Spacefaring RTS Homeworld 3 is sweet sci-fi. Monolithic buildings scorched with plasma burns. Smooth spacecraft. Alien sunrises. It’s additionally good sci-fi as a result of its characters converse by way of reams of inscrutable however cool-sounding house science, and at no level does a grinning quipster inform a scientist: “Whoa there, professor. Why don’t you attempt saying that once more… however in English!” Principally, in case your wishlist for Homeworld 3 has tone and ambiance on the high, relaxation straightforward. At no level did I get the sense that Blackbird ever took making the primary correct Homeworld in eight years flippantly.
Homeworld 3 can be, on steadiness, a great time. I say ‘on steadiness’ as a result of it took me about two-thirds of the 13-mission marketing campaign to begin comfortably navigating the controls, by which era different, extra basic points began to crop up. Unit disposability and clickmania finally takes over from the measured tactical play these great ships deserve. Additionally, the ‘regular’ marketing campaign is usually a glorified tutorial, which suggests some story beats didn’t hit as arduous. (“The mothership can’t take one other hit like that!” command screams, as an asteroid knocks off roughly 3% of my whole well being.)
By way of all this, although, Homeworld 3 by no means didn’t hold me pacified with dramatic, prolonged cutscenes, unbelievable vistas, gripping moments, and considerate particulars. All of it left me with a stable appreciation that didn’t fairly translate to a rip-roaring videogame time, however I’ll get into all that in a bit.
The sport begins as scientist Imogen S’Jet is making ready to enter the Hiigaran mothership, Khar-Kushan, as its navigator. It is a course of the place she’ll successfully change into one with the large vessel, each bodily and thru a psychic hyperlink to the complete fleet. A Unhealthy Area Occurring often known as ‘The Anomaly’ is spreading, disrupting gate journey and destroying ships. Now, earlier Homeworld navigator Karan S’Jet has gone lacking. Nicely, don’t simply sit there like a 2D chump! Get on the market and command some ships to maneuver round in 3D house and discover out what’s taking place.
![A dogfight takes place around ancient structures in Homeworld 3](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/hw31.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
It’s this 3D motion that, alongside your fleet of items carrying over between missions, differentiated the collection from its contemporaries again in ‘99 when the primary sport launched. Asteroid coming your method? A silly flat-plane dwelling Warcraft orc must work-work on their headbutting expertise, however you’ll be able to simply swoop beneath. Outnumbered in a dogfight? Ambush the fleet from above to get at these weak topsides. This extends to formations, too, the place command teams might be set to fly and struggle as spheres or defensive partitions. Later, you’ll unlock minelayer frigates, in a position to lay diamonds or packing containers of explosives to safe chokepoints on a number of elevations.
Of the 13 missions, one is a tutorial and introduction, however not one of the different twelve fall again on the RTS skirmish staple of defending a base till you’ve constructed up a power, then sallying out to crush the enemy. I really wouldn’t have minded this a minimum of as soon as, since such missions are a great sandbox to check out completely different fleet compositions, however I feel their absence comes right down to offering rigidity in a collection the place you don’t really construct a base in any conventional sense. You’ll have as much as 5 useful resource gatherers and your mothership for unit manufacturing, and any form of defensive perimeter comes down to creating certain none of them get blown up. In any other case, missions often provide up some twist on level seize, ceaselessly with an enormous showdown on the finish. There are arduous limits on each particular person ship sort and ship lessons, like frigates or strike craft. So useful resource administration and excessive degree techniques are sometimes targeted on the way to successfully cut up your fleet to cowl targets, protection, and common assaults so that you don’t get overwhelmed.
Bear in mind Beat Saber? I deliver it up as a result of it’s my go-to instance of a management system so recognisable and easy that anybody, whether or not or not they’ve held a controller earlier than, can get pleasure from themselves with it in about fifteen seconds. Homeworld 3 is regardless of the reverse of that’s: a management system completely particular to itself. It’s not unintuitive within the sense of being complicated or superfluous, it’s simply, nicely, not intuitive. Understandably so, in some methods, because it should help an uncommon set of actions. This isn’t a unfavorable evaluation, it’s only a new expertise that may journey you up for just a few hours, possibly longer.
Once I did lastly get proficient, utilizing the default ‘fashionable’ management scheme, it was arduous to not lean into the fantasy of flicking levers and and turning dials on the helm of some gargantuan battleship. Homeworld 3 makes you employ your mouse and keyboard in a different way. It’s neat in a “that is the closest I’ll ever come to proudly owning the Metal Battalion controller with out promoting a kidney” method. It’s simply not instantly pure. Or, eight-hours-in pure, actually. So, there’s your worth proposition: you get two marketing campaign playthroughs. One on regular to benefit from the story and study the controls, one on arduous to really play the sport.
![Choosing an artefact upgrade in Homeworld 3's War Games mode](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/hw32.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
Is it a nasty factor to have a sport’s controls represent a part of its problem, particularly in case you’re successfully taking part in a personality taking over the horrible psychic weight of controlling a whole fleet of unbelievably superior ships? That asteroid discipline, for instance, can be even much less of a difficulty if navigation was so user-friendly it wasn’t even a consideration. One thing to ponder, possibly, when you’re grappling with the usually ineffective ‘click on on empty house to deliver up a 3D radial factor’ as a result of ‘empty house’ is difficult to seek out in a pinch as a result of all of the background terrain. The ‘motion airplane’ grid, which supplies you a flat adjustable floor to vector motion throughout, is commonly the one dependable possibility.
