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Releasing a video without saying "recommend" or "not recommend" in the title feels like Skill Up's version of sending a text that just says, "can we talk"
To me it says one of two things: I like it, but it has too many flaws for me to recommend or I love it, but it is not the kind of game that everyone will love, like, or even tolerate
Yeah I immediately was like “oh man he prob has some complicated reason for loathing it, but wanted people to understand his reasoning rather than just writing it off as a ‘don’t recommend’”
This is ignoring the fact that too many people just assume intentionally deliberate multiplayer modes can be treated as single player games, just because you refuse to play with other people. As much as it might sit on the line of a Co-op game, you have to remember that the core of this game mode is Live Service in nature, and built around the current culture of PUGs. You don't give a player in a server-design game the power to pause and roll back time, just because their the host, for really obvious reasons. The clues are all there..... its got Match Making and Public game finder, its got a progression system, AND its got DLC attached to it. War Games is a Live Service model. And I'm kind of surprised that this many people don't recognize it, just because its not granular.
@@freelancerthe2561you are right, I didn’t take that into consideration, what do you say to the other commenter about pausing in team games within StarCraft?
@@ratt44 Easily, since Lucas "borrowed" a lot from Dune. The Voice = The Force, Arrakis = Tatooine, Sarlacc Pit = Sandworms, Sandcrawlers (exist in both), The Emperor (exists in both), main characters being descendants from villains (in both) etc.
A secret sect of exceptional individuals that wield mystical mental powers, including the capacity to see into the future, and that are driven by the prophecy of a chosen one.
My Favorite is: "Watch For debris" I always took it as a pilot just downed an enemy and tell his squad mates to watch out for the shattered remains of their enemy; and man is that brutal.
"Yes, yes... We will not be Bound, whatever that means. Well, guess what: we won't let you go! It doesn't matter how we die, one ancient monster is as good as another!"
Yeah, I wish games like Ace Combat kept the melodrama in the cutscenes. 4 was peak for me in terms of story presentation, much more understated than 5 and on.
Dispassionate radio chatter was one of the reasons why every single emotional scene felt better in 1 and Cataclysm Professionals under stress shitting themselves seeing Kharak burning? priceless
"Overcome her insecurities." So incredibly tired of these storylines. People used to know what they wanted and fight for it, 100x more enjoyable for me.
Homeworld has some of the best video games music ever created bar none. Truly worth checking out the soundtrack even if you don't play the game, and I'm not one for listening to soundtracks
Yes, so original while being so great, It's nice that blackbird didn't let down with the soundtrack in any of the games they made an rose up to the task
Since you can choose difficulty, my guess is that they didn’t take the adaptive difficulty from the previous ones; where the next level’s enemy scales to your fleet size
While I still want the game, it looks like it might follow the standard process where a game launches, and takes about two years before the patches and DLC either entirely ruin the game, or just about perfect it.
It was a very divisive method of balancing. It punished players simultaneously for being too good and having large fleets or going into battle with severe losses and no resources. You were forced to find the “Goldilocks Zone” of having a sufficient fleet and resources just to avoid being blasted into oblivion by an unbeatable fleet 2 minutes into the following mission.
It's still there, and let me tell you Persistent Fleets on Hard if you're actually solid at maintaining low losses + capturing is.. a helluva thing. I think it was mission 9 that gutted everything I was saving up till then lol.
@@guamson8946 That was definitely true for the initial launch of HW2. iirc, there was a bug in the 4th (?) mission that caused the enemy fleet to dramatically scale higher than yours, making you take on multiple destroyers when you barely had frigates. HW2 did get patched to nerf the scaling quite a bit though, across the whole campaign. I also can't fairly judge that aspect of difficulty though, as I was always very meticulous and methodical, and while my first couple of playthroughs were definitely difficult, I truly appreciated the game **wanted** to kick my ass, and took it seriously to not let it. But I also didn't like the campaign of HW2 nearly as much, and would probably not do very well nowadays. Much more experience with HW1 and Cataclysm.
@@guamson8946 It sounds pretty bad. I never played much of homeworld, but i didnt know about adaptive difficulty. It sounds pretty bad to me, instead of being rewarded for playing well the previous battles, you just ge tnothing or get even punished. Imho there should never be autoscaling, only an option to adjust difficulty manually, so you get a sense of achievement , that you play good enough for example , to change to "Hard"
Man it makes me so happy to hear someone else mention Total Annihilation. That game, along with Kingdoms the medieval-like expansion, were such awesome RTS games.
Great review! I look forward to playing Homeworld 3 this coming November. About a year and a half ago I stopped playing (most) games at launch and instead wait 6 months for the inevitable patches and improvements that will follow, and that strategy has paid off in a big way. That small amount of patience guarantees that I am always playing the best version of a game. It has really helped me to enjoy games more and, coupled with never pre-ordering games, has helped me break out of the FOMO marketing cycle as well. It also helps stretch my gaming budget even further, as I often pick up games on sale using this method. Strongly recommend.
The bonus of waiting until November is also that you won't have to deal with high temps in the summer xD Homeworld 3 is naturally a pretty taxing game and even though it runs pretty well on my beefy computer, if your ambient temps are high then your GPU/ CPU temps are going to be high as well. I guess it's time to touch grass for me now :P
What took you so long to figure this out? I never play PC games on release. I think the last one I did play on release was Alien Swarm, which was a free game. It's crazy that gamers keep paying full price for PC games, which basically indicates to game developers that they can get away with releasing unfinished games...
5:50 Dude... S'jet is NOT a family name... Rachel is very likely the ancestor of Karan, but we're talking at least a few generations. Kiith-S'jet is one of the tribes/clans of the Hiigarans/Kuushans, Notable for being a Kiith that focuses on research and knowledge over all else. The reason that Karan S'jet is such a big deal is because she was bound into the original Mothership, she was bound together with the three hyperspace cores and the Sajuuk vessel, wether you like the mysticism or not, something about the cores obviously changed her, because between Homeworld 1 and the new Homeworld 3 she's remained unaging, she's roughly 200'ish years old and still connected to the hyperspace cores. I haven't played the new game yet, but if there's any kind of anxiety that Imogen is feeling, it's most likely the fact that she, out of her entire Kiith, and even from any of the other Kiiths, is stuck picking up the mantle of someone that's achieved a demi-god/nascent god level of status for their entire society. And is expected to surpass it. Also, really hope the Beast Slayers, Kiith-Somtaaw get some love in Homeworld 3, even if it's just in the wargames.
I would pay for a dlc adding kith somtaaw, I love that story, they seserve an appearance as a proper warrior kith with the whole beast slayer thing going on
@@cristhianmlr Fuck you. It's canon, no matter what the hacks that made this piece of shit of a sequel says, I will not accept anything else. I'll fight anyone for this.
You mean it sounds like actual military radio chatter and not panicked teenagers LARPing military chatter. That's one of the most refreshing aspects of the entire franchise.
I was pretty upset from the start about Blackbird's decisions for story telling. Homeworld had the same situation as Fallout did actually, where a spinoff made by another studio really outshined the studio in charge of the original. Homeworld Cataclysm was a Space RTS with a Horror story being told. It was a spectacular game which I distinctly remember actually giving me anxiety and making me fearful a few times of the antagonist. Homeworld 2 on the other hand felt like a weird Science High Fantasy story. Where everything felt way too whimsical and weird. Now Blackbird seems to be doubling down on that aspect, which wasn't very well received in the first place, and adding in a dose of, say it with me, 'MODERN STORYTELLING tm' by making it all about the personal story of a few people instead of the overall story of the ship and her crew that Homeworld 1 and Cataclysm were. It just feels like a complete Whiff by throwing away a different way to tell a story. The idea of the story being not about a single person, but about an entire race was something unique and interesting and is partly why the first game was loved for its story. Cataclysm was smaller scale, but still did the same thing. It was the crew of a mining ship thrown into the middle of a situation far above their paygrade. The entire crew had a role to play. They all had unique and interesting voices. It was more personal, but while still being about this larger group of people instead of being about single individuals.
While you have good points, there are over fifteen years between cataclysm and HM3, it's just straight up not the same landscape, I don't even think there are many game writers still capable of doing that kind of story, although I wouldn't call cataclysm's story cold and uncaring, more so the story of a bottom of the pyramid clan fighting during a crisis and rising to become heroes, that's why when they call them warship is so hype, in any case it would be the first game the more empty colder one given the situation of the kushan going in a voyage to unknown space
I didn't know there was anything wrong with controls until I watched the reviews. I only ever noticed a bug that wouldn't let me use an ability on multiple enemies, but that's fixed now
The story narration was goated..for the older games, wtf is wrong with this current industry and it's hiring of incompetent and passionless game devs, greed and mismanagement at it's worse, what a tag team of self destruction
Sacrifice, man.. Everytime someone mentions it I get happy. Sacrifice and Giants: Citizen Kabuto both brought a new gameplay style and nobody uses something like it anymore. Both were very well received by critics but absolutely no one talks about them.
The 90s and early 2000s were about developers having creative freedom and making the most bonkers ideas coming out as games. You would never be able to pitch Xenogears nowadays.
Space opera and mysticism CAN work very well together - see, the 2004-2008 Battlestar Galactica. Which, come to think of it, was also about a fleet acting as an ark for humanity… with percussion-heavy music against space battles, and… hmm… I wonder if Ron Moore was a Homeworld fan.
