Homeworld 2

"Oh, how I wanted to like this...."

Oh, how I wanted to like this game. The original Homeworld was groundbreaking in the graphics, sound and detail on the ships. I played and replayed it for hours. Beautiful fighters trailing streams through a nebula with blue backlighting and eerie music. Gameplay in the original was solid along with the storyline. Cataclysm was a nice continuation on this. I'll admit up front that I only got up to the 5th mission in Homeworld 2 before I decided not to waste more time and find a better game.

R.Glenn's review pretty much summed up my feelings about this game. It looks beautiful, it has amazing potential, but the single player experience is very lacking.

I'm just going to address gameplay issues here. Although I think a good storyline can add immensely to the game enjoyment (Wing Commander, Homeworld 1, etc.), my priority is the gameplay. This storyline didn't make me care in any way about the troops I was commanding.

Gameplay 4/10

I spent most of my time in Sensor view trying to command my large strike fleet. Thus, most of the very cool ship and battle graphics don't get seen. Since I wasn't really given time to concentrate on small battles, the great graphics were lost on my gameplay experience.

In the original, I enjoyed the time to gather resources, plan out my research and then experiment and build different ships. In the first few single player engagements, you're thrown into battle quickly without much time to really learn what works well and to determine your own style of play. Research does seem to be lessened also with fewer tech trees branching off and just some rather boring armor and speed upgrades.

I also struggled trying to find a particular type of ship when needed. Very possibly there's a quick way to just find the Resource Collectors or Elite Bombers within a strikegroup made up of dozens of ships, but I didn't find it. That just may be my fault though. Very frustrating though when it's very much a rock/paper/scissors approach to battle and I have to try to find the appropriate type.

On a plus side, I very much liked the implementation of the minelayers. Nice addition.

Battles scenarios were unoriginal and have been done before. I very much enjoy capturing enemy vessels and adding them to my fleet. But the unholy targeting of my Marine Frigates (they can be sitting far, far behind the main fleet and the enemy will still go through the fleet and attack them) and inability to capture larger enemy ships (such as the carriers and shipyards) in the early stages left me disappointed with this feature. It created a very, very linear experience.

I finally gave up this game when I got to a segment where I had to fight against movers - nearly indestructible small fighters that leveled my huge fleet even after getting the special EMP ability to use. After doing this for several tries, I saw no reason to continue. That isn't good game design - that's just a crutch because the designers can't find a better way to level out the player's experience.

Oh, how I wanted to like this game. I really, really did. But with the huge numbers of games out there, there's only so much time to play. Very sadly Homeworld 2 didn't live up to the earlier titles. I hope this review helped anyone considering this game.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 07/28/04