{"id":48989,"date":"2024-05-10T21:00:06","date_gmt":"2024-05-10T20:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.xtremeservers.com\/blog\/homeworld-3-single-player-campaign-review\/"},"modified":"2024-05-10T21:00:06","modified_gmt":"2024-05-10T20:00:06","slug":"homeworld-3-single-player-campaign-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xtremeservers.com\/blog\/homeworld-3-single-player-campaign-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Homeworld 3 Single-Player Campaign Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This review covers the single-player campaign of Homeworld 3. For thoughts on the multiplayer skirmish and War Games co-op mode, see the <\/em>Homeworld 3 Multiplayer review<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Considering Homeworld 2 came out more than 20 years ago (and was remastered in 2015) it\u2019s a welcome surprise how little had to change \u2013 and how little complexity had to be sacrificed \u2013 to bring this classic, large-scale space strategy gameplay up to modern standards and deliver a visually spectacular and mechanically varied campaign. Building and controlling an armada of strike craft, frigates, and capital ships in full 3D space is certainly a little tricker to wrap your head around than most RTS games, but thanks to the ability to pause and give orders at any time you can grow into command at your own pace. The payoff is more than worth it, and this campaign invites you to embrace your inner Admiral Akbar and walk into traps just to blast your way out.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Using a now well-worn template for soft-rebooting a series, this story follows a brand-new character who must seek out the original protagonist after they go missing \u2013 in this instance, 20 years prior. Despite that cliche, Imogen S\u2019jet\u2019s search for answers about what happened to Karan S\u2019jet\u2019s lost fleet is delivered with convincing emotion. That includes some very reasonable conflict between her and her second in command as he tries to keep her on the task of tracking down the looming new threat to Hiigara and the galaxy at large they were sent out after in the first place.<\/p>\n

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Thanks in large part to its fully animated cinematics (as opposed to the Homeworld series\u2019 traditional hand-painted animatics), Imogen feels more human and relatable than Karan ever did, despite being hooked into the same fleet-controlling machines, wearing the same skin-tight wetsuit, and floating in another goo-filled tank with her eyes closed. But she gets to stretch her legs and emote more during the visions she has while the Mothership hyperspace jumps between missions, and that\u2019s where we get to know her a little better. In sharp contrast to the massive scale of the city-sized Mothership flying through the wreckage of even more gargantuan megastructures, these cutscenes feel small and intimate; we only ever really see four characters, so it\u2019s almost like watching a stage play. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

One of those characters is the antagonist, The Queen, who comes across as a bit over-the-top maniacal but chews the scenery with gusto and conveys a menacing, wild-eyed sort of madness. There\u2019s clearly something not right with her \u2013 and that allows her to be tragic and sympathetic in certain moments. That said, I did roll my eyes a bit when she recites Darth Vader\u2019s \u201cJoin me and rule by my side\u201d speech almost verbatim (she is not, as it turns out, Imogen\u2019s father). And while her use of hyperspace as a weapon sounds cool, it mostly happens off screen and we aren\u2019t given a real sense of how it\u2019s causing all this destruction. The one time we see it in action on a small scale raises a bunch of intriguing possibilities for how it could be used in battle\u2026 but then, anticlimactically, it\u2019s never seen again. So while the characters work on an emotional level, the overarching story does end up feeling a bit lost amid its tangle of lore about space ancients.<\/p>\n

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When the view zooms out to the battlefield, Homeworld 3 immediately recaptures the feeling of controlling a fleet of starships, and being able to select a group of ships and put them into one of several formations \u2013 from a delta V to a sphere to a claw \u2013 and toggle between three different behavior stances is as powerful as ever. Taking in the details as capital ships bombard each other with ballistic weapons and laser beams, their turrets swiveling to track the fighter craft weaving between them leaving streaks of color behind, as explosions constantly go off will never, ever get old. I\u2019m often willing to take more losses than I need to in battle just so I can zoom in, turn off the interface (a one-button convenience), and enjoy the show. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m often willing to take more losses than I need to in battle just so I can enjoy the show.\u00a0<\/section>\n