SkillUp takes about literary genres, tone and narrative are usually pretty cringe: he is just evidently out of his depth on these topics, that''s how it is. He clearly makes up for it in other departments, where is very good at analyzing and commenting.
Well just looking at this game it looks like something CPU heavy with all the ships and units doing their thing. Not GPU heavy because the graphics and models looks quite simple.
Favorite hw1 memories: The second mission with the Kar Salem. Also how the story had an initial loop. The higarans were exiled to kahrak after losing a war to the tiadan banned from ever developing hyperspace technology. Jumping from system to system eventually defeating the tiadan and reclaiming higara. Only to restart the next campaign as the tiadan who have been exiled for losing a war and forbidden from developing hyperspace technology. That narrative loop was amazing for me back in 1999.
I really cannot think of a series more heartbreaking to lean into personal melodrama than Homeworld. The original story was a truly beautiful, masterful work of grand scope about the journey of a people and no one individual. Its literal biblical style of narrative has truly few equals. Even Cataclysm is a fantastic story about the interplay between kiithid and political powers in a newly reshaped galaxy facing a threat of, you know, cataclysmic scale.
Yep, post 2010 most stories seem to be about unactualized people getting lost in navelgazing. So tired of it. There is no sense of striving or transcendance in these themes. No acknowledgement of a world bigger than yourself.
I guess it's just a tendency with most writers learning to write character dramas instead of world building stories, I mean homeworld was a bit of a drama just more of a civilization spanning one, but yeah I wish we could go back, luckily like all trends they change, hopefully this period in writing will end soon
Honestly rogue like might be a great way to help RTS get up again. Those “hero unit” missions in SC2 or CC were some of my favourite. And those were rogue ish cause you got reinforcements from camp liberations, and if you die you pretty much start over again.
There is a reason Coop mode was so successful in StarCraft 2. Most People in RTS play the single player campaign and a few matches of AI skirmish never Multiplayer. So the key to a successful RTS game is make a good-ish game and have enough "easy" single player/coop content.
@@kyle857 I can see that. Some were absolutely terrible. Felt more like tutorials then games but some were like how you begin the mission and those were interesting.
I can see how you enjoy it and I in know ways represent most of the community,.but when I start an RTS I am usually there for the managing several units aspect more than any weird hero shenanigans, it might help to get some new people in who feel overwhelmed in normal rts skirmishes
Thanks for the review. It would be very swell, if you could also mention when a game has anti consumer DRM's like Denuvo. Homeworld 3 for instance has it.
I don't think oldschool Homeworld fans really care about the S'Jet saga at all - in fact that was a major complaint about Homeworld 2 at the time. Not sure why the writers seem so enamored with the idea of turning Homeworld into a character-driven story when the franchise was at its best with barely any characters at all.
I hate to say it but HW3 gives me the same feeling I had when I first watched the Star Wars sequels. Technically it looks great but it really feels like it was made by people who don't understand what made the original great and so fondly remembered. I just hope this isn't the end of the Homeworld franchise and starts a resurgence in 3D RTS games.
It seems they did what the second game did which was ignore the Battlestar inspiration and double down on the dune inspiration and I can't help but think the new dune movies greatly influenced this games development.
@@cn.st.182 the video does not touch on some of the issues: no directional armor, no fuel mechanics, no hyper drive in missions, no physically simulated projectiles, no modules, no tech "tree"... shall i go on?
@@Gorgo-22056i mean, the fuel mechanics went away in HM2, that isn't really a problem unless it was a problem before, and honestly the fuel mechanics were very annoying
@@exilestudios9546The first games were also very inspired by dune, and I can still see the battlestar inspiration, there is still a mothership, the music still sounds great, storywise I got lost in HM2 so I don't really care that much about it
Most companies are doing that now, though it is not Story Mode, it is Journo Mode. It makes everyone think they are actually playing the game, when it is basically playing itself. The problem with hard mode in this scenario is that they usually do not balance it properly, just turn the enemies into damage sponges.
@@kellywilliam3708 It's very rare I play anything in Early Access these days. Ironclad basically supported the first game for almost 10 years, so I wouldn't be surprised if they're still putting their all into the new one, but I don't have any experience with it yet. Maybe someone else will know, because I'm curious now too...
@@Kasaaz One big credit I'd give them is they interacted with Mandalore in the comment section of his review of the first game. They seem to be very receptive to feedback
@@kellywilliam3708I still play rebellion, which is essentially the original so I guess the answer is, not really? I'd wait, but I have high hopes for it
The family had consoles growing up, NES, Mega Drive, SNES but I never really got it, my parents and siblings used those. I spent all free time outside when I was young, a 30 mile bike ride for fun sort of outside. Then when I was 15 my parents got me a computer and I haven't seen the sun since, Settlers, Quake, Ultima Online, Syndicate etc. Compared to the games that I played throughout the 90s Homeworld was my first experience with "next-gen"
I was very excited for the game but I just found it it has Denuvo and an absolute bonkers EULA. They can get access to every bit of data you have, including your CC info, Mac address and even your photo if it's there. They also use Denovo anticheat, which uses a ton of CPU and does a lot of writing to your SSD, which can shorten it's life.
I've only played homeworld 1 in this entire series and I actually really enjoyed its story and world building. The beefy manual that came with it had a bunch of history and backstory about kharak (the world you start on), and I thought it was very interesting. I actually don't think you did the story in the first game justice with your summary. For one, the people on kharak were not from that planet, they were marooned there (I think b/c they lost a distant past war). They discovered hyperspace travel by finding their own ancient, forgotten ship buried in one of the massive deserts that cover their planet. The "new" homeworld they were traveling to, was THEIR homeworld, the one they were taken from when they were marooned in the distant past. That established, I don't think I would like the story of this game, looks very modern drama-y. In the original, none of the characters on your side had any drama between them. The drama came from their struggles against the extinction of their entire race, and the whole game was an odyssey through a dangerous galaxy trying to finally come home. And I think "less is more" really applied with the first game's story (and could still apply today if these dummy execs would stop overproducing game stories).
RE: Skill's point about no tactical pause in solo skirmish/war games: He nailed it, BBI announced today they're implementing tactical pause for solo play of multiplayer modes
@@ArnieMcStrangleholdwhile i agree that not being able to pause a single player session is annoying, do you really need to leave your desk so often that it makes you completely unable to play the game? if i know im gonna go do laundry soon i just park my ass in my castle and be done with it. also, your health only starts to trickle down after youre completely out of blood. that hasnt happened to me even a single time in 15 hours of playing. ive died from standing in the sun but i dont think thats what you were referring to
I mean, the game is meant to be co-op so that is why it probably isn't there, I don't think lacking a pause feature in a game mode should be enough to stop you from playing it, there is more game that you can play, and you can still play war games when you can grab 30 minutes of undisturbed time
@@ThatoneWeeb945I would expect them to already have DLC planned. It would be pretty insane to not have part of the company working on that. Otherwise your writers, artists, etc, who have already done their part for the release version, would be sitting idle. That would be ridiculous.
@@TheGUARDIANOFFOR Genuinely, how the f*ck is it woke.... If anything the game is questionable due to their 'roadmap' and DLC before the damn game even releases.
Never clicked on a notification quicker. OG Homeworld fan here, hyped for the release! After watching your review, I would disagree that the franchise is “hard sci-fi” like the expanse. Politics has never really been a focus of the series. In the first game we never met or really heard of the Taidani Emperor until the final mission. It was about the journey, the struggle and finding the truth about your heritage (Gardens of Kadesh being an important set piece in the story). Homeworld 2 introduced the Vaygr with their leader claiming to be the Sajukar. In that way it’s always been more focused on the personal and religious sentiments than hard politics. It’ll be interesting to see how the difficulty plays out, and I’m hoping the performance issues aren’t too severe. I remember having some issues in the demo with inconsistent frame rates. As you say it’s not that big of an issue in an RTS but it’ll be nice to have a smooth experience.
He never said it was hard sci-fi, he said if you'd never heard of it you would guess it was. You really need to learn to listen before going on a boring rant!
The closest we really got to harder politics, was the intro to Cataclysm/emergence (**** you, Blizzard). Hell, even the Historic Brief in the manual for the first game, the clan history was more a 'yeah, we were divided, but this is a unifying event that only the crazy desert dwelling extremists stood apart from.'
From my understanding, he was saying if you looked at a Homeworlds battle, what would you think it would be? You'd think, hard sci-fi. When in reality, it was more akin to soft sci-fi. Which I think you would agree with.
@@BaldManBeardFace that’s fair enough. Admittedly I was trying to watch/listen to this whilst juggling another task so I probably just tuned out of what he said immediately prior, which is my bad.
Man, I've never heard of this series before but the maps and settings in this game look stunning. I love the idea of an RTS with verticality like this.
The original Homeworld is one of my all time favourite games (45yrs old, so I've played a few over the years). Going into the franchise blind, and getting right into the story, DDAAMMNN. The voice acting is superb, and that background music soundtrack... I put the disc into my CD player just to listen to it at night. Homeworld 2 was technically better in every way, but just seemed to miss something. Still a very good game, just not quite as good as the masterpiece the first game was. I'd recommend getting the Homeworld Remastered Collection. You wont be disappointed
There's a whole lineage. First there was 1978's BSG, then 1982's Macross/Robotech, 1999's Homeworld, and finally 2004's BSG. The BSGs are very similar in story obviously, but the others vary it up a bit to make each distinct but it's clear they're all spokes on the same wheel. I love em all.
