Now Playing: Homeworld 3

Homeworld 3 was one of my most anticipated games this year and for good reason. I’ve been a fan of the series since the original game released way back in 1999 and it’s now been 20 years since Homeworld 2 released. That’s a very long time to wait for a sequel.

Not that we didn’t get any new Homeworld content during that time – the remastered editions of Homeworld 1 and Homeworld 2 released in 2015 were excellent despite some balancing issues and bugs and a few contentious changes that upset the purists.

And in 2016 we had Deserts of Kharak, a satisfying prequel to Homeworld 1 that some claimed wasn’t a ‘proper’ Homeworld game because it wasn’t set in space. But as I said in my review at the time – ‘we’ll ignore those people because they’re dumb.’

So we’re finally here – Homeworld 3. A game 20 years in the waiting. How could it possibly live up to my expectations? Well, it can’t, of course. How could it? But I am pleased to say that Homeworld 3 is a solid entry in the series but, undeniably, also its weakest.

Because no, it’s not as good as Homeworld 1 or 2 but honestly, I never expected it to be. I can’t say I envied the developers who were tasked with putting together the sequel to a couple of cult classics. And certainly not with a fanbase that feels like it’s willing for new Homeworld content to fail rather than succeed – something I’ll touch upon later.

And I must admit, my heart sank when I played the War Games demo back in February. I had a lot of issues with that demo – from the controls, to the UI, to unit pathfinding, to combat pacing, to AI . . . it was a lot, and I wasn’t alone in sharing those concerns. But when Homeworld 3 was then delayed to address those concerns, I regained some hope. But still, I must admit I was wary. But come on – it’s Homeworld 3. How could I not pick it up at release?

And, I’m actually somewhat surprised to say that pretty much every issue I had with the demo has been resolved. The controls feel so much better thanks to the legacy options and the ability to mix and match with the modern settings as I please. The UI now has proper scaling. Unit pathfinding – aside from the odd hiccup – is vastly improved. Ship survivability has been increased, so combat pacing feels better. And the AI, overall, also feels better – although campaign scripting probably plays a large part in that.

The campaign of Homeworld 3 has 13 missions and took me about 8-10 hours to complete on both Medium and Hard difficulties. It is, I suppose, comparable in length to previous games, but it felt oddly short to me. I think this is due to a combination of two things – the campaign begins with a series of very short, simple missions, but ends with a series of longer, larger and more complex ones.

Yes, I suppose that’s also comparable to previous games, but it feels way more pronounced here – one early mission is over in a matter of minutes, for example. So the first half of the game feels very rushed, and it doesn’t feel like the game really gets going until the latter half.

This also isn’t helped by missions ending not when you choose to hyperspace, but simply once your objectives are completed. Hey, Homeworld 3, I like to relax and reorganise my fleet at the end of a mission, not scramble to do so at the start of the next. I get there may occasionally be story reasons for not allowing it, but that doesn’t always apply.

This issue is also compounded by the story and the way that it’s told. I’ve seen people dunk on the story and say it’s terrible because it shifts towards a more personal, character driven story than the originals. Those people are also dumb. I don’t just want to see this series do the same thing or try to tell the same stories. That said, I can’t say the story in Homeworld 3 quite pulls off what it’s trying to do.

There’s just not enough time to tell a story like this within the campaign as it exists. When you’re dealing with a threat that would mean the end of the galaxy as we know it – and when that threat is in the form of an individual, you really need to spend some time exploring who that person is and where they come from so we better understand them.

When you want to present a clash of wills between our protagonist (Imogen) and the antagonist (The Incarnate Queen) we need more than an handful of weak interactions between them. There’s just not enough meat to sink our teeth into here.

And we definitely need more ‘show don’t tell’. The game tells us about this massive threat and that ‘billions have died’ but we never see or experience any of it ourselves. We’re entirely disconnected from what we’re supposed to be fighting against and we’re never quite sure what the stakes are because the game doesn’t adequately explain or explore them. Compare that to the opening of Homeworld 1 where the stakes and our objective are made very clear from the opening mission.

I’m not saying this story can’t work, I just don’t think it’s fleshed out enough within the game. It feels like half the story is missing so as a result, it ends up feeling rushed and weak and not as engaging as it should. But, in terms of missions at least, Homeworld 3 offers a nice variety. The early missions are short, but they’re still fun, and the later missions that offer larger maps and more complex objectives are where the game really shines. I do wish there was more of an evolution to your fleet progression though.

Unlocking new ships in the original games always felt special and was tied to something within the narrative but in Homeworld 3, they’re pretty much just dumped on you without reason. Now you can build a destroyer! Okay . . . but why now? One mission just gives you several minelayers because they’re particularly useful in that mission. And they are, but I didn’t bother with them again the entire campaign. And that’s another weakness of Homeworld 3 – the limited unit roster and how unnecessary some of the units feel.

