix it and they delivered some late but they comply and delivered a better quality for the game, because it's not enough the DLC only for war games mode, they can save the game if do campaigng DLC, Mods for everything maps, races, sound effects everything, because will be a shoot in the foot if they only allow modding for maps, many years ago the games was done with more emphasis with Quality of life in absence of graphical power, now than there's graphical power there now an absence of quality of life of the product, and that should not be the norm, taking as examples how good and well crafted games is, Homeworld 1 classic, Descent freespace the great, soulreaver legacy of khain, prince of zelda 64, mario 64, etc.
4:25 minutes in and you're saying EXACTLY 100% all of the things I complained about thus far in HW3. Thank you for this, man. These are honest words that I, a simple HW fan and player with no ties to anyone but myself, absolutely agree with. You did a tremendous and very extensive job on this review and I will gladly give you my thumbs-up! I really hope more people watch this video and maybe even that BBI or GBX see it as well.
Thanks for the kind words! Hopefully there's a brighter future ahead.
Units actually work better when not in formation. The problems you were having were due to units prioritizing staying in formation over following your orders. Sphere formation is the only one that somewhat works because all of the units move uniformly together. All of the other formations have the central unit move normally while the units on the outer edges of the formation have to move more to stay in formation.
Going off of Hardspace shipbreakers the story will never be adjusted or changed, this is permanent. No amount of roadmap wishful thinking will change it.
I don't think I've ever seen a game where the story was changed after release.
Certainly not substantially.
Only thing coming close is the Ending DLC for mass effect 3.
@@nonyabisness6306 You are correct, but I wasn't very clear in what I mean so that is my bad. People wanted a way to play shipbreakers campaign without the story. This should be possible because of the other game modes available and the way the game is structured, but THE MESSAGE was paramount. Most players resorted to just turning off voices in the audio settings. Being preached at is not an overly fun experience.
About the story - 'I'm very confused about how this could have happened'. Just count the number of writers this had...
Top notch review, too bad the game seems so undercocked and not thought through.
Thanks! But yeah, it's very sad.
Apparently the devs were making homeworld 3 then the publisher stepped in with her knee high girl boss boots and said she was the captain now.\
This is why a guy whos first pc game ever was homeworld will not get the new one.
This was my first pc game too. I still remember the morning my dad's friend who was an I.T guy came over and gave my dad a few games for his new pc, Homeworld was one of them. I've played Homeworld more than any other game so when I saw what has been done to Homeworld 3 and it's disgusting story I took it personally. God I'm so disappointed words fail me.
@@jabbathedroid7745 The worst part is the devs WERE making the right game. The problem is the publishers stepped in because those DEI bucks.
I was able to return my collectors edition back to Amazon for a full refund even having played it. They also missed the mark on physical quality of these, they were mostly delivered late, negating the early access, and lastly falsely advertised the lithograph size. The delivered poster was tiny.
TBH, one of the things that has me surprised over (other than full-length videos, when most other Homeworld games used stills (even Deserts of Kharak didn't go into full-length videos for it's cut scenes). Add that, with the missions ending without needing to hyperspace most often and I just don't "feel" Homeworld when i play, and just feel "Generic sci-fi RTS". I mean, when playing scenarios in Nebulous: Fleet Command, I get more of a feeling of Homeworld gameplay than I did playing the Story mode, so I am very disappointed with this. This game feels more like the Homeworld mobile game (which I have played as well), but that is expected to play differently. Huge disappointment, and sadenned by Blackbird completely botching this entry...
I wouldn't be so overly critical over such trivial things, but this game was delayed several times claiming they needed more time to get things right. From what i have witnessed, I cannot for the life of me understand what they improved with all of the delays... Gameplay is more one dimensional than Homeworld 1 (functions more in common with Homeworld Mobile), cutscenes are inconsistent with past iterations, story is simplistic at best, this is just not a AAA quality experience demanding AAA prices...
It just looks like such a nose length knife fighting clusterfuck... even the fighters just seem to waggle around next to each other. All just a bunch of wonkily moving turret platforms. The fact that everything wants to fight on basically the same plane probably adds to all this clumping.
they should have made this early access
Strongly agree with this.