@@Trozomuro Unless you're one of the devs, I'm pretty sure that's a myth. As far as I know, BSG was just one of its primary inspirations. The music for 2004's BSG being so similar to Homeworld though is very interesting. Makes me think Ronald Moore, the showrunner, was a Homeworld fan.
You can pause the game in any single player mode. What people mean is there is no TACTICAL pause in wargames and skirmish. Tactical pause in the campaign lets you issue orders in the paused state. However you can still open up the menu and pause the game in any single player mode.
H1 and Cataclysm are among my favorite RTSs ever. The art direction is top shelf, the gameplay and persistence between missions is superb, Paul Ruskay's score is legendary, and the end credits song by YES...perfection. The story was one of the best aspects of the OG game and follows in the tradition of BSG/Macross/Robotech and just clicked so hard with me, and I'm a sucker for the Xenomorph/Tyranid vibe of Cataclysm. Since I haven't played H3 yet, I can't comment on its story but from your description, it sounds like a continuation of everything I loved about the OG game from its presentation and melodrama, to the professional detachment of its unit acknowledgments. Bring on the total conversion Star Wars and Star Trek mods :)
@@Solstice261 The lineage I'm talking about is a very specific one. Homeworld predates all of those except Stargate. I never watched the show but is it specifically about the last survivors of a race or population aboard a massive ship, on the run from an alien race and in search of their ancestral home? Because that'd not only be nearly identical to Homeworld but also BSG which aired around the same time.
Man, the story is not just cringe, it's simply bad and utterly frivolous. From the epic existential themes to an interpersonal psychodrama from an "high-school movie"
Dune is not like star wars no matter how many pieces they have in common. Star wars is a fun story created by a George who is a huge fan boy of old action movies. Frank when he wrote Dune, is more like a thesis than a fun story... also its a lot more dense and much more world building and points of view
You couldn't have had better timing with this. I'm throwing around the idea of scoring my friend's game, and these are huge tips. Thanks for bringing your expertise!
Totally with Ralph on that sci-fi/mysticism point. Yes, Dune or Battlestar Galactica did it well. Extremely well. But I wish sci-fi writers would lean more into that Expanse thing and deliver solid hard cold sci-fi from time to time. Some people wer saying starfield is trash because there were no aliens and stuff and I am always like No brother, it wasn´t good simply because it wasn´t good.
If the different factions in Sci-Fi are diverse and interesting enough, aliens are not necessary. I personally prefer it with another species because I like seeing more than just humans, but it's not mandatory.
See with Starfield I and many others think it is good but it's just that, it's fun while you actually play it but the moment I stopped I wanted to go back to playing fallout 4 which on every level is somehow both worse and better as a game
There are hard sci fi options, you just need to like reading, there is however of course a tendency to use the settings to investigate more mystical and weird stuff, it's just what it is, to be honest it would be weird if homeworld was suddenly hard sci fi but it would be nice to have a game that used that setting
@@Solstice261 By reading you mean books? If so than of course, but I am talking about games. I know there are couple of indies hard sci-fi such as ΔV: Rings of Saturn or one of my favorite indies ever - Citizen Sleeper. I am also extremely excited for Falling Frontier. But for years I wished there was at least one big story driven adventure set in hard sci-fi universe. Something like CP77 or TLoU but in space. Starfield could have been that but it just did not deliver.
My issue is the feel of playing the game feels worse than HW2. It’s minor things, like responsiveness of controls, camera responsiveness, length of fights, and fighter chaos that HW3 is missing. I can empathize, they had to learn and rebuild everything rather than improve on what came before. Personally, I don’t like the game, but I hope everyone else does. I want this game to be a massive hit!
It breaks my heart that the best game in the series (Cataclysm) just keeps getting snubbed. I know the original studio is gone and they lost the source code so they'll never remake it but, like, a mention or something. Maybe have the ship from Cataclysm show up as a war ship or something!
Interstellar empires and huge fleets of ships and what do the DEI writers make a story about? Women. One missing, one looking for her. Clearly not what many of us wanted from the game. Guess it saved me some money as I won't be bothering until there is a deep sale.
I disliked the story and design in homeworld 2, the prophecies, chosen ones and the hunt for the hyperspace cores to stop the Vagyr and Taiidan all made me miss the story of homeworld 1 and cataclysm. With how Ralph described it, homeworld 3 is following HW 2, when it comes to story, the constant use of Karan S'Jet as a plot device has gotten old and tiring imo. The intel character and Imogen constantly bickering and talking about their feelings and personal lives sounds god awful as well. What made homeworld 1 and cataclysm so interesting was our place in that world, learning we were really just Aussies who lived on a prison colony and by trying to escape we broke a 5000 year old treaty causing our colony to be destroyed. We were pawns in a much larger game being played by bentusi and Taiidani empire, even when Karan and the other characters watched their entire planet burn, in what is probably one of the most chilling scenes in gaming, they show just enough emotion to convey what just happened but still remain stoic enough to continue the mission. Excessive use of what feels like teenage angst in what is essentially a grand scifi opera doesn't work. I love the series regardless so i might wait for mandalore to review the game, to get a better picture.
It breaks my heart that the story isn't good. Story is actually the main reason Homeworld 1 and Cataclysm were 10/10. H1 had they feeling of going into an unknown with no going back. Mystery of what lay before you. Cataclysm on the other hand was the first and still I think only horror RTS. Original and unique. H2 is where things went downhill, we just got a generic sci fi story. Things happen because such things happen in sci fi. Deserts of Kharak was the same, just lore and world building. I'm really starting to hate the word lore. It's crutch of bad writers
I love Homeworld, but I'd really like some good developing/publishing companies to take a good look at Haegemonia, also released 2 decades ago. When I was a kid I much preferred the latter rather than Homeworld.
Oh yeah! Sweet Haegemonia with those massive ships and customizable weapons. Worth mentioning also "Nexus: The Jupiter Incident" the customization of ships and tactical nature of that game was through the roof.
@@maciej3262 Nexus was supposed to be the tactical layer of Imperium Galactica III but they ran out of money and were restructured while also making their own game engine. That would have been EPIC. I think Mithis was still around as Eidos Hungary until 2009.
Homeworld was a big one for me as one of the great early 00s titles.. to get Baldur’s Gate 3 and now Homeworld 3 allllll these years later feels like a small miracle to be celebrated in and of itself.. 🙏🏽
Big fan of Homeworld but this is sounding like I should wait until its about half the price before buying it. Homeworld was never about its personal journeys for characters but rather it was a story about the human races journey across the cosmos, told in a detached, overseeing way, as cold as the stars that they travel through. A story like this misses that spirit, and for only getting half of what Homeworld is (the gameplay), I will only pay half for what it gets wrong. (The narrative)
It is adagio on strings which isn't really a homeworld theme since it's its own piece made before the game with no relation to it, but yeah, karak is burning is engraved in my school with that music
About the difficulty, in some way Im glad normal is... "playable"? I mean everyone remembers Homeworld for being a particulary hard game, first game and the sequel, were hard and the resources were scarce, that was the point of keeping the units to the next mission, and after completing your mission having the option to harvest others resources left on the map. So, again Im glad the game is this way, sometimes I want to enjoy what Im playing and for me Homeworld hooked me from the visuals, the attention to detail with the weapon animations and the story, and I expect the same from a sequel... of course we'll see if the story is this bad for me when I play the game. And after ending the review I have to say Im shocked you didnt mention Homeworld Complex (or any other mod I played on past tittles) when I reached you speaking about mods in the game. Mod deffinetly kept this game and community alive enough to see devs enough interested to make a sequel
Agree, the first one was a showstopper come later missions. Some of the missions were so grindy (the laser frigate sphere comes to mind) and you had to be so careful with your fleet that some later missions were pretty much impossible if you didnt try to salvage, capture and generally baby your fleet every step of the way. Cool for realism but a bit exhausting to play, especially if you're not a diehard strategy person. It does kinda sound like they went a bit tooooo soft, though. If so, that's a shame as it probably will make the game less memorable.
When i thonk of homeworld, i remember the shivers and despair when the music kicks in in the late part of the first mission of the original game... then later during the debriefing '' xx did not survive the interrogation'' wow. That original game was gold on so many levels.
I wish they would keep the old style of cutscenes, expanding on it. Somewhat like Deserts of Kharak, but better. Or look at Destiny 2, it's illustration like cutscenes are really well done, save the budget and convey the story well.
Thank you for the review. I just wished to be able to hear your thoughts about one of the most impactful points of the Homeworld series: the music. The Turanic Raiders theme, the Imperial Battle theme, the Kadesh theme, or the Keepers. The Vaygr theme I hear in this video at 8:55 is from Homeworld 2. Did they reuse it in the game or was that a video edit? I'll also add a thought about the difficulty. If memory serves, the original Homeworld 1 and 2 campaigns had no Difficulty setting. Homeworld 2 even had this system that scales up enemy numbers based on your current fleet size. The more ships you have, the more the enemy will have. People complained about it. The Remastered versions added a difficulty setting, but they named the original difficulty mode as Classic, and under that, two easier modes. My guess is given how RTS nowadays is a much smaller and alienating genre, they did not want high difficulty to filter out players who would otherwise enjoy the story. Deserts of Kharak followed this trend with the hardest difficulty mode being Classic again. I presume this is why Homeworld 3 has scaled the difficulty that way.
