izigame.me

21 years ago, Homeworld 2 was released, 20 years ago Homeworld 3 was announced followed by the disappointing bankruptcy of Relic Entertainment. For some time I was waiting for someone else to release Homeworld 3 someday and this moment miraculously began to come true. Moreover I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard that some people from the former Relic Entertainment would be working on the game.
Before that, I managed to play a lot of Homeworld 2 with the wonderful and magnificent Complex Mod 9 from Beghins. I enjoyed replaying the remastered versions of Homeworld 1 and Homeworld 2, thanks to Gearbox Software. I even liked Deserts of Kharak.
The old parts of Homeworld were very laconic, but at the same time very atmospheric with their unique setting and unusual history. For me it has always been an amazing, fascinating mixture of Arabic motifs and space strategy. A serious version of 1001 Nights, but in space. The first two parts of the game left an aftertaste of light but deep food for thought: “Humanity of the future in space, a civilization similar to the Arabic, Bedouins and Deserts, the theme of the loss of home, great sacrifices and great losses, pilgrimage, hostages of the sins of past generations, the greatest lost through many generations achievements, forgotten knowledge and technologies scattered across the vast cold space, finding a new home, reunification, ancestral homeland, ancestors, clans - kiits, survival, hope, difficult decisions and severe trials, the mysterious and inexplicable, a little mysticism, great leaders, great and powerful villains". All this was woven together in the plot and in the presentation of the plot through the gameplay and turned into a thick, rich atmosphere of difficult and serious space travel. The narrative component was laconic, gave more questions than answers and nothing more was required.
Which of the above can you feel in Homeworld 3? Almost nothing. After playing Homeworld 3, to my great regret (after all, I was really looking forward to this game), an aftertaste remains in my head: “Children and infantile adults who have forgotten how to think about things deeply and give deep experiences have crept into all corners of human creativity and this is disgusting”. In Homeworld 3, we see a story suitable only for teenagers with a puberty crisis, in which the main protagonist is a cool scientist, but an infantile emotional schoolgirl, who leads a fleet to search for her missing grandmother-mentor, deals with magical anomalies that are not are very logically justified, while she and her fleet are simply very lucky. The purpose of the journey is weak. Character motivations are weak. The intrigue is weak. The main villain is called the queen - what is that? What kind of baby talk is this? At the beginning, when the mother ship is launched, there is simply a sea of replicas destroying the previous atmosphere in the style of a pompous patriotic war movie. For what? This does not have the spirit of Homeworld, it does not have the spirit of the previous model of human society that was present in previous masterpieces. In my opinion, it is very speculative, often used “Adagio for Strings” in not very important moments of the plot, which in itself looks like the enthusiastic scribbles of a joyful naive child.
In terms of gameplay, I was waiting for evolution, but we only received a couple of additions: the ability to turn the mothership vertically or horizontally and low-level flight relative to the surfaces of asteroids and the wreckage of space stations. At the same time, the space in which events take place has shrunk to tiny pockets stuffed with debris and asteroids. While waiting for Homeworld 3, I wanted, on the contrary, that the engine could support colossal spaces for a 4 vs 4 player network game, for example. The story missions themselves turn out to be tiny, sometimes difficult, but very short. The entire story campaign as a whole feels like a demo version in terms of duration.
The visuals are great, but what are visuals without gameplay and narrative? Is this a game? I'm not even nitpicking about the terrible drops in game performance at the end.
As for the War Games mode, this is the last thing that interested me. First of all, I expected the story campaign to be rich and atmospheric, like in the previous parts. And the War Games mode, which, if I’m not mistaken, was already tried to be done a long time ago for the mobile segment, did not interest me at all.
Guys, I won't demand a refund, BUT YOU COULD DO BETTER! Narrative designer and scriptwriter, you have greatly disappointed me. To the rest of the guys - thank you for trying, I know you tried.
I also understand that you wanted to reach a different target audience, a younger one. Money decides everything in this world - yes, but most likely, it was this step that destroyed Homeworld, drove it into the deepest grave with a running start, and I won’t even see your sincere work on mistakes and a more adult version in the form of Homeworld 4. The Homeworld series is now for sure will be abandoned to the outskirts of the farthest sector of space and this is an even greater sadness for me - her fan.