PROCLAIMER: This video is not a paid ad, unlike most of the others. I’d never take a bribe to shill a game or otherwise give preferential or censored coverage. I’m a Homeworld player of 25 years since the demo of the first game, and I wanted to make this to evaluate Homeworld 3 and give my findings impartially and with basis in my expertise and history with the games.
And I really hope they get addressed and this game launches in a far better state than this. People waited years or even decades for this. They really deserve better. Part of me hopes that this demo was someone at the company trying to get proof from the fans that the game needed to be delayed, to get more time for it. But it already had so much time. It already got delayed over and over again. And now there are even more layoffs. What can they even do in 3 months? Do they even have enough people left to do the patching?
See my first 2 hours of Homeworld 3 uncut, here:
https://youtu.be/PwSjHjnTXrs
#homeworld #homeworld3 #blackbird #gearbox
0:00 intro – delays and layoffs
1:35 no rebinding
2:30 ability buttons
15:40 dragged selection boxes
16:55 dragged target boxes
17:55 no ATTACK MOVE
26:50 flanking bonuses absent (?)
28:20 big explosions are muted, played down
31:00 ion cannons are a bit weird
32:15 no modules now? ok
35:50 no unit veterancy that DoK introduced? ok
36:20 the mothership design is weird man
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This is what happens when you put designers on games that have never played anything but DOTA and similar games since they where born..
It killed DOW3. It will kill this to. For ever. There wont be a HW4.
liked because this has to be the number one video about homeworld 3 for a while 🙂
HW1 was a quarter century ago. Oof
It's sad how much further away they've strayed from the mechanics of Homeworld 1. The Devs have a couple of months to stop reinventing and stay on the same course of its legacy. Sadly to say, the more they drift away from the classic, the more they drift away from critically acclaim awards, which Homeworld 1 had achieved.
never saw your channel, your accent is fucking wonderful
This video needs more eyes.
They'll probably delay the game again because they cannot possibly consider adding missing features / fixing all the bugs / replacing the shitty abilities in under 3 months.
I can agree with everything, except for the Mothership design, it's ok, nothing amazing, but not terrible either.
only HW2 had enforced classic Mothership/Main design and HW1 always let you go with flat style Taidan Mothership.
and ngl the HW3 pancake is just taking Classic Mothership, squishing it up, simplifying it couture and laying it on it's side.
the main issue is lack of details with it being 99% basic flat hull texture with gigant logo slap on it.. all other HW games had a lot of detail and texture variance…
I have played both homeworld one and two and never knew there was directional armor.
homeworld 2 all the way through. Still flanking was a good idea though because the weapons were not pointing at me.
Cataclysm had the ability keys down right. Abilities on most ships were situational actual abilities that provide you some sort of benefit. Mimics would close themselves and they could do that to be suiciders. Acolytes had missiles. They could fire ones in the needed to redock in order to refresh their missiles. Ramming frigate could physically push enemy ships You can't deal with right now away. The ACV's could EMP ships to slow them down or make them stop fighting Temporarily
wtf I dont need cooldown abilitys I just want a regular ballanced game
I'm glad you're saying this. Everything I've seen about HW3 seems… not great. The controls and interface look poor, and even in official promotional footage I'll notice AI ships getting stuck in the "terrain" of the map and all sorts of odd behavior.
I won't buy the game with the APM bullshit special ability crap.
It's like a woke nightmare. Just reinventing stuff that was perfect the first time round but now applying some stupid changes that nobody wants instead of just updating it with new visuals, story & units. They've shitted on the original so that they will release this crap for consoles.
This is why I never pre-purchase anymore.
I don't play RTS much but the APM thing smells like a chasing Esports kind of thing.
Oh no, it looks awful. My favorite sci-fi strategy series.
well they better have mod support but the game will need some reballance fixings
This game is absolutely dead on arrival. Not touching it with a 10-foot pole.
preach
Homeworld 3 the Arcade game. Not only that but if you try the Mobile game of Homeworld .. You understand way this game is as it is.