Wargames is worth the pricetag alone and, judging by the one year pass, seems to be where Gearbox and Blackbird are putting most of their efforts. The story...I have not completed yet. Someone on the official Discord server mentioned that the first and second game centered around a whole race of people, so switching the focus like this to a main protagonist seems jarring. I completely agree - the story isn't bad per se (so far), but it isn't as poignant as the first game or even the 2nd. Still a great game though!
@@danc1513 The distinction OP wanted to underline is that HW1 and 2 were about "The Hiigarans". HW3 is about "Imogen and Paktu, the Hiigarans". HW3 is abolutely a character-driven story, where as HW1 and 2 were an Epos. At least that's how I'd put it.
Guys. Wanna know why this majestic franchise is, both narrative-wise and character look design, in this current sorry state? Keyword: Sweet Baby Detected.
Total Annihilation was my jam. Listening to the metal screeching while units move, the sound design... glorious. I never got into homeoworld because my computer at the time didn't had enough power to run it. I might give it a try this time.
Honestly the fact that the story and campaign (and awful presentation) are so lackluster is one of the reasons I likely won't buy it without a heavy discount. Those things meant the world to me when I played the originals, and knowing this time I'll just be breezing through without really caring about a lackluster story is a huge hole in my motivation to play.
Agreed, I was going to say that the campaign’s problem might be that it’s too “conventional”, in contrast to the more minimalist, less character-driven story of 1 and 2, but honestly I thought Sands of Kharak had a pretty good story so I don’t know what they were doing
I normally enjoy your reviews BEFORE I buy. But this time I had the game gifted and played before watching this review and thus, I can comfortably say, your synopsis is spot on. To quote Bill and Ted 'Listen to this dude Rufus(Skill Up), he knows what he's talking about.'
Story definitely feels too personal compared to the previous games; putting too much focus on individuals rather than the whole. Karan was more of a symbol and Fleet Intelligence was just an advisor. Imogen and this Fleet Intelligence are too personalized. The scale of the story feels way smaller this way.
She was fleet command, fleet intelligence was represented by our dear man who reported unit production etc. I know it's not really important but as hardcore fan I am legally obligated to point out the difference
Great they casualized Homeworld and killed the franchise. The bane of modern AAA/AA RTS games, dumbed down and too much focus on DLC and multiplayer. Their main focus should have been the story campaign and skirmish and later on they could have delivered a more fleshed out version of the war game mode. But hey, the latter is mainly here to sell minor DLC factions and skins and other bullshit.
I really like this review. It gives me a full view of the experience without spoiling. And it’s unbiased. And the criticisms seem fair. I like that he doesn’t water them down. On a side note I too am a fan of hard sci fi instead of the mix with mystic elements. If u have any recommendations on sci fi titles, rts, and otherwise, comment section please reply to this.
You got it backwards about the plot. It's a terrible story that probably makes more sense to newcomers because it sure as fuck doesn't make sense to long time fans. Look at the heavy backlash this game is getting because of its story campaign.
staring at those monolithic moon sized tech environments makes me keep wondering why a giant beam cannon does not pop out from it and evaporate your fleet and everything else in the vicinity.
if the precursors/progenitors was still a flourishing empire - most certainly that would have been likely. They are the ones who constructed Sajuuk, the two Keys ( Dreadnoughts ) - but fortunately for everyone involved - the creators of the progenitors vanished. Progenitor "drones" in their AI form were only meant to be caretakers - though with often overwhelming power.
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giants citizen kabuto, know that one?
A typically articulate, balanced, and thoughtful review, thank you Ralph.
So... Is this a recommend or nah?
@@Atromnis he answers that very question at the end of the review.
The game everyone forgets which puts this to shame is star trek armada
Releasing a video without saying "recommend" or "not recommend" in the title feels like Skill Up's version of sending a text that just says, "can we talk"
Huh? Corny af
To me it says one of two things:
I like it, but it has too many flaws for me to recommend
or
I love it, but it is not the kind of game that everyone will love, like, or even tolerate
@@Tawleyn He says what it is in the video..
Yeah I immediately was like “oh man he prob has some complicated reason for loathing it, but wanted people to understand his reasoning rather than just writing it off as a ‘don’t recommend’”
@@Twarex01 Yes, I know. But we're talking about what a title of a video means, not what he thinks of this specific game.
It blows my mind that in 2024 standard functions like a save option is still hit or miss if you get that option.
This is ignoring the fact that too many people just assume intentionally deliberate multiplayer modes can be treated as single player games, just because you refuse to play with other people. As much as it might sit on the line of a Co-op game, you have to remember that the core of this game mode is Live Service in nature, and built around the current culture of PUGs. You don't give a player in a server-design game the power to pause and roll back time, just because their the host, for really obvious reasons. The clues are all there..... its got Match Making and Public game finder, its got a progression system, AND its got DLC attached to it.
War Games is a Live Service model. And I'm kind of surprised that this many people don't recognize it, just because its not granular.
@@freelancerthe2561Starcraft II at least has pause in even team games...
@@freelancerthe2561you are right, I didn’t take that into consideration, what do you say to the other commenter about pausing in team games within StarCraft?
@@freelancerthe2561what’s a PUG?
@@MisterK-YT Pick Up Group - aka randoms.
"Think Star Wars or Dune, which are basically the same thing"
You trying to start a war?
Probably because Star Wars was based off Dune. But yeah, not the same thing at all!
Homeworld 3 is essentially the force awakens.
@@ratt44 Easily, since Lucas "borrowed" a lot from Dune. The Voice = The Force, Arrakis = Tatooine, Sarlacc Pit = Sandworms, Sandcrawlers (exist in both), The Emperor (exists in both), main characters being descendants from villains (in both) etc.
A secret sect of exceptional individuals that wield mystical mental powers, including the capacity to see into the future, and that are driven by the prophecy of a chosen one.
@@ratt44 Get mad
im sick and tired of "oh dont worry itll get better with updates"
Yeah, there are still enough games that are in a more complete state when they're released. Why "hope" another game gets better?
ok
My favourite voiceline from the OG Homeworld:
"Scuttle initiated"
Mine is the emotionless, “We’re alive?” After the first jump
"there is nothing for us here... Let's go"
My Favorite is: "Watch For debris"
I always took it as a pilot just downed an enemy and tell his squad mates to watch out for the shattered remains of their enemy; and man is that brutal.
"Yes, yes... We will not be Bound, whatever that means. Well, guess what: we won't let you go! It doesn't matter how we die, one ancient monster is as good as another!"
"Karak.... Is burning."
I reject your notion that the unit's radio chatter is "dispassionate". Professional under stress is the word you are looking for.
Yeah, I wish games like Ace Combat kept the melodrama in the cutscenes. 4 was peak for me in terms of story presentation, much more understated than 5 and on.
I hate watching a sci fi space battle only yo see a scene where a pilot is screaming into the radio that they need help or something.
@@CoolSmoovie 'WE CAN'T LET THEM DESTROY OUR CHANCE FOR PEACE! THEY'RE LIKE THE DEMONS OF LEGEND!'
It’s like he was expecting War of the Ring 2003 levels of hype from the units. 😂😂😂
Dispassionate radio chatter was one of the reasons why every single emotional scene felt better in 1 and Cataclysm
Professionals under stress shitting themselves seeing Kharak burning? priceless
"Overcome her insecurities." So incredibly tired of these storylines. People used to know what they wanted and fight for it, 100x more enjoyable for me.
It's incredibly shallow compared to the first two Homeworld and DoK
"...the cutscenes look incredible...'
Are you high?
Well, they look incredibly bad and cringe.
In engine cutscene are good, character CGI scenes are awful
Skillup is a joke the game sucks especially if you are a fan of the originals it's dumbed down casual fare.
Homeworld has some of the best video games music ever created bar none. Truly worth checking out the soundtrack even if you don't play the game, and I'm not one for listening to soundtracks
Yes, so original while being so great, It's nice that blackbird didn't let down with the soundtrack in any of the games they made an rose up to the task
19:14 : Every other pilot : Enemy frigate spotted, moving to intercept
That one guy : SEND IT BOYS FUCK IT WE BALL
I am really tired of hearing, "interested to see where this game ends up down the road" 😞
You and me both man! Why can't they just release a good game from the start!
Well, it ended up on the Sweet Baby Inc. detected curator list for starters...
We'd be interested too if we got paid to 'review' the game.
It's an excuse for being sold unfinished products.
Since you can choose difficulty, my guess is that they didn’t take the adaptive difficulty from the previous ones; where the next level’s enemy scales to your fleet size
While I still want the game, it looks like it might follow the standard process where a game launches, and takes about two years before the patches and DLC either entirely ruin the game, or just about perfect it.
It was a very divisive method of balancing. It punished players simultaneously for being too good and having large fleets or going into battle with severe losses and no resources. You were forced to find the “Goldilocks Zone” of having a sufficient fleet and resources just to avoid being blasted into oblivion by an unbeatable fleet 2 minutes into the following mission.