It was early access but for the fig backers and people than bought superiors editions than the standard, for they the game was available since 10th may, the regulars was open for download at 13th may
Agreed, this game needed actual player feedback and should have gone to early access first.
Still wouldn't have fixed the story, something like 12 people were credited to the story. Bloody ridiculous
@@sean7221 the story cannot be fixed at this point and is officially canon, what BBI/GBX should and must do is the campaign editor a la Age of Empire, and people will be free to go with their imagination, the game need alot of patching and fixes, that and the mod tools, campaign editor, map editor and fully modable should make better the game in the state right now are in, because right now as how its the game the chances of a "Homeworld 4" its almost zero.
The trick with the coop mode even if you play solo is get the objectives done quick, then find a good place to turtle and use resource collectors to steal their frigates until you have a massive fleet. It makes it far easier.
For the last missions, which tend to be very difficult, you eventually just send your carrier away and the AI will try chasing you so you just kite them indefinitely while finishing objectives with another team.
Doesn’t feel right. 😂
Do you need to be online to play this game or can if be played offline?
Exactly my opinion. I also didn't like how all the ships seem to roughly have the same engagement ranges, which makes combat desolve into a furball of lazers and explosions. Yes, torpedo frigates have longer ranges, but other than that its just a mess.
Era One from the modders of Cataclysm is coming out in fall 2024.
I'm checking out gameplay and development videos, and it looks promising.
Yup. That's the hope for Homeworld's legacy now. Plus, Falling Frontier and Nebulous represent that same lineage in their own ways.
Great video. Whole lot of things I agree with. I'm just rambling on while on break below.
I really only bought it for the Wargames mode since the only story I was following was a lore video like an hour before i bought the game.
A bit later I tried the story mode and mentally blocked out the BS for a bit while looking at the ship visuals.
I especially liked the mothership launch, the freighter crash, and the asteroid field thing. They're fun to look at, but not really much in gameplay. I just sent my mothership straight to the end point in that asteroid field, with the entire fleet in parade. Tanking the entire thing the whole way through
Controls were kinda customizable. I remember messing around with it till I found something mostly comfortable. Then again, I basically did not drag or edge scroll when I played the old homeworld games. I'm used to having a huge map, hyperspacing around, and anchoring my camera to ships and objects with alt click.
After playing the shipyard mission I just stopped playing. Only clocking 5.5 hours. Now I kinda regret buying it early. At least it wasn't $70.
I wonder if Homeworld remastered has the ships wiggle on evasive too? I got it for cheap but didn't boot it up.
Great review. I hope devs watch it and react to feedback that can be easily patched. Couple things, Incarnate ships are in war games at later player levels and want a spoiler warning for the campaign story.
I pre ordered so i could play early, but i still havent completed campaign. Never thought i could get bored with a HW game, but somehow they managed
Homeworld 3 was involved with The Centre for Digital Media and Diversity in Games. Mentioned in the ending credits.
Apparently, other goals were priority than story. Unlike in HW1,HW2.
12:50 "Power of Friendship" .. looks like Disney's Acolyte and HW3 had same "consultants" :P
Two things to add
- You actually can play as Incarnate in War Games, as their starting fleets will be unlocked via basic progression.
- You can actually win War Games solo, since the amount of enemies is scaled to the amount of players. The Scout Fleet that focuses on frigates and corvettes, is pretty capable to do the job.
Others have corrected already but yes you're correct! I haven't played much of War Games, so missed the lvl 10 unlock. As for my solo play, I had the lobby on difficulty 10, which warped my opinion and is frankly ridiculous in solo play. Would be super shocked if anyone can take that.
The campaign was depressingly short
Dayum Naka! Nice vidya
Hi Team Respawn Sean
I was going to buy this game as I loved the original homeworld but I knew straight away from day one that this was not going to be a great game - so sad!
I haven't actually played this yet and won't be able to for a while but the multirole capabilities of the Destroyers sound like a good idea to me. I've always thought most Homeworld ships are too specialized.. I wish there were better multirole Frigates in the setting though. Something like the Incarnate multibeam Frigate with a beam or two removed and some anti-small craft weapons installed or an Ion Frigate with some combination of reduced HP, turn rates, and Speed for an Anti-small craft turret or two as examples. The gutting of the Hiigaran Corvette selection sounds like a bad idea though.
