Recent reviews by Elephonz

One of the best shooters I've ever played; easily in my top 3 movement shooters (Titanfall 2, Unreal Tournament and The Finals).

I really like this game. it's simple but the driving physics, graphics and attention to detail are top notch. i also love the concept of these being drones controlled remotely!

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So first I should preface this with my bias; I've been a Homeworld fan since the 1999 release when I was 10 years old. Now I'm 35 and have started my own family - so it's been a crazy journey. Homeworld was instrumental in my career, passions, everything. The reason I'm a dev now is because I learned to mod because of Homeworld. So to say I'm biased towards liking the series is probably an understatement.
Another bias I have is that I strongly prefer Homeworld 1 over Homeworld 2, for many reasons. When I played Homeworld 3 I was dimly aware that there was some negative sentiment that it removed features from Homeworld 2 that players enjoyed. I have not read any of the online discourse since getting the game: I wanted to go in completely fresh-eyed.
With that out of the way I'll also save everyone some time: I absolutely loved Homeworld 3. It was what we were hoping for with Homeworld 2: Dust Wars and I am here for it. For newer fans of the series, or fans that might not know, Dust Wars was demoed in 2008...ish? It introduced the megaliths and the concept of fighting within giant space structures. Then it was scrapped because of tech limitations at the time and that's why Homeworld 2 had to restart it's development halfway through.

So Homeworld 3 is basically what Homeworld 2 was supposed to be and IMO it nails it. Here are my thoughts. For all of them I'm going to start with the areas I could see improving and then talk about the areas I thought it did well because in my opinion it did so much well that I just want to get the could-be-improved stuff out of the way first.

Story:
Could be improved:

• The cutscene where Karan and Imogen foreshadowed the lullaby cypher felt a bit stilted. When Karan says "I know goodbyes are hard. Let me sing our lullaby", it just felt forced.
  
• There was a pretty big logical leap right after we met Karan. I thought the reunion between the two was heartwarming and well-voice acted. Karan says: "The queen is coming for the sajuuk's progenitor cores...she will be able to harness the energy from the entire gate network. Nearly infinite power" and then Imogen replies with "in that moment her systems would be open...and we could override...if we were very close to her temple." it's a huge unprompted logical jump. I have no idea why she would say that other than to move the story along.
  
• At the end of the final mission I felt like it wasn't really communicated that we would also be stuck there. What does it mean that our cores were overloaded? Are they permanently damaged? I also don't feel like it was well communicated as to why Karan had to join the Queen. I assumed it's because her cores were used. Regardless of the reasons I really liked this part of the story, see below.
  
• Karan/Imogen's line "To be Hiigaran is to never be alone" is a little cheesy but hey it's spaceships and laser guns, I didn't mind. :)

Now that that's out of the way - The Awesome:

• The story was really character driven, much more so than in any other games in the series and I thought it was done really well. Powerful female leads working with an immensely intelligent male lead. Everyone's motivations made sense and they reacted logically to lots of situations. I really loved the villain but we'll talk about her in a bit.
  
• I felt like the transhumanist themes were really interesting and this game dove deep into what it might be like in the Homeworld universe to essentially become a living starship, capable of hyperspace flight. We really looked at what it would mean for a human consciousness to grow to the size of a living starship. It also ties in well with the Queen's arc; how she had been elevated to godhood and found herself all alone, abandoned by her people. What would it be like to have the power of a god but only have yourself to talk to about it?
  
• The Queen and Karan literally ascending into hyperspace was also a very cool thought. Literally moving to the next plane of existence by existing in another reality. What gods could we become?
  
• Fleet Intelligence was well acted and worked really well with Fleet Command. It was refreshing to see two professionals working together for a common goal, which you don't usually see in contemporary media anymore.
  
• I think the Queen was a solid villain. Her motivations were simple but easily understandable and extended from the trauma of being used and abandoned by her people. Her and Karan's arc remind me a bit of a Terry Pratchett book called "Small Gods". In it, the villain is a monstrous head of the church, torturing etc. The hero of the book, Brother, ends up killing him and restoring the church to a more peaceful path, becoming a prophet of their god Ohm. When he dies 100 years later, he finds his former enemy lost in the sands of eternity and rather than ascending to heaven himself, takes pity on him and walks with him. I felt like regardless of why Karan had to join her, I feel like her doing so was a really complex character moment and humanized an enemy that would have otherwise been a very simplistic villain. I appreciated it.

Art/Technical Design:
Could be improved:

• I felt like Imogen was pretty oversexualized. She was basically naked, down to showing individual toes. She could have at least had maybe more average features?
  
• Not a huge fan of the unit designs. I like the idea of the Hiigaran ship being designed to a top-down profile and the Incaranate to a side profile. However I feel like the Hiigaran ships lacked interesting silhouettes and the Incarnate were very overwright with way too many lines. I think the two factions adhered too strictly to horizontal/vertical profiles and should have mixed it up more. Witnes the original Taiidan ships, which IMO are the pinnacle of Homeworld ship design but I know that's subjective.
  
• Unit pathfinding is pretty dumb.

The Awesome:

• Cutscene characters were great and it's awesome to see the evolution from hand-drawn black and white, to hand drawn color, to color CGI mimicking hand drawn to full CGI standing on it's own, with still a little bit of that limited movement from a hand drawn animatic.
  
• Some really amazing shots, the one where the mothership broke free of the ice was beautiful and really sticks out in my mind. The build up of cosmic "sand" in the bowels of the great megaliths, or the perspective of seeing massive capital ships dwarfed by gigantic planar objects they move across. The environments really told a story and were so well crafted to the mood of the levels.
  
• The blend of technical and artistic design is so beautiful and uniquely Homeworld. The vast windswept frozen planes, the deep clouds and volumetric shadows, the bright flares as explosions rip apart massive warships; technically speaking from every aspect the game is gorgeous.
  
• The megaliths are just really inspirational and I absolutely love them.

UX:
Could be improved:

• If you don't turn on unit health bars it is really hard to see what ships you have selected.
  
• Sometimes I would auto-select multiple units of a single type and that was frustrating.
  
• The concept of formation or group leads was never really explained, would be nice to see.

The Awesome:

• Love the flexibility in the camera and gameplay systems.
  
• The ship selection system combines the best elements of Homeworld 2 (picture icons) and Homeworld 1 (grouping similar ship types instead of showing an icon for each one). Personally I still prefer the text list of Homeworld 1 but ya gotta change with the times.
  
• I really enjoyed the menus and how they plus the in-game interface felt very advanced and technically competent.

Gameplay:
I'll just generally talk about this one. I really enjoyed it - the megaliths offer an exciting new challenge and I like how the idea of terrain close maneuvering is expanded on in the

Very realistic, interesting and tactical game. Highly recommend if you're a fan of space travel.

Fun turn based strategy