It's still there, and let me tell you Persistent Fleets on Hard if you're actually solid at maintaining low losses + capturing is.. a helluva thing. I think it was mission 9 that gutted everything I was saving up till then lol.
@@guamson8946 That was definitely true for the initial launch of HW2. iirc, there was a bug in the 4th (?) mission that caused the enemy fleet to dramatically scale higher than yours, making you take on multiple destroyers when you barely had frigates. HW2 did get patched to nerf the scaling quite a bit though, across the whole campaign.
I also can't fairly judge that aspect of difficulty though, as I was always very meticulous and methodical, and while my first couple of playthroughs were definitely difficult, I truly appreciated the game **wanted** to kick my ass, and took it seriously to not let it.
But I also didn't like the campaign of HW2 nearly as much, and would probably not do very well nowadays. Much more experience with HW1 and Cataclysm.
@@guamson8946 It sounds pretty bad. I never played much of homeworld, but i didnt know about adaptive difficulty. It sounds pretty bad to me, instead of being rewarded for playing well the previous battles, you just ge tnothing or get even punished. Imho there should never be autoscaling, only an option to adjust difficulty manually, so you get a sense of achievement , that you play good enough for example , to change to "Hard"
Man it makes me so happy to hear someone else mention Total Annihilation. That game, along with Kingdoms the medieval-like expansion, were such awesome RTS games.
I need a true success to SupCom Forged Alliance.
I NEED it, FAF won't live forever.
@@powerfist1340 Sanctuary might be something you'll be interested to take a look at?
@@powerfist1340 Beyond All Reason (BAR)?
i still remember downloading those additional units they dropped, free content ... just wild.
You need to look at Beyond All Reason. Chris Taylor himself give the devs a 'thumbs up'
Great review! I look forward to playing Homeworld 3 this coming November.
About a year and a half ago I stopped playing (most) games at launch and instead wait 6 months for the inevitable patches and improvements that will follow, and that strategy has paid off in a big way. That small amount of patience guarantees that I am always playing the best version of a game. It has really helped me to enjoy games more and, coupled with never pre-ordering games, has helped me break out of the FOMO marketing cycle as well. It also helps stretch my gaming budget even further, as I often pick up games on sale using this method. Strongly recommend.
Thanks for the tip
The bonus of waiting until November is also that you won't have to deal with high temps in the summer xD
Homeworld 3 is naturally a pretty taxing game and even though it runs pretty well on my beefy computer, if your ambient temps are high then your GPU/ CPU temps are going to be high as well.
I guess it's time to touch grass for me now :P
What took you so long to figure this out? I never play PC games on release. I think the last one I did play on release was Alien Swarm, which was a free game.
It's crazy that gamers keep paying full price for PC games, which basically indicates to game developers that they can get away with releasing unfinished games...
5:50
Dude... S'jet is NOT a family name... Rachel is very likely the ancestor of Karan, but we're talking at least a few generations.
Kiith-S'jet is one of the tribes/clans of the Hiigarans/Kuushans, Notable for being a Kiith that focuses on research and knowledge over all else.
The reason that Karan S'jet is such a big deal is because she was bound into the original Mothership, she was bound together with the three hyperspace cores and the Sajuuk vessel, wether you like the mysticism or not, something about the cores obviously changed her, because between Homeworld 1 and the new Homeworld 3 she's remained unaging, she's roughly 200'ish years old and still connected to the hyperspace cores.
I haven't played the new game yet, but if there's any kind of anxiety that Imogen is feeling, it's most likely the fact that she, out of her entire Kiith, and even from any of the other Kiiths, is stuck picking up the mantle of someone that's achieved a demi-god/nascent god level of status for their entire society. And is expected to surpass it.
Also, really hope the Beast Slayers, Kiith-Somtaaw get some love in Homeworld 3, even if it's just in the wargames.
I would pay for a dlc adding kith somtaaw, I love that story, they seserve an appearance as a proper warrior kith with the whole beast slayer thing going on
I miss Somtaaw. I think the obsessive focus on Kiith S'jet throws away so much potential.
Clearly whoever wrote this game doesn't know Homeworld, they're just using it as a vehicle to push their own shit story.
Emergence is not canon
@@cristhianmlr Fuck you.
It's canon, no matter what the hacks that made this piece of shit of a sequel says, I will not accept anything else.
I'll fight anyone for this.
You mean it sounds like actual military radio chatter and not panicked teenagers LARPing military chatter.
That's one of the most refreshing aspects of the entire franchise.
I was pretty upset from the start about Blackbird's decisions for story telling. Homeworld had the same situation as Fallout did actually, where a spinoff made by another studio really outshined the studio in charge of the original.
Homeworld Cataclysm was a Space RTS with a Horror story being told. It was a spectacular game which I distinctly remember actually giving me anxiety and making me fearful a few times of the antagonist. Homeworld 2 on the other hand felt like a weird Science High Fantasy story. Where everything felt way too whimsical and weird.
Now Blackbird seems to be doubling down on that aspect, which wasn't very well received in the first place, and adding in a dose of, say it with me, 'MODERN STORYTELLING tm' by making it all about the personal story of a few people instead of the overall story of the ship and her crew that Homeworld 1 and Cataclysm were. It just feels like a complete Whiff by throwing away a different way to tell a story. The idea of the story being not about a single person, but about an entire race was something unique and interesting and is partly why the first game was loved for its story.
Cataclysm was smaller scale, but still did the same thing. It was the crew of a mining ship thrown into the middle of a situation far above their paygrade. The entire crew had a role to play. They all had unique and interesting voices. It was more personal, but while still being about this larger group of people instead of being about single individuals.
While you have good points, there are over fifteen years between cataclysm and HM3, it's just straight up not the same landscape, I don't even think there are many game writers still capable of doing that kind of story, although I wouldn't call cataclysm's story cold and uncaring, more so the story of a bottom of the pyramid clan fighting during a crisis and rising to become heroes, that's why when they call them warship is so hype, in any case it would be the first game the more empty colder one given the situation of the kushan going in a voyage to unknown space
Hearing you praise the Unit control and Unit behaviour is quite polarising,
since everyone else i'v listened too (review wise) says the opposite.
I didn't know there was anything wrong with controls until I watched the reviews. I only ever noticed a bug that wouldn't let me use an ability on multiple enemies, but that's fixed now
The story narration was goated..for the older games, wtf is wrong with this current industry and it's hiring of incompetent and passionless game devs, greed and mismanagement at it's worse, what a tag team of self destruction
"Homeworld 3 feels like it's made by someone that had to google what Homeworld is few week before release"
Sacrifice, man.. Everytime someone mentions it I get happy. Sacrifice and Giants: Citizen Kabuto both brought a new gameplay style and nobody uses something like it anymore. Both were very well received by critics but absolutely no one talks about them.
Oh man. I totally forgot about giants: citizen kabuto!
Sacrifice is a standout
The 90s and early 2000s were about developers having creative freedom and making the most bonkers ideas coming out as games. You would never be able to pitch Xenogears nowadays.
Some of the Giants developers tried making a kickstarter for a similar game some years back, but it basically had no backing.
Sacrifice was a underrated banger. Amazing fresh take and weird af
Space opera and mysticism CAN work very well together - see, the 2004-2008 Battlestar Galactica.
Which, come to think of it, was also about a fleet acting as an ark for humanity… with percussion-heavy music against space battles, and… hmm…
I wonder if Ron Moore was a Homeworld fan.
Oh he has been very open about homeworld influencing his Battlestar reboot
Battlestar inspired homeworld which inspired the battlestar reboot
Yeah, except that BSG was at its best when the mysticism was flavor and a factor in fleet politics rather than an Objectively True driver of the plot.
Appropriately, BSG Deadlock is one of the better space strategy games of the last decade.
SkillUp takes about literary genres, tone and narrative are usually pretty cringe: he is just evidently out of his depth on these topics, that''s how it is. He clearly makes up for it in other departments, where is very good at analyzing and commenting.
It's 2024 and we're still cpu bound.
According to their benchmark tool, its all gpu bound, on 3080 (mine) and people have 4080 and get the same results
I still think nope we are not cpu bound but developers make it so lol
More like engine bound limiting the CPU itself. I reckon programming multi-threading is still hard.
@@El_Maximo_Grande If you get the same perfomance regardless of GPU then that is the very definition of CPU bottleneck.
Well just looking at this game it looks like something CPU heavy with all the ships and units doing their thing. Not GPU heavy because the graphics and models looks quite simple.
Favorite hw1 memories: The second mission with the Kar Salem.
Also how the story had an initial loop. The higarans were exiled to kahrak after losing a war to the tiadan banned from ever developing hyperspace technology. Jumping from system to system eventually defeating the tiadan and reclaiming higara. Only to restart the next campaign as the tiadan who have been exiled for losing a war and forbidden from developing hyperspace technology. That narrative loop was amazing for me back in 1999.
So I didn't just make that up in my mind back then. Good to know.
Sacrifice was my favourite game as a kid :) It was amazing! I loved reading the manual as well, with all the creature and God descriptions.