Man I miss the era of actual, comprehensive and most importantly even just somewhat honest postmortems.
Not that those happened often, but especially these days you get nothing out of devs but corporate-sanctioned PR logorrhea that does nothing but waste your time. I'd be _super_ curious to find out just what exactly went so very wrong behind the scenes with this game. Because _my_ _god_ is this game a confounding mess.
Though even in the best of cases we'd still have to wait until at least a year after the final content update for something like that to even release, I suppose.
The game is a mess. It feels like the story was written during a coffee break and i wonder how anyone could think it was good enough. I am surprised that devs nowadays still cannot make a decent game, regardless of all the tools and advancements in technology and knowhow.
It’s really less of a dev issue and more of a management issue. Management wants to check boxes when making a game, and they keep drawing up the wrong boxes to check.
@@zerg0s While the managers certainly deserve a huge portion of the blame, there's plenty to go around and the devs need their fair share too. There are a disturbing number of devs who hate their customers. More to the point, there is a genuine lack of competence across all disciplines, though obviously this is on a case-by-case basis. It's simply not correct to say these are all great devs, constrained by evil managers.
Writers and game designers are not just following orders, creating the best craftsmanship they can sneak into the game without the suits noticing. There are serious issues that aren't there because management insisted on them, even indirectly. Even with management actively working to make the game worse, there are better options that would still have met the misguided criteria. Programmers also have flawed implementations of the questionable specifications they're given. These cause bugs, defects, and oversights that never needed to exist.
That said, I'd have to agree that management is the one to focus on. If there are too many devs who hate the players, then management keeps that level of disdain... but applies it to their employees as well as the end user.
I would even think they have no idea how to even accomplish thw boxes they want checked, and leave it to the devs to figure it out
Been looking for more honest reviews. Very disappointed, went back to HW and had a lot more fun.
I removed it from wishlist after playing their roguelike demo which was unplayable to me with insane controls and nonsense mechanics. I saw reviews and story complaints at release which solidified my disdain towards HW3. It seems like this game was not made by people who loved or even played the original.
Also how the f did this game had like 14 writers on the team, there is no way this story required so many people to write it. Smells like board meddling or some kind of 'consultancy' involved at which point it's a no-brainer game turned out this bad.
As a big fan ill get the game, as the game story is this ill wait for a big sale.
To me Homeworld has always been a story game, it was the RTS with the best story. At the time HW 1 story was just stunning, then the music hit in.
It's also a shame to not see an update to the RTS tactics, id have hoped for more commands like maintain firing range Long/Med/Short to force long range units to run or fighters to stay extra close etc.
Graphics look cool, music reminds me of the old games. Wish it had gone more hard SIFI, borrow from the best SIFI books to make an amazing plot or go sideways like Cataclysm.
I saw dataminers founding old cinematics, which were more like previous game's , but somewhere in the ending cycles of development Diversity team was assigned and whole story was rewritten and cinematics were too. So, SJW strikes again.
For the astoid mission I just sent a resorce collector across with a support figate. Main fleet and Mothership doesn't actually need to move.
Wow that is ridiculous. Good find, but that makes this terrible mission even worse.
@@NakamuraRTS Yeah, there is far too much cheese and not enough strategy for a Real-time strategy unfortuantly.
That you decide when you left the map was essential for homeworld, you could defeat the enemy collect all the resources and build up the fleet and when you where ready you jump!
The Story feels like it was written by grown up children!
The characters are just silly and why cant we have good villains any more. I noticed that even in movies.
I would only add to your review that the background music feels kind of bland. Adagio for Strings is really the high point of the OST. Now compare that with the OG, in the Khar-Toba mission, where the raiders attack. I'm missing themes like these in HW3.
Was looking forward to this and then I read reviews from Homeworld fans. Needless to say it’s a no buy from this fan, unless they touch it up with proper love n respect.
I'm contemplating a refund, but even if I don't I won't be playing until the mods start rolling out to see if anybody will be able to salvage something from this mess.
