Homeworld 3

[Blackhawk]

That (in general terms) is the reason that I have everything going through Gmail accounts that forward to the one account that I actually read. I can delete old messages all day long, but they're only the copies forwarded from the original accounts. If anything comes up, I just switch to the original account and every email I've sent or received in the last decade (or however long) is there.

[Unagi]

All of that makes sense - they can't really ship you a product without your address

True. But I've never had to sign a release like this for every object I've bought that was shipped to me, have I ?

[Paingod]

6 hours in now. I absolutely know I'm taking longer than I need to. I'm someone who goes out of their way to acquire as many enemy ships as I can while minimizing my own losses.

Denuvo hasn't been a performance hit for me - or if it is, it's negligible. It's worth stating that I overhauled my PC less than a year ago with second and third tier parts, so it's pretty dang fast and can handle the load. The gameplay itself is smooth and load times are measured in seconds.

A couple of complaints resonate with me from reviews.

Pathing. I'm quite tired of my ships and enemy ships getting stuck on my Mothership. For some reason, whether upright or laying down, there's a strong tendency for ships to try and pass through my Mothership instead of around it. So they just dry-hump my hull as they slowly slide across to one side. It's particularly irksome when I have an attacker on one side and the ship that wants to kill it is pushing on the other. Like ... come on. That's it, though. Pathing around other obstacles has been fine, though ships sometimes see tunnels and "going around" things as the fastest way to a point. Maybe it is. I had one mission where my Resource ships captured a couple of frigates and ran them back to my Mothership through a tunnel instead of straight there. I'm guessing the AI considers one axis before it considers another instead of trying to draw a straight line and adjusting it when it hits an obstruction.

Small maps. Homeworld 1, 2, and Cataclysm (Emergence) used HUGE maps that you navigated your fleet across with multiple objectives on each map before you finished. Homeworld 3 gives you maps that are maybe 1/10 the size and gives you two or three objectives on each before you move on. On one hand, it means you don't spend minutes waiting for your ships to get from A to B. On the other, you don't really get to spend much time in any one place so you don't develop any sense of familiarity and there's a limited sense of scale.

I'm close to changing my review on Steam to Negative. There's too much stacking up.

Denuvo. Tiny maps. Amateur story. Very short game (in an EPIC series).

The actual game is beautiful and the combat works well. Mechanically it's Homeworld. Intellectually it's not. The developers nailed it. The designers dropped it.

Some day I'll learn to stop assuming beloved titles can't go wrong.

[Blackhawk]

All of that makes sense - they can't really ship you a product without your address

True. But I've never had to sign a release like this for every object I've bought that was shipped to me, have I ?

Of course not, but it's not a good comparison. They're covering more than just shipping physical products in this. They're covering online purchases, physical purchases,tech support, surveys, online services, third party integration, etc.

[Montag]

I was ready to plunk down the big bucks and go all in, but it seems it is a shell of what it was. I will consider this when it is on sale and had time to cook. Big disappointment. Fortunatley I still have more BG3 and Elden Ring to play through; however, Helldivers 2 is still getting the majority of my attention.

[Paingod]

I was ready to plunk down the big bucks and go all in, but it seems it is a shell of what it was. I will consider this when it is on sale and had time to cook. Big disappointment. Fortunatley I still have more BG3 and Elden Ring to play through; however, Helldivers 2 is still getting the majority of my attention.

My only regret so far is the purchase price. I really should have waited a few days, but the shock of seeing a new Homeworld title when I wasn't expecting one sent me into a tizzy. Again, mechanically it's absolutely more of the same and great for that; intellectually (story, scale) it's stunted.

Unfortunately, no amount of extra time in the oven will fix the story. I'm hoping the DLC pass I bought adds more hours and maybe some larger maps.

[Paingod]

Total playtime to campaign end: 13 hours, could have been 12 if I hadn't been persnickety about capturing ships and keeping them alive.

The tunnels & cover mechanics were utilized frequently by enemies, never really needed by me to finish stages. Persistent hull damage is neat, but after a few missions your ships all start to look like they're 'artifacting' (like if your video card is overheating) and have turned into masses of orange & black streaks. Camera controls and pause/order was pretty intuitive. Pathing is problematic, with ships finding their way into odd crevasses or getting hung up on walls or each other. Voice acting was okay but not great. There were times when audio was out of sync with mouths moving.

Ended the Normal campaign with:

Spoiler:

• 160k resources; went into the last fight with 195k but churned through Interceptors, Bombers, and Corvettes like candy
• 79 out of 50 Frigates, peaked at 107 out of 50; I only wish I had more Repair Frigates - made 12, lost 8 by the end and couldn't make more
• 3/3 Carriers (almost completely pointless additions to the fleet)
• 34/8 Destroyers (all captured)
• 0/8 Battleships (couldn't build them, too many Destroyers by the time they unlocked)
• The further I got, the sloppier I was with fleet control - using larger and larger groups, and it didn't matter. By the last mission I was just using F4 to select all military ships and ordering them to steamroll an area, rinse, repeat - everything else was set on "Follow".

The storyline was scattered and unfocused, sometimes in opposition to itself:

Spoiler:

• The push to go out and fight the big bad was completely out of left field and the writers pretended that it wasn't
• Karan's Mothership is "buried deep in glacial ice to mask it's hyperspace cores" only when you find it it's right on the surface covered in a thin crust.
• The big bad was basically an immortal, petulant 8 year old with Navigator and mind control abilities
• In many places it felt like the story skipped two or three beats and just ignored that it happened
• Why do I have to keep using Hyperspace Gates? What the hell are my Hyperspace cores for? I can jump around by myself, except when it's not convenient for the story.
• "it's impossible to Hyperspace jump and rip through a solid object! how did they do that?" and then later your Mothership literally does this with no fanfare, research, or acknowledgement.
• Oh noes! The Gate Network is down and we're stranded ... except we know they can make new Cores and travel via Hyperspace. Haha! Oh, wait, they're not going to do that?

The last fight was:

Spoiler:

Very straightforward, and relatively easy. Sweep the map, destroy batteries on production facilities, lay an egg in three different areas, fend off a "Titanship" that runs every time it gets to 75% and 50% health right until the end moment. Having functionally unlimited resources, over 100 Frigates, and 34 Destroyers made this mission largely trivial and mostly just a matter of waiting for things to die as I rolled over them.

I have heard that playing on Hard is actually Hard, but I have no inclination at this time to do that - nor do I feel like War Games or Skirmishes.

[UsulofDoom]

Ouch, reviews are at 41% positive now. Multiplayer must be bad too since only 978 player are in game at 3:30 PM est.

They seemed to have dropped the ball on this one. Don’t know if they can pull a Cyberpunk make over. Time will tell.