Sure, you\u2019ll get better results by meticulously organizing your ships into control groups, optimizing formations, and prioritizing targets to take out threats to your best ships first (and you\u2019ll need to on higher difficulties). But once you\u2019re confident you have the upper hand, there\u2019s nothing wrong with hitting F4 to select every combat-capable ship in your fleet and ordering them to pick their own targets according to what they\u2019re best at, and blast everything in sight.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Those targets are almost entirely ships of the Queen\u2019s Incarnate fleet, and there are a couple of moments where in-engine cutscenes call back to the original Homeworld by making their fighters feel like an aggressive pack of animals. There are differences between how the enemy fleet operates versus the Hiigarans, but those are mostly relevant in multiplayer; in the campaign, they\u2019re effectively very similar to your own ships (outside of how you have to keep an eye out for pesky capture corvettes that can nab your frigates while you aren\u2019t watching and turn them against you). After fighting the Taiidan Empire and the Vaygr in previous games, I admit I\u2019d hoped for a more dramatic departure from the standard enemy fleet template this time, but the Incarnate certainly put up a decent fight.<\/p>\n

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Homeworld 3\u2019s 13 campaign missions, which took me around 10 hours to complete on the default difficulty, are easily the most diverse of the Homeworld series, both visually and in their objectives. That\u2019s mostly because of the new direction in map design. Previous Homeworld games have spiced up deep space with colorful nebulas as backdrops, but are largely set in huge empty voids with just a few asteroids floating around in them. Homeworld 3, by contrast, has so many massive objects to navigate through that space can feel downright claustrophobic and cluttered with ancient alien ruins, and often telegraphs choke points where the enemy will warp in. They\u2019re still huge maps relative to most real-time strategy games, of course, but scaling back on the scope means there\u2019s a lot less of building up a fleet and sending it on a long journey toward a target, and that\u2019s a good change that keeps downtime to a minimum.<\/p>\n

MIssions take us to very different and visually striking regions of space.<\/section>\n

Several of the mission maps are set within enormous metallic superstructures built by The Progenitor ancients who created the hyperspace cores, which are impressively massive but tend to be a bit industrial and flat. Others, however, take us to very different and visually striking regions of space. After the opening sequence has the Mothership lifting off and doing its shakedown cruise within the atmosphere of Hiigara itself (a first for this series unless you count the ground-based action of Deserts of Kharak), we get missions in a fast-moving asteroid field where you simply have to make it to the other side without your ships getting smashed, another where you must navigate through a crevasse in an enormous ice sheet undetected, lead a small strike group to take out explosive targets without support, and more. (It\u2019s a little silly that the ability to rotate the new horizontal Mothership on its axis exists, but as a fan of the distinctive Space Banana design of old I\u2019m pleased that we\u2019re given the option \u2013 even if it\u2019s just to fit through one tight, vertical space.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Maps frequently made me stop to appreciate their awe-inspiring scope, especially when we\u2019re reminded every so often that these ships we\u2019re throwing around are actually huge and full of people. That\u2019s something that\u2019s easy to forget when you\u2019re zoomed out and watching green and red dots disappear from the tactical map or seeing the distant flash of a capital ship flaming out.<\/p>\n

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Managing all of that is no small feat, of course, and the controls for Homeworld have always been a bit tricky, given that there\u2019s a whole extra axis of movement to account for than in most real-time strategy games. Homeworld 3 allows you to revert to the camera control scheme from Homeworld Remastered Collection, where your view is bound to a ship or other object and you can rotate around it, but by default you\u2019re given full control of the camera using WASD controls to fly through space, with the option of anchoring to a ship. I think I mostly prefer the old controls, simply because it\u2019s quite easy to accidentally drift off away from the action, but I\u2019m glad the option exists \u2013 and in fact, the degree to which the controls and UI are customizable is pretty impressive, with all manner of toggles for how you want them to behave. <\/p>\n

The pressure to get orders right on the first try is relieved by the pause button.<\/section>\n

But no matter what you choose, getting your ships to move to a precise location can involve swinging the camera around so you can view it from different angles, and that can be frustrating to pull off in a hurry. However, in the single-player campaign at least, the pressure to get it right quickly is completely relieved by the fact that you can pause (or slow time) with the push of a button and fiddle with things until you\u2019ve positioned your orders exactly the way you want them. <\/p>\n