Always been a little lukewarm on the Homeworld franchise, as the unit interactions were slightly shallower than my favorite RTSes over the years (Starcraft, Red Alert/Generals, DOW) and it lacked the resourcing depth of others (AOE2, RoN).
Disappointing to hear they didn't push the previous games farther, as honestly the series was already in need of that.
* take inspiration from WW2 fleet combat, and design ships in their "idealized" roles within a navy. Obviously adapted for space combat (submarines would instead be cloaked/phased bombers; actual fighters or bombers are smaller strikecraft agile enough to evade most shots from heavier ships, etc).
* have maps fill out the 3D space with a mix of (a) giant obstructing structures, (b) nebula the act as "bushes" where it's easier to see out than in, (c) asteroids that block movement for larger ships but where smaller strikecraft can pass through, etc
* more transformative abilities than merely temporary "stimpaks" (though even this comparison isn't great because stims came at a cost that you wouldn't necessarily always want to pay). This would include things like giving some ships an extreme-range firing mode that causes them to be fully stationary, or extremely long cooldown abilities that can tank a ton of damage (possibly while shutting down offensive abilities)
As a designer, I know my list here obviously falls far short of the actual full list of things I'd have done for HW3. It's really the sort of thing where a tiny bulleted list (as huge as this comment is becoming) is ultimately going to fail to convey just how much variety I'd want to implement to make things work (after all, the game _has_ quite a few of the specifics I'm naming, like the cloaked bombers, but I'm trying to communicate more of a mentality towards design, where each thing feels like it offers an interesting tactical option, rather than trying to build out the full list of features/content in a comment).
In particular, I think one of the challenges would be drawing inspiration from WW2 ships and factions without pigeonholing each faction into the same basic strategy each game. (ie if the USA-inspired faction is very carrier-heavy for its endgame navy, but you end up building the same carrier-heavy army _every single match,_ then that quickly becomes predictable and boring).
Excellent review. Its a shame that the gameplay is lame considering the quality of the art and sound.
Something else missing from this game:
The sense of vastness and mystery.
That there was so much you didnt know about the universe.
This misses out on this.
Incarnate are available in Wargames at level 10.
I liked your review better than the game.
That's not a good thing, but thanks!
I find the new mothership very forgettable. The predecessors felt like they had so much mass and stature, the new one feels like a squished manta ray. Why change such an iconic design? Music is still very good though! Probably gonna replay homeworld remastered. May pick this up when it goes on sale.
Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is coming to steam shortly
In every way but graphics this game is lesser than every other Homeworld entry. I just felt empty after the shipyard attack mission... which stripped me of any ability to keep my fleet together and alive. Then the next mission... which is set up like an interesting explore and maneuver mission... is just a big combat box mission. I stopped at the ice sheet and I don't know if I am going back. I really really hope that mods for this game fix all the worst aspects.
Solid review. 😢
Gonna wait till it's on a steam sale and all the patches have been deployed
4:45 you can play as incarnate in wargames, you just have to level up to lvl 10 to get it
Thanks for the correction, but that is a very poor decision by the devs - your faction preference shouldn't be unlocked by grinding.
Technically you still play as the Hiigarans, just with captured Incarnate ships
this is end of H3 and prob. BBI and maybe GBX..
incarnate are available in war games... you just need to pick the incarnate fleet at level 10...
SINS of a Solar Empire II is coming out.
The plot sounds like it was written by Sweet Baby. OH WAIT, THE WRITER WAS OPENLY DEFENDING THEM, SO IT MAY AS WELL HAVE BEEN.
I just replayed HW2 and it was very nostalgia shattering in terms of dumb story and bonehead battle command. You just select everything and attack everything. So we only really have HW1 and the bootleg Cataclysm that GOG sells.
Homeworld 2 really wasn't that good. But it was EXCELLENT for modding. The community was legendary, imo.
Did you play the remaster? The remaster destroyed HW2 gameplay very deeply.
@@doltBmB Destroyed as in "broke the HW2 mechanics as badly as the remaster did for HW1", or "executed the HW2 mechanics well enough that it makes the original HW2 seem worse"?