I really cannot think of a series more heartbreaking to lean into personal melodrama than Homeworld. The original story was a truly beautiful, masterful work of grand scope about the journey of a people and no one individual. Its literal biblical style of narrative has truly few equals. Even Cataclysm is a fantastic story about the interplay between kiithid and political powers in a newly reshaped galaxy facing a threat of, you know, cataclysmic scale.
Yep, post 2010 most stories seem to be about unactualized people getting lost in navelgazing. So tired of it. There is no sense of striving or transcendance in these themes. No acknowledgement of a world bigger than yourself.
I guess it's just a tendency with most writers learning to write character dramas instead of world building stories, I mean homeworld was a bit of a drama just more of a civilization spanning one, but yeah I wish we could go back, luckily like all trends they change, hopefully this period in writing will end soon
"Even Cataclysm"? I was under the impression that it had the best story.
@@durakeno5575 Cataclysm is great but is a sort of spin-off from the main story
I am saddened they didn't keep the animated slide cutscenes.
What do you mean? It looks like they did, at least for some cutscenes.
fr fr, it feels a bit weird for all the story in a hw game to be delivered by talking heads.
DoK were probably the best and most cost friendly if it meant they could make the campaign better
Or The narrator
Honestly rogue like might be a great way to help RTS get up again. Those “hero unit” missions in SC2 or CC were some of my favourite. And those were rogue ish cause you got reinforcements from camp liberations, and if you die you pretty much start over again.
Those were my least favorite. When I'm playing and RTS I am here for the armies and fleets. Not the heroes.
I’m with the person above, they were my least favorite.
There is a reason Coop mode was so successful in StarCraft 2.
Most People in RTS play the single player campaign and a few matches of AI skirmish never Multiplayer. So the key to a successful RTS game is make a good-ish game and have enough "easy" single player/coop content.
@@kyle857 I can see that. Some were absolutely terrible. Felt more like tutorials then games but some were like how you begin the mission and those were interesting.
I can see how you enjoy it and I in know ways represent most of the community,.but when I start an RTS I am usually there for the managing several units aspect more than any weird hero shenanigans, it might help to get some new people in who feel overwhelmed in normal rts skirmishes
1 million! congrats! been with you for a while, you all deserve this and much more for all the great work you do.
Thanks for the review. It would be very swell, if you could also mention when a game has anti consumer DRM's like Denuvo. Homeworld 3 for instance has it.
I don't think oldschool Homeworld fans really care about the S'Jet saga at all - in fact that was a major complaint about Homeworld 2 at the time. Not sure why the writers seem so enamored with the idea of turning Homeworld into a character-driven story when the franchise was at its best with barely any characters at all.
I hate to say it but HW3 gives me the same feeling I had when I first watched the Star Wars sequels. Technically it looks great but it really feels like it was made by people who don't understand what made the original great and so fondly remembered. I just hope this isn't the end of the Homeworld franchise and starts a resurgence in 3D RTS games.
Have we watched the same video? Aside from the tone of the story, this is SO true to HWs unique qualities.
It seems they did what the second game did which was ignore the Battlestar inspiration and double down on the dune inspiration and I can't help but think the new dune movies greatly influenced this games development.
@@cn.st.182 the video does not touch on some of the issues: no directional armor, no fuel mechanics, no hyper drive in missions, no physically simulated projectiles, no modules, no tech "tree"... shall i go on?
@@Gorgo-22056i mean, the fuel mechanics went away in HM2, that isn't really a problem unless it was a problem before, and honestly the fuel mechanics were very annoying
@@exilestudios9546The first games were also very inspired by dune, and I can still see the battlestar inspiration, there is still a mothership, the music still sounds great, storywise I got lost in HM2 so I don't really care that much about it
I’m actually not against “Normal mode” being called “Story Mode” in narrative driven games
Most companies are doing that now, though it is not Story Mode, it is Journo Mode. It makes everyone think they are actually playing the game, when it is basically playing itself. The problem with hard mode in this scenario is that they usually do not balance it properly, just turn the enemies into damage sponges.
@@EnsignRedshirtRicky which journalists are bad at video games again?
@@henrysmith8163 Those who played Cuphead ;-)
Story mode should be easy mode. Normal should be... normal, the way the game's supposed to be played.
@@igorthelight For the record that same journalist actually got good and beat cuphead after being flamed by the entire internet.
Homeworld and Sins of a Solar Empire both have this kinda vibe you don't see anywhere else.
Is SoaSE 2 worth picking up yet in it's EA?
@@kellywilliam3708 It's very rare I play anything in Early Access these days. Ironclad basically supported the first game for almost 10 years, so I wouldn't be surprised if they're still putting their all into the new one, but I don't have any experience with it yet. Maybe someone else will know, because I'm curious now too...
@@Kasaaz One big credit I'd give them is they interacted with Mandalore in the comment section of his review of the first game. They seem to be very receptive to feedback
@@kellywilliam3708I still play rebellion, which is essentially the original so I guess the answer is, not really?
I'd wait, but I have high hopes for it
The ship designs and the environments are breathtaking. I want a miniature of the mothership on my shelf.
Luckily for you the collectors edition has one. It's actually pretty nice.
I support that decision though you should also add the original one
The family had consoles growing up, NES, Mega Drive, SNES but I never really got it, my parents and siblings used those. I spent all free time outside when I was young, a 30 mile bike ride for fun sort of outside. Then when I was 15 my parents got me a computer and I haven't seen the sun since, Settlers, Quake, Ultima Online, Syndicate etc. Compared to the games that I played throughout the 90s Homeworld was my first experience with "next-gen"
Everything you described that you don’t like about the story is exactly what I love about the Homeworld universe haha
I was very excited for the game but I just found it it has Denuvo and an absolute bonkers EULA. They can get access to every bit of data you have, including your CC info, Mac address and even your photo if it's there. They also use Denovo anticheat, which uses a ton of CPU and does a lot of writing to your SSD, which can shorten it's life.
I've only played homeworld 1 in this entire series and I actually really enjoyed its story and world building. The beefy manual that came with it had a bunch of history and backstory about kharak (the world you start on), and I thought it was very interesting.
I actually don't think you did the story in the first game justice with your summary. For one, the people on kharak were not from that planet, they were marooned there (I think b/c they lost a distant past war). They discovered hyperspace travel by finding their own ancient, forgotten ship buried in one of the massive deserts that cover their planet.
The "new" homeworld they were traveling to, was THEIR homeworld, the one they were taken from when they were marooned in the distant past.
That established, I don't think I would like the story of this game, looks very modern drama-y. In the original, none of the characters on your side had any drama between them. The drama came from their struggles against the extinction of their entire race, and the whole game was an odyssey through a dangerous galaxy trying to finally come home. And I think "less is more" really applied with the first game's story (and could still apply today if these dummy execs would stop overproducing game stories).
"On the stone was etched a galactic map, and a single word more ancient than the clan themselves... Hiigara. Our Home."
The story of the three Karens.
RE: Skill's point about no tactical pause in solo skirmish/war games: He nailed it, BBI announced today they're implementing tactical pause for solo play of multiplayer modes
War Games not having a pause feature is a deal breaker.
Yeah, that is wild.
Oof. Yeah that's why I can't get into V Rising. Even single player, can't pause. In a survival game where your life is slowly ticking down.
@@ArnieMcStrangleholdwhile i agree that not being able to pause a single player session is annoying, do you really need to leave your desk so often that it makes you completely unable to play the game? if i know im gonna go do laundry soon i just park my ass in my castle and be done with it. also, your health only starts to trickle down after youre completely out of blood. that hasnt happened to me even a single time in 15 hours of playing. ive died from standing in the sun but i dont think thats what you were referring to
I mean, the game is meant to be co-op so that is why it probably isn't there, I don't think lacking a pause feature in a game mode should be enough to stop you from playing it, there is more game that you can play, and you can still play war games when you can grab 30 minutes of undisturbed time
Yup, fuck all the parents with young kids.
40 years of gaming and this is the first collectors edition I have bought. I just really wanted the mothership for my office lol.
Saw this on Steam and was immediately interested but held off on pre-purchasing. Seems that was the correct decision.
Never pre-ordering is ALWAYS the correct decision
Doesn't help they planned DLC and a 'roadmap' weeks before the game was/is even out... Shows how much faith they have in the game.
@@evidicusi still don't understand why it's even a question in this day and age. People be dumb i guess.
@@ThatoneWeeb945I would expect them to already have DLC planned. It would be pretty insane to not have part of the company working on that. Otherwise your writers, artists, etc, who have already done their part for the release version, would be sitting idle. That would be ridiculous.
Same, but I also saw the Denuvo DRM which made me wait even more.
This ones got me nervous. Not gonna lie.
it’s the lack of recommendation in the title too
SWEET BABY WOKE GAME DO NOT BUY
@@TheGUARDIANOFFOR "woke" 🙄
@@TheGUARDIANOFFOR if you aren't woke..are you still asleep?
@@TheGUARDIANOFFOR Genuinely, how the f*ck is it woke....
If anything the game is questionable due to their 'roadmap' and DLC before the damn game even releases.
Never clicked on a notification quicker. OG Homeworld fan here, hyped for the release!