Immersion is total absent and the space Opera homeworld 1 and 2 was is not here.
They pulled back the relese after the demo, maybe to play homeworld 1 and 2 and get back to the board.
Edit: I wish to add, when i play the homeworld 1 for the first time, i could just sit back and watch the ship move, cannon fire and recoil. Projectiles where a physical element of the game.
As someone new to the homeworld series I found the lack of ability automation incredibly annoying. I understand forcing manual input injects skill into the game, but as someone who already has to worry about 20+ ships and their positioning, build order, resources, AND just controlling my camera, pressing the hotkey for the ability of each of my ship types is extremely annoying.
Glad I found this video, going to wait for a nice discount before going for this one. I had no clue they removed so much from the game.
All very good points and I fully agree mate. As happy I am to see Homeworld come back I was just left confused by the demo.
My personal pet peeve is that all strike craft are freaking GIGANTIC compared to the Carrier and even the Mothership. It's hilarious to watch when your Carrier hyperspaces in and is literally a clown car spewing 20+ interceptors from Sajuuk knows where…
Also no voice chatter confirming which group is under attack or confirming orders. Not to mention all the chatter is mostly fluff and has little to do with the situation on the field. No more "This is group two engaging enemy frigate. Fuel low." to actually inform you about the state of things.
No attack move?? WHYYY And those explosions? Why reactor always goes off?! I thought that new engine will allow them for more than one effect… Big ships should die diffrently when pierced by ion canons and diffrently when they are bombarded by smaller weapons, you know, multiple small explosions, lights go off and ship floats dead with many holes across its hull. Even when reactor goes off, where is fire? Where is cloud of small burning pieces and burning oxygen… Im not buying that game on release if they will not fix at least half of mentioned in this video issues. Maybe modding community will fix the game but that should not be the case, i want base game to be fun…
I have the strong vibe that they originally had fuel and someone went. Its not accesible enough.
It only takes a short glance at previous or contemporary titles to understand how to do abilities per unit well. Even the high APM of StarCraft has features like energy or health cost to make you think about how you use unit abilities. Red Alert 3 had no mana system but they had cooldowns, statistical changes, costs in money, and even fundamentally and sometimes permanently changing or destroying the unit in the process. The comically short CD’s for “same but better’ abilities really detracts from the gameplay and turns your strategy game into a QTE with extra steps.
It doesn’t help that these abilities are comparatively boring as well. Cataclysm/Emergence did something very similar with many units having a special ability or two but they all had niches, trade offs, and even detriments.
The Acolyte was interceptor, bomber, and corvette all in one but it depended on how you used it’s abilities that made it effective in these roles, like linking Acolyte’s into ACVs to EMP a Heavy Cruiser then unlink as they maneuver behind it to missile it’s weaker sides. Alternatively you could be fighting assault frigates and need to divide your missiles between them to efficiently fight them.
Hive Frigates could eat fighters with their Swarmers but any another dedicated anti fighter unit would eat its Swarmers in turn. While the Swarmers didn’t do much damage they could distract capitals reasonably well so your Acolytes without ACVs or EMPs could still get their missiles off.
Ramming frigates replaced ion frigates and filled a similar niche but differently. Even infected it could still shove a Beast capital out of the fight long enough for your other ships to leg it. Also while comically ineffective fighters they weren’t completely harmless and would smash through stationary Defenders in the way. The ramming also required multiple Ram Frigates to move larger ships, necessitating a larger investment and probable loss.
Leaches were creative in their use with them being slow anti-cap assassins, spies, or even ad-hoc resource harvesters by leeching off an enemy capital mid fight to help recoup losses.
Ship’s like the Destroyer and Multi-Beam Frigate didn’t have abilities but had passive intricacies that made them important like the Multi-beams maneuvering like corvettes rather than frigates and having wide firing arcs of near instant hit weapons to counter enemy Acolytes before they stunned you or beast missiles before they hit, and the Destroyer being the first infection-resistant ship to let you stand and fight beast capitals without sacrificing things, especially the Beast Mothership.