@@DZ-X3 The first one, remaster is bad for both games. HW1 and HW2 are very different games, some prefer one or the other, but what you cannot do is just merge them together into one, it doesn't work and damages both.
I loved the HW1 mods. Yeah, I played with the Robotech mod for a bit. I'm so glad I didn't allow myself to get my hopes up. I made the mistake of getting a little excited for the Cowboy Bebop remake. I knew it was a bad idea, but I did it anyway. I think the people who make crap like this _enjoy_ pissing people off. That, or they're incredibly stupid, or both.
None of this is unexpected. Learning from successes and failures from the past is too expensive. Developers just surround garbage with eye candy, and shovel it out the door.
The average consumer's attention span is getting lower every year. That's what's fueling the destruction of all our beloved franchises.
Seems weird they didnt make the protagonist an alien alien. I mean weve got the human element we dont need even more humans. Missed opportunity to incorporate some truly alien designs and lore. The bentusi were cool and unknowable. Organic ships would have been cool to see, maybe ships that bleed when you shoot them.
Dang, I should have said Hi RUclips! like a good boy! :(
Hi RUclips
This is the real power of friendship. Making comments for the algorithm
The writers were pushed into making some sort of plot to appeal to teen girls from the looks of it. Both the protagonist and the antagonist talk like emotional teenagers and how they come together in the end just screams fanfic material. It's so weird.
Obviously
the cinematics would’ve been cool if they weren’t just so corny and they had such a huuuuge world and cultures like taiidan and bentusi and they didn’t use any of it…
All these guys had to do, was revamp the game engine and give us a new and compelling story line... Because this game's mechanics and playability was ALREADY viable...
Yet they couldn't even manage that...
>wargames
You can solo up to difficulty 6, no problem. Recon fleet, build assault frigates (get 3 support frigs for safety) and recons. Choose artifacts accordingly. Capture like 10-20 incarnate frigates. 6k? Exp every 30-60 minutes.
Thanks for the correction, huge fail on my part to not make this clear. What I should have said is that the game does not adjust difficulty properly for solo play. So 10 is doable with 3 capable players, but basically impossible solo.
Waiting for HW3 Complex mod
I realized this game took too much from Deserts of Kharak. It's obvious once you realize ressources are NEVER taken from a natural source like an asteroid or a gaz/dust field, exactly like in DoK where ressources are taken from wrecks. Plus, "terrains" and their exploitation for cover and advantage, are everywhere in this game, to the point that the game seems back to 2D RTS (a shame for a Homeworld game, even if it was excusable for DoK). Battle against WarSage was the only one where it felt 3D, while the ice reefs felt like the game developers were trying to make a submarine game. Same for character-focused cinematics : taken from DoK.
Also, no ally met during the campaign. WTF ?
The unit AI’s pathfinding and the non-support of other countries’ keyboards is what prevents me from enjoying the game. It looks great and I want to like it, but the ergonomics of the game are just terrible.
the incarnate are in wargames its a unlock
One of the best stories in gaming abandoned to instead spend money on bad cutscenes.
You can play 1v1 on larger maps and even in Deep Space you can reach destroyers.
I also like the weird logic that railgun corvettes are not transformative but they alone scale all the way to the end game while also being able to deal with Incarnate corvettes which are the counter to Hiig strikecraft. Also, on small maps, they can snipe whole resource controllers in between dealing with smaller targets.
Also, the abilities are extremely powerful but you would only know that after playing against even opponents or simply through testing; recons, for example, can outpace dominance fighters and interdict corvettes when they have their speed buff on, it would be really dumb to make that a passive. Interceptors also do twice the amount of damage and having that as a passive which reduce player agency such as the following: sphere -> activate when you see the enemy finish an attack run.
You also can't mindlessly spam, Nakamura mainly either got rolled by good players or faced extremely bad ones while the meta was developing. Case and point, if you look at how the resources are dolled out, by around the 7 minute mark or so resources begin to dry up and spamming leads to blocked production and bad fleet compositions. For example, if you continue to spam strikecraft as Incarnate when the Hiigarans have four or five assault frigates, you're wasting resources. If you spam too much recon you won't be able to do enough damage and you won't have enough pop cap for bombers. Even early on, if you spam everything at once you'll lock up your production queues meaning your upgrades come late and you will ultimately lose engagements. Also, he really doesn't understand carriers at all or how 500% increase production speed shifts things.