After watching your review, I would disagree that the franchise is “hard sci-fi” like the expanse. Politics has never really been a focus of the series. In the first game we never met or really heard of the Taidani Emperor until the final mission. It was about the journey, the struggle and finding the truth about your heritage (Gardens of Kadesh being an important set piece in the story). Homeworld 2 introduced the Vaygr with their leader claiming to be the Sajukar. In that way it’s always been more focused on the personal and religious sentiments than hard politics.
It’ll be interesting to see how the difficulty plays out, and I’m hoping the performance issues aren’t too severe. I remember having some issues in the demo with inconsistent frame rates. As you say it’s not that big of an issue in an RTS but it’ll be nice to have a smooth experience.
He never said it was hard sci-fi, he said if you'd never heard of it you would guess it was. You really need to learn to listen before going on a boring rant!
The closest we really got to harder politics, was the intro to Cataclysm/emergence (**** you, Blizzard). Hell, even the Historic Brief in the manual for the first game, the clan history was more a 'yeah, we were divided, but this is a unifying event that only the crazy desert dwelling extremists stood apart from.'
From my understanding, he was saying if you looked at a Homeworlds battle, what would you think it would be? You'd think, hard sci-fi. When in reality, it was more akin to soft sci-fi. Which I think you would agree with.
@@BaldManBeardFace that’s fair enough. Admittedly I was trying to watch/listen to this whilst juggling another task so I probably just tuned out of what he said immediately prior, which is my bad.
yeah that comparison had me reeling. it takes a great deal from Dune. Dune is not hard scifi
Hearing you mention The Expanse makes me realize how much I want a Homeworld 3 mod based on the show.
Man, I've never heard of this series before but the maps and settings in this game look stunning. I love the idea of an RTS with verticality like this.
The original Homeworld is one of my all time favourite games (45yrs old, so I've played a few over the years). Going into the franchise blind, and getting right into the story, DDAAMMNN. The voice acting is superb, and that background music soundtrack... I put the disc into my CD player just to listen to it at night.
Homeworld 2 was technically better in every way, but just seemed to miss something. Still a very good game, just not quite as good as the masterpiece the first game was.
I'd recommend getting the Homeworld Remastered Collection. You wont be disappointed
get the first 2. this one is garbage.
They also released a desert-ground vehicle based one called Deserts of Kharak that is excellent and has it's own whole vibe going on.
Great Video as always.
Love that Skillup's new catchphrase is now "Remember when ... ?"
How do you know? It came out 6 minutes ago 🤨
Question, how do you know it’s a good video if you haven’t seen it all yet?
@@errantoverflow4828 I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed
@@errantoverflow4828 as always, videos are always great.
How much of a loser do you have to be to farm likes? Such a sad life.
Those cut scenes are fking awful. What a miss. Hard to believe it's made by members of the original team.
It's mad how much Battlestar Galactica thematically borrows from Homeworld, down to the beautiful middle-eastern bgm..
HW was a Battlestar Galactica game prior and then the studio lost or did not secure the rights of the IP.
@@Trozomuro Ha! That makes perfect sense. No wonder they are similar
There's a whole lineage. First there was 1978's BSG, then 1982's Macross/Robotech, 1999's Homeworld, and finally 2004's BSG. The BSGs are very similar in story obviously, but the others vary it up a bit to make each distinct but it's clear they're all spokes on the same wheel. I love em all.
@@Trozomuro Unless you're one of the devs, I'm pretty sure that's a myth. As far as I know, BSG was just one of its primary inspirations. The music for 2004's BSG being so similar to Homeworld though is very interesting. Makes me think Ronald Moore, the showrunner, was a Homeworld fan.
@@phrozac what does macross have to do with BSG and home world?
I see they got Lord Farquad to play Imogen.
having an unpausable game mode is hostile to parents like me, and it means that I will never play it 😡
It should be a basic feature in any RTS for single player.
@@srn7254boohoo
You can pause the game in any single player mode. What people mean is there is no TACTICAL pause in wargames and skirmish. Tactical pause in the campaign lets you issue orders in the paused state. However you can still open up the menu and pause the game in any single player mode.
Homeworld has never been a turn-based game. RTS = real-time strategy.
@@Chris-cf2kp lol. lmao.
H1 and Cataclysm are among my favorite RTSs ever. The art direction is top shelf, the gameplay and persistence between missions is superb, Paul Ruskay's score is legendary, and the end credits song by YES...perfection.
The story was one of the best aspects of the OG game and follows in the tradition of BSG/Macross/Robotech and just clicked so hard with me, and I'm a sucker for the Xenomorph/Tyranid vibe of Cataclysm. Since I haven't played H3 yet, I can't comment on its story but from your description, it sounds like a continuation of everything I loved about the OG game from its presentation and melodrama, to the professional detachment of its unit acknowledgments.
Bring on the total conversion Star Wars and Star Trek mods :)
And mass effect, halo, battlestar, stargate and many more
@@Solstice261 The lineage I'm talking about is a very specific one. Homeworld predates all of those except Stargate. I never watched the show but is it specifically about the last survivors of a race or population aboard a massive ship, on the run from an alien race and in search of their ancestral home? Because that'd not only be nearly identical to Homeworld but also BSG which aired around the same time.
@@phrozac i was talking about mods
Man, the story is not just cringe, it's simply bad and utterly frivolous. From the epic existential themes to an interpersonal psychodrama from an "high-school movie"
Dune is not like star wars no matter how many pieces they have in common. Star wars is a fun story created by a George who is a huge fan boy of old action movies. Frank when he wrote Dune, is more like a thesis than a fun story... also its a lot more dense and much more world building and points of view
I can't wait for Mandaloregaming's video on this game
You couldn't have had better timing with this. I'm throwing around the idea of scoring my friend's game, and these are huge tips. Thanks for bringing your expertise!
game is 5/10. might buy in 1 or 2 years for $10.
I won't waste my HDD space when Epic gives it out for free.
The story has real Marvel/Disney vibes.
Totally with Ralph on that sci-fi/mysticism point. Yes, Dune or Battlestar Galactica did it well. Extremely well. But I wish sci-fi writers would lean more into that Expanse thing and deliver solid hard cold sci-fi from time to time. Some people wer saying starfield is trash because there were no aliens and stuff and I am always like No brother, it wasn´t good simply because it wasn´t good.
If the different factions in Sci-Fi are diverse and interesting enough, aliens are not necessary. I personally prefer it with another species because I like seeing more than just humans, but it's not mandatory.
See with Starfield I and many others think it is good but it's just that, it's fun while you actually play it but the moment I stopped I wanted to go back to playing fallout 4 which on every level is somehow both worse and better as a game
There are hard sci fi options, you just need to like reading, there is however of course a tendency to use the settings to investigate more mystical and weird stuff, it's just what it is, to be honest it would be weird if homeworld was suddenly hard sci fi but it would be nice to have a game that used that setting
@@Solstice261 By reading you mean books? If so than of course, but I am talking about games. I know there are couple of indies hard sci-fi such as ΔV: Rings of Saturn or one of my favorite indies ever - Citizen Sleeper. I am also extremely excited for Falling Frontier. But for years I wished there was at least one big story driven adventure set in hard sci-fi universe. Something like CP77 or TLoU but in space. Starfield could have been that but it just did not deliver.
@@Scarecr0wn oh, then yeah I understand, it's unfortunate starfield turned out how it did
My issue is the feel of playing the game feels worse than HW2. It’s minor things, like responsiveness of controls, camera responsiveness, length of fights, and fighter chaos that HW3 is missing.
I can empathize, they had to learn and rebuild everything rather than improve on what came before.
Personally, I don’t like the game, but I hope everyone else does. I want this game to be a massive hit!
It breaks my heart that the best game in the series (Cataclysm) just keeps getting snubbed. I know the original studio is gone and they lost the source code so they'll never remake it but, like, a mention or something. Maybe have the ship from Cataclysm show up as a war ship or something!
Blackbird's writers tripping up great gameplay and design once again. The heck's going on over there?
It was Martin Cirulis and Joel Watson. They should be ashamed of themselves
I for one await to see how Mandalore feels, hes got interesting Homeworld takes.
Well he actually the lore... and how's that starwars and dune aren't the same thing...
Interstellar empires and huge fleets of ships and what do the DEI writers make a story about? Women. One missing, one looking for her. Clearly not what many of us wanted from the game. Guess it saved me some money as I won't be bothering until there is a deep sale.
I disliked the story and design in homeworld 2, the prophecies, chosen ones and the hunt for the hyperspace cores to stop the Vagyr and Taiidan all made me miss the story of homeworld 1 and cataclysm.
With how Ralph described it, homeworld 3 is following HW 2, when it comes to story, the constant use of Karan S'Jet as a plot device has gotten old and tiring imo.
The intel character and Imogen constantly bickering and talking about their feelings and personal lives sounds god awful as well.
What made homeworld 1 and cataclysm so interesting was our place in that world, learning we were really just Aussies who lived on a prison colony and by trying to escape we broke a 5000 year old treaty causing our colony to be destroyed.
We were pawns in a much larger game being played by bentusi and Taiidani empire, even when Karan and the other characters watched their entire planet burn, in what is probably one of the most chilling scenes in gaming, they show just enough emotion to convey what just happened but still remain stoic enough to continue the mission. Excessive use of what feels like teenage angst in what is essentially a grand scifi opera doesn't work.
I love the series regardless so i might wait for mandalore to review the game, to get a better picture.