The Dreadnaught had an ability to permanently give up one of its ion beams but gained the repulse weapon to ping pong siege cannon shots and disrupt enemy formations while not affecting its own fighter escort.
Speaking of, the Command Ship for both Beast and Somtaaw had modules and abilities that couod decide how the game went with the Siege Cannon of the Somtaaw and the health-drain overclock of the Beast Mothership, as well as its own infection beam.
Even the Processor, the basic resource controller, had enough guns and repair beams to basically be an assault and 2 support frigates in the shape of a destroyer parading as a resource controller. While all auto cast or passive, it still made it a uniquely useful ship in fleet fights where workers are easily picked off but you need a repair ship, or need something to buy time early in the game so you put 2 next to each other and they get exponentially tougher with healing eachother and fighting at the same time.
Thanks for the critique on the demo, really making me reevalutate about getting the game if this is how its going to be on release. Will be keeping tabs on this channel if you plan on putting out a release review
Well, I guess it's time to drop this one from my Steam wishlist.
Seems like a gameplay downgrade from the past titles, UI looks cluttered and stressful, graphics aren't really doing it for me, and all in all I don't see myself having fun with it.
I expected more from this one, and the already un-wishlisted Vampire the Masquerade 2 (huge delays, abuse of some key original stuff before firing him, all signs indicated a woke sjw open world far cry).
i lost faith when i seen CGI S'jet instead of the 2d concept art portrayals. there's just something about the concept art that makes homeworld what it is.
The way time to kill has constantly gotten shorter has been my absolute least favorite part. Back in 1 I was able to keep Raider Ion frigates and multi beam frigates all the way to the end of the game through very careful play and aggressive protecting of my lil babies. But after Catacalysm there was basically no point in caring about anything smaller than a Destroyer and now it looks like I only need to care about the Mothership. I hate the idea of building a ship… loading it up with brave and willing Higgarans… then sending it to its absolute death for a short fight then build another. It makes losing a ship mean nothing.
Great observations and commentary! The supposed 'RTS revival' is definitely suffering from what appears to be designers that don't fully understand what made earlier games in the series great. Company of Heroes 3 is another one that – even a year after launch – is struggling to catch up to what it once was. I hope the devs at Blackbird get to see this and take it in a constructive way to help them get back on track.
I enjoyed your use of the term 'orthogonal' to describe what abilities should be (complementary trade offs) rather than spammable boosts. These are the foundations of good game design that should be established from the beginning of the process and have supporting elements designed around them to accentuate the game loop. It feels like modern titles put all the effort into updated graphics/physics engines and somehow lost sight of the actual gameplay mechanics. What's really odd is how common it is with 'revival sequels'.
This is the biggest downgrade in gamming history, all the improvements done 25 years ago are butchered out of the franchise. It is sad to say the least
I hope HW3 takes in your feedback, because moving while firing is a staple in RTS.
issue that I see without digging into details is I look at gameplay and it looks like a game that has been released 10 years ago- I was hoping for some next gen- really get me immersed kind of graphics.
From a vid Blackbird released you are supposed to rotate the mothership into it's correct vertical position. I guess a LOT of people (me included) said it's wasn't a mothership if it was horizontal. sm
I knew they were doing to f this up. I knew it.
R.I.P. Karan.
You forgot the complete removal of hyperspace altogether regardless of game mode.
Also, spoiler:
You are going to be sorely disappointed by the mothership thingy with Karan. The Khar-Sajuuk, the sister ship and predecessor to the Khar-Kushan, is basically just a copypasta of the Khar-Kushan except with phased cannon array. It's still as ugly as the Khar-Kushan overall. Also, Karan sacrifices herself along with the Khar-Sajuuk, so that's extra disappointing.
Sad to see Homeworld being another victim of MODERN GAMING