I received’t cut back the tonal execs and usefulness cons of those controls to a flat ‘impartial’. Every represents one thing notable. Controls all learnt, although, I’m not satisfied there’s all that a lot depth in fight, or sufficient depth so tactical choices seem to be a precedence over response pace. Perhaps I’m asking an excessive amount of right here. RTS fight kind of at all times orbits some type of rock, paper, scissors, and Homeworld 3 has extra incentive than most to play the hits. However the sport affords such a convincing and absorbing simulation elsewhere that it primes you for the same degree of involvement the place plasma meets hull. But I received by way of regular problem with the identical techniques I developed for Warcraft 2 after I was ten: overwhelm with an enormous ball of items, and in case you’re up in opposition to one thing notably nasty, focus hearth it down. Arduous problem feels extra substantial, as different mission targets change into extra of a problem with deadlier foe compositions.
There may be some nuance to the press. Queuing the motion vectors for bombing runs is demanding within the warmth of battle, and satisfying when pulled off. Every ship class has a hotkey skill that may remodel an engagement when timed accurately, and arranging a number of command teams in numerous formations might be massively highly effective. I feel an enormous concern right here is that something smaller than frigate class tends to begin dropping like house flies just a few seconds after beginning a dogfight, which makes difficult maneuvers really feel a bit pointless. Early on, whenever you solely have just a few ships obtainable, you struggle a frigate with tiny strike craft, and also you’re instructed the armour on the again is weaker. You micromanage just a few assault runs, subsequently, and really feel like an area genius. However issues quickly get far too hectic for this to be reasonable until you need to be paused on a regular basis – and since pause isn’t obtainable in roguelike co-operative Wargames or PVP modes, I received the sense it’s only a concession for the marketing campaign. Counting on it looks like a crutch.
![A strike craft prepares for an attack run in Homeworld 3](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/hw33.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
One other concern with ‘taking part in the hits’ is that it passes up the chance to meaningfully evolve the issues that made earlier Homeworlds particular. Take that contiguous fleet: why not develop your relationship with them additional by way of issues like expertise ranges and promotions? I’ll get to this in a second, however the plot right here is so targeted on just a few characters to the detriment of the Hiigarans as a those that your little pilots simply find yourself feeling disposable. There’s an early scene the place Imogen first realises she will be able to really feel the ache of each pilot within the fleet that dies in battle. I’d like to really feel that too, however I’m having hassle summoning up empathy for any of the handfuls of an identical recon ships. A bit extra survivability on either side so dogfights lasted longer would make particular person losses really feel much more consequential. I’d love to inform your loved ones what occurred, firstname bunchahullpoints, however I’m afraid I don’t know the way you died.
Zoom out, although, and Homeworld 3’s tone and atmospheric mixture of somber responsibility and awed marvel is sort of the particular factor. Sci-fi storytelling at all times has a little bit of a problem in avoiding the cerebral turning into sterile. The Homeworld setting has a bit of of the house feudalism and techno-spirituality of Battletech, nevertheless it additionally strikes me as too within the how of all of it, the expertise, to completely slip into science fantasy. That intangible loneliness remains to be there although. That Homeworld feeling of being the pinnacle of a fleet of a whole lot of vessels of unfathomable dimension, however nonetheless being very small and really alone in an unlimited unknowable house. As one cutscene captures masterfully, it evokes the extra terrestrial marvel of deep ocean exploration.
The precise plot, whereas ceaselessly gripping, triumphant, and tense, is lacking one thing: Homeworld instructed the story of a whole folks. This tells the story of, like, 4 folks. They’re a likable bunch, nicely acted, however they’re solid in what’s in the end a reasonably rote heroes vs. villains plot. I’d have appreciated to play a narrative much less character-driven, extra in regards to the ‘what’ and ‘why’ than the few heroic ‘who’. This could have allowed house for little story snapshots of some particular person pilots, and for tragedy and dying and actual stakes. Right here, you meet the primary characters in the beginning, and none of them actually undergo any form of development. It lacks the somber poetry I affiliate with the collection.
![Imogen S'Jet prepares to navigate the mothership in Homeworld 3](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/hw34.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
This isn’t to say I disliked every thing about your tiny pilots. I am a fan of how mid-mission chatter is dealt with, for one. I’m instructed Deserts of Kharak did this too, however Homeworld 3 provides you little pockets of dialog out of your ships, updating you on how their thrusters are performing or different such trivia. A few of these traces are designed to present you important info throughout battle, resembling in case you set command teams, and one in all them begins dropping ships, you’ll get a “group 4 is in hassle” voice line. It will get fairly in depth. Though I may do with out being instructed “group 1 is taking heavy losses” when actually all they’ve misplaced is 2 of the most cost effective ships. The dramatic advisor that cried wolf, and all that.
Homeworld 3 leaves me within the unusual place the place I need to play extra of it, however I’ve mainly had my fill of the marketing campaign, I’ve received little interest in PvP, and Battle Video games mode is foolish tough in single participant. It’s like having a set of very nice brushes however no canvas, so to talk. I assume that is most likely the place mods are available in – the sport is meant to be launching with inbuilt help and instruments on day one. I get that “It’ll be nice with mods” doesn’t come throughout as a ringing endorsement, however to reiterate: Homeworld 3 is a reasonably good time in an excellent sci-fi setting. I can’t suggest it wholeheartedly, however I’m additionally hoping it finds sufficient of an viewers that it paves the best way for a extra experimental sequel or enlargement sooner or later – and in case you’ve been eager for 21 years for a followup to Homeworld 2, I can’t see you being too disenchanted.
This assessment relies on a assessment construct of the sport supplied by the developer.