MCU inflicted us with one-liner syndrome where every character has to be a witty exposition-dump machine.
Hell yeah for the shoutout to Sacrifice. Stellar voice cast too.
It breaks my heart that the story isn't good. Story is actually the main reason Homeworld 1 and Cataclysm were 10/10. H1 had they feeling of going into an unknown with no going back. Mystery of what lay before you. Cataclysm on the other hand was the first and still I think only horror RTS. Original and unique.
H2 is where things went downhill, we just got a generic sci fi story. Things happen because such things happen in sci fi. Deserts of Kharak was the same, just lore and world building.
I'm really starting to hate the word lore. It's crutch of bad writers
Sacrifice is brilliant! One of my favorites from the glory days of RTS games.
I love Homeworld, but I'd really like some good developing/publishing companies to take a good look at Haegemonia, also released 2 decades ago. When I was a kid I much preferred the latter rather than Homeworld.
Oh yeah! Sweet Haegemonia with those massive ships and customizable weapons.
Worth mentioning also "Nexus: The Jupiter Incident" the customization of ships and tactical nature of that game was through the roof.
Still has some of the best explosions in gaming this far on!
@@maciej3262 Nexus was supposed to be the tactical layer of Imperium Galactica III but they ran out of money and were restructured while also making their own game engine. That would have been EPIC.
I think Mithis was still around as Eidos Hungary until 2009.
Homeworld was a big one for me as one of the great early 00s titles.. to get Baldur’s Gate 3 and now Homeworld 3 allllll these years later feels like a small miracle to be celebrated in and of itself.. 🙏🏽
Big fan of Homeworld but this is sounding like I should wait until its about half the price before buying it.
Homeworld was never about its personal journeys for characters but rather it was a story about the human races journey across the cosmos, told in a detached, overseeing way, as cold as the stars that they travel through.
A story like this misses that spirit, and for only getting half of what Homeworld is (the gameplay), I will only pay half for what it gets wrong. (The narrative)
I'm actually very impressed by the story... Outside of space screen, I don't like space queen
I hope it has the Yes homeworld theme
There's at least a reference to Adagio.
It is adagio on strings which isn't really a homeworld theme since it's its own piece made before the game with no relation to it, but yeah, karak is burning is engraved in my school with that music
Best reviewer on TH-cam, 1 million subs doesn't reflect the quality of this channel, thanks again for high tier content ❤
About the difficulty, in some way Im glad normal is... "playable"? I mean everyone remembers Homeworld for being a particulary hard game, first game and the sequel, were hard and the resources were scarce, that was the point of keeping the units to the next mission, and after completing your mission having the option to harvest others resources left on the map. So, again Im glad the game is this way, sometimes I want to enjoy what Im playing and for me Homeworld hooked me from the visuals, the attention to detail with the weapon animations and the story, and I expect the same from a sequel... of course we'll see if the story is this bad for me when I play the game.
And after ending the review I have to say Im shocked you didnt mention Homeworld Complex (or any other mod I played on past tittles) when I reached you speaking about mods in the game. Mod deffinetly kept this game and community alive enough to see devs enough interested to make a sequel
Agree, the first one was a showstopper come later missions. Some of the missions were so grindy (the laser frigate sphere comes to mind) and you had to be so careful with your fleet that some later missions were pretty much impossible if you didnt try to salvage, capture and generally baby your fleet every step of the way. Cool for realism but a bit exhausting to play, especially if you're not a diehard strategy person. It does kinda sound like they went a bit tooooo soft, though. If so, that's a shame as it probably will make the game less memorable.
When i thonk of homeworld, i remember the shivers and despair when the music kicks in in the late part of the first mission of the original game... then later during the debriefing '' xx did not survive the interrogation'' wow. That original game was gold on so many levels.
I wish they would keep the old style of cutscenes, expanding on it. Somewhat like Deserts of Kharak, but better. Or look at Destiny 2, it's illustration like cutscenes are really well done, save the budget and convey the story well.
Thank you for the review. I just wished to be able to hear your thoughts about one of the most impactful points of the Homeworld series: the music. The Turanic Raiders theme, the Imperial Battle theme, the Kadesh theme, or the Keepers. The Vaygr theme I hear in this video at 8:55 is from Homeworld 2. Did they reuse it in the game or was that a video edit?
I'll also add a thought about the difficulty. If memory serves, the original Homeworld 1 and 2 campaigns had no Difficulty setting. Homeworld 2 even had this system that scales up enemy numbers based on your current fleet size. The more ships you have, the more the enemy will have. People complained about it. The Remastered versions added a difficulty setting, but they named the original difficulty mode as Classic, and under that, two easier modes. My guess is given how RTS nowadays is a much smaller and alienating genre, they did not want high difficulty to filter out players who would otherwise enjoy the story. Deserts of Kharak followed this trend with the hardest difficulty mode being Classic again. I presume this is why Homeworld 3 has scaled the difficulty that way.
Wargames is worth the pricetag alone and, judging by the one year pass, seems to be where Gearbox and Blackbird are putting most of their efforts. The story...I have not completed yet. Someone on the official Discord server mentioned that the first and second game centered around a whole race of people, so switching the focus like this to a main protagonist seems jarring. I completely agree - the story isn't bad per se (so far), but it isn't as poignant as the first game or even the 2nd. Still a great game though!
No it's centered on the same group of people. No idea where that inaccuracy came from. It's still about the Hiigarans.
@@danc1513 The distinction OP wanted to underline is that HW1 and 2 were about "The Hiigarans". HW3 is about "Imogen and Paktu, the Hiigarans".
HW3 is abolutely a character-driven story, where as HW1 and 2 were an Epos. At least that's how I'd put it.
@@aWraithsSoul exactly! That is the point I was trying to make. Thank you!
I appreciate the shout out to Sacrifice. That game is very fondly remembered!!!
Guys. Wanna know why this majestic franchise is, both narrative-wise and character look design, in this current sorry state? Keyword:
Sweet Baby Detected.
Brainrot
Mate it’s almost midnight in Sydney, but of course I’m gonna watch before bed. Love ya Shillup
this game is just a floop...it not the search for a better life since we are the last of our kind. so anything else, just noise.
Total Annihilation was my jam. Listening to the metal screeching while units move, the sound design... glorious. I never got into homeoworld because my computer at the time didn't had enough power to run it. I might give it a try this time.
Honestly the fact that the story and campaign (and awful presentation) are so lackluster is one of the reasons I likely won't buy it without a heavy discount. Those things meant the world to me when I played the originals, and knowing this time I'll just be breezing through without really caring about a lackluster story is a huge hole in my motivation to play.
Agreed, I was going to say that the campaign’s problem might be that it’s too “conventional”, in contrast to the more minimalist, less character-driven story of 1 and 2, but honestly I thought Sands of Kharak had a pretty good story so I don’t know what they were doing
I normally enjoy your reviews BEFORE I buy. But this time I had the game gifted and played before watching this review and thus, I can comfortably say, your synopsis is spot on. To quote Bill and Ted 'Listen to this dude Rufus(Skill Up), he knows what he's talking about.'
Story definitely feels too personal compared to the previous games; putting too much focus on individuals rather than the whole. Karan was more of a symbol and Fleet Intelligence was just an advisor. Imogen and this Fleet Intelligence are too personalized. The scale of the story feels way smaller this way.
She was fleet command, fleet intelligence was represented by our dear man who reported unit production etc. I know it's not really important but as hardcore fan I am legally obligated to point out the difference
It has the atmosphere, sound and music of true HW. Awesome.
Great they casualized Homeworld and killed the franchise.
The bane of modern AAA/AA RTS games, dumbed down and too much focus on DLC and multiplayer.
Their main focus should have been the story campaign and skirmish and later on they could have delivered a more fleshed out version of the war game mode. But hey, the latter is mainly here to sell minor DLC factions and skins and other bullshit.
Holy mutinous motherships SkillUp been waiting for your review on this one, & you never disappoint bro! 🧙♂
Always love a skill up vid before bed. Cheers man! Love from NZ
That chin.
LOVE to see skill up review an RTS!!
"Star Wars and Dune are basically the same thing."
Fucking
WHAT?
ikr smh
This looks cool. I loved the mood in the first 2 games but never finished them. Cinematics and feeling was first class IMHO.
Jokes aside thanks for the review ShillUp, hope youre doing well
I really like this review. It gives me a full view of the experience without spoiling. And it’s unbiased. And the criticisms seem fair. I like that he doesn’t water them down.
On a side note I too am a fan of hard sci fi instead of the mix with mystic elements. If u have any recommendations on sci fi titles, rts, and otherwise, comment section please reply to this.
You got it backwards about the plot. It's a terrible story that probably makes more sense to newcomers because it sure as fuck doesn't make sense to long time fans. Look at the heavy backlash this game is getting because of its story campaign.
staring at those monolithic moon sized tech environments makes me keep wondering why a giant beam cannon does not pop out from it and evaporate your fleet and everything else in the vicinity.
if the precursors/progenitors was still a flourishing empire - most certainly that would have been likely. They are the ones who constructed Sajuuk, the two Keys ( Dreadnoughts ) - but fortunately for everyone involved - the creators of the progenitors vanished. Progenitor "drones" in their AI form were only meant to be caretakers - though with often overwhelming power.