That being said the game play is faster and it is about micro if you're playing on small maps, but you can also play 1v1s on the 6p map which changes the dynamic quite a bit. However, if you're fan of build orders, then this game doesn't really have any and it's mainly down to tactical decisions and strategic economic decisions (aka not spamming everything).
I feel like you are trolling. Recommend you watch the video again - your comment is putting words in my mouth.
- Yes you can play 1v1 on 6 player maps, but that is not a natural thing to do. I review the gameplay as presented by the devs.
- The railgun upgrade/ability is NOT transformative. It is a single-target burst damage unit before, and it becomes a better one after, making it a not very interesting upgrade. It's just more fireworks at a cost of APM. A transformative ability in the franchise was the Burst fire mode of the Heavy Corvette in HW1, which added a massive AoE damage to a single target unit. Like I said, this is OK, though.
- I never said the abilities are bad. I literally said you are supposed to use them frequently.
- I very clearly stated that you are supposed to spam until you unlock multiple frigate types, at which point obviously no one should spam recons into assault frigates and anti strikecraft turrets. You're awfully aggressive about things I never said lol.
@@NakamuraRTS
- 1v1 is not natural on a larger map if you discount that some of the gold standard rts games play on larger maps all the time with multiple spawns such as sc1 and sc2 as well as games like wc3. Part of reviewing gameplay as presented by devs is to look at all the map gen options.
- rail gun is transformative, your approach and options differ without the upgrade and your opponent’s approach will differ as well. You can one shot frigates and threaten motherships. Without the upgrade they aren’t a threat to frigates and above.
- No, you made a blanket statement that those abilities are better off as passives. That demonstrates to me that you have no idea what you’re talking about especially in light of calling the railgun corvette upgrade as non-transformative.
- The example about spam is what happens when you think that it is all mindless spam, you screw over your mid game and fleet composition. But you wouldn’t know that unless you faced superior opponents or even skilled ones. Incarnate feels this a lot more than Hiigarans due to their smaller economy at the mid game.
This really isn’t aggressive at all but pointing out the gaps in skirmish knowledge, but also how some of your statements and conclusions are simply not true - it’s an analysis that lacks attention to detail which is surprising because there are so few.
But feel free to think I am a troll if that will assuage your ego. I think you can do better and in the end this is probably a dead game anyways.
Looks so good!
Plays so bad!
imo, the biggest promise for the game, is the modding potential. I'd love to see an EVE online mod for this.
The story started out strong, and then just went into the toilet with all the mystical nonsense.
Was their confirmation re: the ability to add ships and new factions?
Mods are our only hope.
rtx4080? and here i am on amd 6750 and i never hada drom in that gate trap mission below 60 fps looks like your geting a botle neck problem with your gpu
The first step to saving this game is making a new campaign, a proper lore friendly one, it should continue off the first campaign of homeworld3 but make it that the whole first campaign was a simulation or something akin to a bad dream and then continue with a fresh start and stay true to the roots of the game. Next step fire the manager of narrative directives or whatever that made up title is called, she is an enemy to everything homeworld. Then the game will be on a solid footing to start fixing all the issues you have stated, the game play and mechanics have taken multiple steps backwards since homeworld 2. The only thing that is better is the amazing graphics but that's it, every other aspect of what makes a game it is fundamentally worse.
Guys. Wanna know why this majestic franchise is, both narrative-wise and character look design, in this current sorry state? Keyword:
Sweet Baby Detected.
DEI policy strikes again
Homeworld lovers are now aware of Blackbirds hiring policies. Kiss of death.
Thanks for the non-sponsored review. Feels like all professional coverage has been sponsored and as you said its weird that not many others are talking about it. Truly a shame it looks so cool but the gameplay is lackluster. Hopefully it gets better in year.
Hipster dev not nerds..imho
are you alive? where is Retold news video? lol
Yeah, on holiday. Will sort out a late summary of what happened once I'm back home.
At last!