Recon units become useless as soon as you unlock interceptors. There’s only one corvette class. One! Ion beam frigates are slow to aim and slow to fire. I did use them but they never felt particularly helpful. Destroyers and battle cruisers look cool but are so slow to move that they’d often arrive late to the fight and my frigate / bomber groups would have already done all the work.

Deployable turrets are fun, but they can only be placed on a flat surface which is a little weird. I really wanted to attach them all to the mothership and just fly around using that – seriously, it’s shockingly fast and will leave your other capital ships in its space dust.

Combat engagements are fun, but I’m not sure about the unit specific special abilities. They’re not a bad addition, they’re just not very exciting, I guess? And there’s no unit veterancy, so units feel rather expendable in a way they weren’t in the original games. And that’s even more true given how abundant resources are.

You soon stop caring about combat losses because of how fast and easy it is to replace them. Some of the later missions feel less about tactically outsmarting your enemy, and more about outproducing them. The faster you can churn those units out, the faster you can overwhelm them. It’s also shockingly easy to capture enemy units with resource collectors. I had over 20 enemy destroyers in my fleet by the last mission and it made it all a little too easy.

Carriers also can’t be customised to specialise in producing certain units, so they become just another production bay to churn everything out en mass, rather than a bespoke unit fulfilling a specific role. I can’t say I didn’t have a good time playing the campaign though. The visuals are great. The battles look spectacular. Locking onto a fighter in the middle of a hectic battle and following them throughout the engagement is just as riveting here as it was in the original game.

The music is great, as it should be in a Homeworld game. Oh, and so is all the unit chatter. It gives a nice sense of personality to your combat groups, which is why it’s such a shame the game seems to treat them all as entirely disposable. Performance could certainly be better – during some big fights, I’ve seen the frame rate dip down to the 30s from a locked 120. In a game like this, it’s not very noticeable, but it still needs improving.

Oh, and there are bugs. Nothing serious, thankfully, but the audio bug warning you that you’ve lost a destroyer or a carrier when in fact you just destroyed an enemy one is pretty annoying even if it’s not game breaking.

Overall, the Homeworld 3 campaign – and it’s the campaign that I’m most interested in when it comes to this series – offers a fun and engaging series of missions, with a nice variety of objectives, maps and problems to solve. It is, however, somewhat short, there are balancing and difficulty issues that need to be addressed and the story is pretty weak.

So no, it’s not as good as the campaigns in Homeworld 1 or 2, but that doesn’t make it bad. It’s a solid campaign that just doesn’t stack up to the originals. And that’s okay. Well, it is for me – I’m just glad to be playing a new Homeworld game in 2024. Other fans? Not so much. But yeah . . . we’ll get to that.

Beyond the campaign, Homeworld 3 offers a skirmish mode which is pretty much what you’d expect and not something to get very excited about – it’s pretty limited right now in terms of maps and fleets / units and it’s also where you’ll probably notice most of the AI problems.

But Homeworld 3 also offers War Games which is a solo or co-op experience that sees you attempt to progress through three (somewhat) randomised missions with a preset fleet. You earn experience to level up as you go and that unlocks new fleet types and there’s various difficulty modifiers you can apply to boost your experience gain.

And it’s . . . surprisingly fun. It certainly needs more content though, and it also really needs to let me save and quit if I’m playing solo because when a single match can last around 30-40 minutes I need to try to clear my f**king schedule and hope I don’t get interrupted if I want to play.

Okay, now let’s finally get to the problems with the fanbase I’ve mentioned. I don’t often address other reviews, but at the time of writing, Homeworld 3 has a ‘mixed’ rating on Steam of 40%. That’s pretty damn harsh in my view, but I’m also not entirely surprised. Homeworld 3 is a game fans – like me – have been waiting over 20 years for and there was simply no way it was ever going to live up to our expectations.

But then, that’s been the case with every Homeworld release since the original. Because in the eyes of a hardcore subset of Homeworld fans, no game will ever measure up to Homeworld 1. Even Homeworld 2 was considered a disappointment at release, as was every other subsequent release – the remastered editions, Deserts of Kharak and now Homeworld 3.

I bought Homeworld 1 at release so I’ve seen the pattern repeat for a long time. As much as these fans might say they want more Homeworld games, the reality is that none of them will ever be good enough in their eyes. That’s always been an irritating quirk of the Homeworld fanbase – one that won’t accept anything new.

Now, I’m not saying you can’t not like this game or think it’s bad or whatever. I don’t really care. But looking at these reviews, I don’t see a game that’s being judged fairly on its own merits. I see a game getting dragged for not being as ‘perfect’ as Homeworld 1.

Me? I’m just happy to have a new Homeworld to play, imperfect though it is, and I wish more fans of the series could be too.

6/10