Homeworld 3 Review – Mostly Harmless

World War II shooters, point-and-click adventures, flight simulators… Many gaming genres and backdrops were proclaimed dead over the years; Some were resuscitated, some self-resurrected, and few came out of hibernation. None were gone forever because forgotten tastes, sooner or later, always return to fashion. Real-time strategies are current victims of swinging trends. Even if they nowadays seem pretty close to True Death, some convulsions can be observed.

One of those faint blips/ticking chitin legs is Homeworld 3. This latest entry in a quarter-of-century-old series tries to carve a place for itself by being better looking than its glorious fathers, ignoring the innovation that made the original unforgettable. I suppose that might be enough for the portion of the ancient fans and RTS audience suffering from substantial draught in this genre. But the lasting impression in another story. Speaking for myself, I can attest that everything about it started to fade after three days. Instead of a sequel for the ages, new owners of Homeworld IP created a competent but fast-dissolving, insta space strategy syrup.

Space Karans

Set roughly a hundred years after Homeworld 2, the game tasks you with fixing the anomaly that threatens the hyperspace travel. Homeworld 3 does a pretty clumsy job of setting the stage, as the intro, labeled „History of Homeworld“ must be manually initiated from the main menu. Having played both main games, a spinoff and a prequel (Cataclysm and Deserts of Kharak), as well as the latest remasters, I was familiar with its history and consciously ignored the video that also explained the nature of the latest threat. I was in the dark for a while, expecting the game to clarify stuff naturally. And it did, but clumsily.

The story, unfortunately, never reached any discernible heights. Playing as Imogen S’Jet, the young Hiigaran navigator interfaced with a Khar-Kushan mothership, you’ll be picking up the pieces of the previous expedition, which disappeared on a fact-finding mission about hyperspace-threatening anomaly. You’ll be spending the better part of the game searching for legendary Karan S’Jet who led that mission, learning about the mysterious queen hell-bent on acquiring precious hyperspace cores and becoming more powerful than anyone can imagine. That hooded female Thanos wannabe never bothers to explain herself, and the reasons for her fury and animosity remain obscured. Imogen and Karan are not much better. The young navigator will mostly make painful faces in the cutscenes, and Karan S’Jet acts and talks like she’s high on barbiturates. Sloppy writing, amateurish characterization and weird acting all around.

Asteroids, planetoids, space stations…

Homeworld 3 stayed true to previous games, offering a choice between a new, slightly altered control scheme and the original. The only real innovation comes via space terrain. Huge asteroids, planetoid surfaces, big space stations, and other objects represent the major difference compared to the (mostly) empty open universe of the first two games. In single-player, those obstacles are mostly for show, serving the purpose of holding super detailed textures that communicate something like „Look at us, we are the modern visuals OMG!“. The game occasionally nudges you to exploit tunnels and crevices for tactical purposes, but it’s just not worth the hassle. I suppose you can benefit from cover in PVP multiplayer, but every time I lost the match, it was because my opponent had better-optimized force and more intelligently used special abilities. I could have sneaked my fleet from behind and gotten destroyed just as easily.

Your ship selection is quite similar to before, now with a bit more specialized vessels and type limits. There are no spamable omnipotent wonders in Homeworld 3, so you are always forced to use a diverse fleet. Success also rides on special abilities, such as burst ability for Rail gun corvettes, which provide massive damage boosts, or utility benefits like Battlecruiser’s damage aura which affects nearby ships. Flat surfaces are useful for placing defensive turrets, so at least you don’t need to tie your mobile forces to mothership defense. You just park the big girl near the wall and make her a bed of auto guns and torpedo launchers.

War Games for the win

The best part of Homeworld 3 is the War Games mode. It’s procedurally generated, rogue-lite, co-op, or solo mode with a random sequence of levels and upgrades, with meta progression on top of everything. If you played No Return, The Last of Us II remastered roguelike mode, you know how the thing works, the difference in the form notwithstanding. You start every match with a carrier and a very limited, basic force. Getting more options and upgrades for existing buildable types requires fulfilling the mission objectives. Success rides on luck to some extent, and in the case of co-op play, the amount of coordination between players. Since single-player is over in seven to eight hours, I suspect War Games is where most people will end up. There’s also classic PVP multiplayer, where you can train with bots before you pull the trigger and engage real people.

Homeworld 3 is a somewhat competent shadow of its great progenitor from 1999. It’s also weaker than any of its sequels, including the grounded prequel from 2016, Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak. It looks superb, and even the Denuvo contagion doesn’t seem to affect the performance noticeably. Unfortunately, it has no character beyond a thin, superficial mask. This is not a sequel for the Ages. You’ll complete the campaign for the old times’ sake, and eventually dabble in War Games or multiplayer for a couple of days, but that would be it. You most certainly won’t get a tattoo of the Second Higaraan Empire, as one guy from my high school did. That’s a true story, btw, however embarrassing it may sound.

At least it’s not a tattoo of Khaleesi.

Review platform: PC

Developed by: Blackbird Interactive

Published by: Gearbox Publishing

(read our Review Policy for clarification)