izigame.me

I bought the game early as a long-time fan of the franchise, but waited a while to post a review. Waiting to see what the first patch cycle would bring, and I remain a satisfied customer. (More or less)
Overall, HW-3 (multi-player) is a solid game, and deserves much praise. The graphics are beautiful, and the special effects award-worthy. For an RTS game, this is very very high quality. The “Wargames” mode is absolutely worthy of the Homeworld franchise mantel. Probably a few more patches needed, but overall, when compared to most games that come out anymore, HW-3 has been very bug-free and a fantastic graphical & stratagy experience that franchise fans should be happy with, and developers should be proud of.

While I give the Homeworld 3 Wargames/Multiplayer 4 out for 5 stars, I do have some minor constructive criticisms for devs to hopefully take to heart, and improve in the next patch cycle:
- Remaining Bugs I’ve found after 1.1 patch:
o In Wargames, Resource Controllers seem to have an issue recovering/respawning their collectors after a sucessful ship capture. That might have something to do with the auto-launch feature on the carrier? Not sure.
o “Allied” ships continue shooting at enemy ships that are being hauled away during the capture process.
o In Wargames, Repair frigates seem to get stuck in loops doing their green-beam-thing, but never actually repair anything.
o In Wargames, salvageable debris from Destroyers will sometimes just “take flight” and move itself off-screen. Weird.
- Game Itself:
o The unit statistics display for speed/turn rate/vision are great! Exactly the right formula. It would be nice for armor/hit-point/weapon stats to be equivalent in their level of detail, especially with so many artifact upgrades being weapon range/damage/accuracy focused and stackable. It is hard to know what you are buying when choosing between artifacts. That’s probably my biggest ask.
o Interface is much better than the pilot, but still needs tweaks:
 A pause button for building queues would be nice. For example, when resources are low and a player needs to prioritize spending. 😊 HW1 & 2 had that.
 Can the “Initiate Hyperspace” button when objectives are complete NOT be in the middle of the screen? Bottom-right corner maybe?
 Same issue with Issac’s “Combat Alert” message. It overlaps the exact center of the screen and provides no value…and just stays there overlapping everything important going on. Why can’t that just be an audio/subtitle alert?
 Can the chat box be more translucent to see through, and why does it show up AT ALL when you are playing solo in a War Game?
o Units for both races are terrible about friendly fire. It doesn’t seem to affect gameplay, but is still a bit ‘cringe’.
o Maps like Karos Graveyard are the right idea, but still very two-dimensional in a 3D landscape.
o Mod support. I am only just starting to play with this, but it seems good at face value, and I am grateful it is there at all in the 2024 game landscape. Curious what modders like “Beghins” have to say on this topic, (and hopefully Blackbird consulted him, or will)?
 The artwork for the Carrier & Mothership designs seem to suggest that the “modules” of HW2 were at one point part of the plan? I am hopeful that feature has been left in for more “COMPELX” 😉 gameplay in future?
 The mothership’s “guns-on-train-tracks” concept is absolutely awesome, but stopped short of allowing players to choose what kind of turrets to build/deploy. (IE: Anti-fighter, missile-defense, anti-capitol ship ion cannons, etc.) Hopefully that is editable/expandable, or could be?
o The Single Player Campaign ……… (sigh) ………………..So…a lot of other people have made commentary about the single player story, and I won’t critique it in detail here. Suffice to say, Blackbird, if they want the sales & long-term subscriptions for DLC content on this game that they could potentially earn with word of mouth…need to seriously consider a sh*t-can & rewrite of the entire single-player campaign as a patch. No joke!
As someone who has lost friends/co-workers in the line-of-duty, I found the childishness of the dialog personally insulting. This is a game that is being marketed to nostalgic adults invested in a 1990’s franchise…Right?!!
“Let the burden remain”? “Compartmentalizing”? WTF?!! The dialog between Imogen & Issac is so broken & chaotic it would probably qualify for Article 90 under UMCJ. (If you’re a writer/editor at Blackbird, and need to Google “UCMJ” to know what I am talking about…MY POINT EXACTLY.) I could say more, but I am going to stop there.

- Blackbird, you have a potential StarCraft I level RTS game in your hands. To misquote the Underpants Gnomes:
o Step 1) Fire the weirdos!
o Step 2) Hire well-adjusted mature adults to rewrite the single player into something equivalently mature as your chosen demographic audience.
o Step 3) Profit!

You were sooooo close to an industry-breaking home run. Please be brave enough to try for one!