I’ve never played a Homeworld game so I’ve no idea how to compare Homeworld 3 to the previous games but what I do know is that Homeworld 3 has had me hooked from the start and the aesthetics are “chefs kiss”.
Platforms: PC – Steam & Epic Store
Players: Single-player, Online co-op, Online PvP
Genres: Strategy, Sci-fi, Space, RTS
Developer: Blackbird Interactive
Price: £49.99
Key was provided by Green Man Gaming
Homeworld 3 Review
The galaxy has enjoyed an age of abundance, with a huge thank you going to the Hyperspace Gate Network. However, now the gates are catastrophically failing, and Karan S’jet – a Fleet Commander and main protagonist from the previous games, who has since passed into myth and religious idolatry. Is the key to the mystery threatening a galaxy’s future.
Homeworld 3 picks up when Karan’s ship goes missing and her protege Imogen S’jet binds with a new mothership in order to go out into space and discover the fate of Karan. To be honest, without the context of the previous games at times I felt a little lost with the story. It’s very mystical, with heavy religious themes. Imogen has tonnes of visions throughout which are always vague and confusing to her.
Whilst the execution of the story in terms of visuals and cut scenes is great, it didn’t necessarily land with me. I enjoyed the performances and thought it was all well acted. I just found myself not worrying too much about what it all meant at the end of a cut scene. That being said, I don’t mind that too much because building a huge armada of spaceships and blowing stuff up is really fun.
If you’re more of a fan of hard science fiction that relies on trying to be accurate when science is concerned then Homworlds almost magical tech might miss the mark for you.
Space style goes hard
Sometimes I see a screenshot of a game and I know I’m going to like it simply because of how it looks. That was exactly how I felt when I first saw Homeworld 3. That mothership just looks so damn cool. I immediately thought of Simon Stålenhag’s art when I saw it. Something about it just made me think of his Tales from the Loop series. Either way, the presentation throughout the game is excellent. Each different unit of spaceship is packed full detail and style. Watching them pop out of the mothership, get into formation, and jet off across space to blow some bad guys up is satisfying as hell.
Furthermore, the sounds of the ships are great, the soundtrack is on point throughout. With dark electronic synths and deep baselines mixed with instruments of Middle Eastern and Asian origin, it perfectly accompanies you as you jump through hypergates, engage in combat, or hold in anticipation of something waiting to emerge from the wreckage around you.
This is one of the best-looking games I’ve played this year, no doubt about it.
Gameplay
I played the campaign on medium difficulty thinking it wouldn’t pose much of a risk but still offering a little challenge here and there. Truth be told it was pretty easy throughout. I think the fact that you keep your units between missions – which makes total sense, given the context of what you’re doing. However, it does mean that you can kind of snowball any fight. The game tells you that certain units have weaknesses making them easier to defeat. Such as some being more vulnerable from behind meaning sneaking behind for a surprise attack can give you the upper hand. However, I never really felt the need to do that. Such was the force I had at my disposal, I could send wave after wave of ships until I won.
With almost 20 different ships to choose from you can take on a lot of these fights in many ways. Each ship has its own weapons, speed, armour, and upgrades available. Giving you loads of options when picking a fight. I love that you don’t need to keep making those same upgrades as you progress from mission to mission. Watching all your ships getting into massive dog-fights that break out into smaller battles is really cool.
I don’t mind games being a bit easy at times, sometimes I want to be able to make progress quickly and not get bogged down on needlessly difficult fights. That being said, perhaps medium was a little too straightforward. I haven’t tried hard, but I’d probably treat medium as an easy mode and hard perhaps as medium.
Multiplayer
With both co-op and PvP available, there’s plenty more to get stuck into after finishing the roughly 7 hour-long campaign. You can play the War games mode which is billed as a roguelike game mode where you must battle your way back from an anomalous region to Higarin space. You’ll earn XP as you progress allowing you to unlock new starting fleets and artifacts. You can play War games solo or in co-op with up to 2 others. It’s a cool mode that offers something a little different.
Furthermore, there is the PvP skirmish mode with various modifiers available to alter the conditions of a match. I played a couple and very quickly got my behind handed back to me in a nice little parcel. But I’m sure people will find lots of fun to be hard here.
I think one of the most promising aspects of Homeworld 3 is that it supports community modding. We all know that when you get a good community of modders for games you can extend the life and enjoyment of said game exponentially. I’ll be very interested in seeing what starts to pop up.
Even though the story in Homeworld 3 didn’t quite land, I loved everything else about it. I’ll no doubt be revisiting to get a hit of some lovely sci-fi RTS action.
-Will
