Recent reviews by Planesman22

Best roamer I've played.

A cinematic masterpiece, one of the few games that allows one to explore his or her imagination.

I loved the Professional setting, this should bring the right amount of thrill and 'risks'.

The sheer conceptualization of Boneworks and its related mechanics was on another level...

But in terms of content, I think this stands equally tall. Consider this as a second campaign to Boneworks and is fine if you are here for some extra content.

When you get to some of the fun stuff, just be very careful. I have my VR legs and can do smooth locomotion for days ... but this game got me so sick I had to quit VR for a week. Attempting to finish this game without being extremely comfortable in Pavlov, Onward, or other fast paced titles is VR suicide.

Now very few games brings me back like the first time I've played Skyrim...

yet for some reason this game hits just like it.

Was pretty hard for me, especially with the special ending.

Play this if you have the will-power to hone this game's demand. The story was pretty good.

Wow

To be frank, I didn't know it was possible to continue this title. The team has blown up many of my negative presumptions (extensive marketing, pricing, staff firings, delays...).

Perhaps Cunningham was overly worried about remaining faithful? It's definitely a hard comparison when you look at HW1/2, which is a shame because the QA, Devs, and art team did a fantastic job!

Play Recommendations:
Go hard. I am not the best RTS player out there, but this level strikes a good balance between being challenging and not too punishing.
Alt + Right Click a unit to scuttle or retire it. There are no buttons nor key for this, at least in my playthrough, and it wasn't explained in the tutorials either.
Use the P key! If you're slow like me, play at 50% speed haha.
It should take around 15 hours to finish the campaign.

To the Devs, and mostly to Cunningham:

The DLC and addons are where I think this game could really shine. You've built solid mechanics, there are no crashes or glitches with a ton of units! But so were Homeworld 1 and 2. So what sets this game apart?

I personally find the cutscenes and punchlines corny at best... We're in our mid-20s, if not 30s or 40s by now, right? Think of titles like Skyrim and Half-Life... Do you really need to invest so much in the cutscenes to make the game great? The story was just passable; it felt more like "finishing a job started from HW2" than trying to stand on its own. You need to pivot the story around the player, not the new navigator. You can't assume we care about her—it's the player's adventure! Yes, writing a good story is hard, but it's even harder to watch all the effort go into almost a half-hour long monologue about a world I wasn't a part of. WHY should I help her? WHY should I care about the Hiigara? Let us connect with the character through gameplay, not by watching a movie. Your homework assignment is to read The Odyssey, The Lord of the Rings, and The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy... You start with nothing, you build up, and watch your actions shape the world.

A lot of the magic of Homeworld is in the big battles and the sandbox. I think the campaign had only one or two missions that were large enough for strategic play. Yes, there are some unique ideas! But I think that the game was cut a bit short... There is no way you guys made the entire corvette menu only to have one class available... And is there a real reason why players cannot capture carriers and battlecruisers? They look shiny, and I paid to have fun here, not to follow some "vision of balance" of yours so that "the end game could be challenging enough." We are highly functional RTS players; we don't need your rules telling us what we can't do, especially from something we were used to in HW1/2...

Multiplayer is kind of middling in general. In skirmish, I am right next to other motherships (map size issue). I lost interest after the first time I played the roamer mode... too simple, too reliant on actions per minute, where everybody builds torpedo frigates and anything else barely works...

I wish you luck in pulling in some form of profit and survive. it sounds like I had a lot of negatives but there just isn't any new and exciting space RTS out there right now ... and I really wanted HW3 to hit just right. Your team did a fantastic job in a lot of the stuff.. just not the story and playstyle. I still don't think is too late to pivot towards mechanics that can make something more meaningful. Because here we are with a game that probably won't satisfy the general audience, even though I think you've really tried. And, though I am very thankful as a HW fan, I think the original Homeworlers will notice the dullness of HW3. It's a game with a phenomenal backend but somewhat untouched potential. I will stay tuned for the DLCs.

I notice that there is a pretty heated debate on the battle generator. I for one did find it frustrating at times... The game allows you to set task forces and, even with a moden setup of 3-4 CVS and 6 DDs, you will get small engagements of 1-2DD vs a few enemy CAs.

But to be frank that is but a small thing when you really look at the level of effort this dev (and I think it was like 1-3 guys!) was able to put into it. I think they took pride in their work and I have no question in their strong understanding of naval combat. This is a game that was both fun and historic, however I hope that the devs could perhaps include some of these minor adjustments (listed bellow), some of your customers are just there looking for that "cheap high":

>Aviation industry limitations for China. Yes I agree, but this should be optional, or rather the player could choose to invest in this industry to have it unlocked.
>Remove research limit capped at 12%.
>More lethal submarines. Yes historically is true that submarines, with some exceptions (Taiho), isn't known to sink capitals, but if the player invest heavily in submarines and the enemy has low ASW tech, they should pay dearly....
>Option for players to requst their government to initiate diplomatic alliances.
>Make guided torpedos work/stop missing. You can't justify unlocking advanced guided acustic torpedos and more than half of your torpedos miss.
>Doctrine for if player has aircraft carriers in division, then all ships in the division should show up.
>Engagement distances with carrier division should be a few times further than in game.
>Is the navy that sets timeline requiremetns for research, not the industry. Maybe the navy could set longer deadlines for higher quality proposals?
>Option to completely remove (division will be handed off to AI because is too far away) when player unlocks radio communication. I understand where this is coming from, but I think this extra level of inpredictibability is more distracting than challenging.

The Pros:
Super fun carrier management and warfare.
Was on the edge throughout my game play.
80% Bug free as of April 30th 2022, no hard crashes yet (Able to beat the entire game).

The Cons:
You don't get to see things get blown up.
Upgrades are slow.
Mistakes are going to be very very painful.
Makes you wish you had more carriers.
You are practically fighting IJN solo.

General Impression:
This is a unique game! If you ever wanted to be an aircraft carrier commander, this is it. There is something about executing your authorities as a captain that feels super good.
I have only encountered an minor bug about a few characters not able to move between locations from time to time, (but eventually the bug goes away if i come back later.)

How this games works:
You are a commander of a carrier. You can:
*Tell the ship where to go
*Fully manage the deck of the ship to land and takeoff planes
*Send your planes off to scout/strike enemy forces
*Pick tactics on your strike missions using a 5-card system where, depending on who you are smashing, you need to change up your tactics due to enemy modifiers.
*Semi-automatic damage control management
*Allocate sailors to adjust manpower on several stations accordingly
*Scream for help from your escorts when things goes bad.
*Sit silently at night reflecting on your choices that made dozens of pilots drown.

Hints:
The game's continue button after debriefing might stop working towards the end. The work around is to hit ESC and hit return to harbor. After that, the game does recognize that you've beat the mission and you can move on without issues.

In game stutter progressively gets worse and worse until it becomes unplayable. Medium settings with shadows and bunch of stuff turned to low, on a RTX 2060.

Cannot recc. the full price tag at this point because of this. I hope they fix this soon (with co-op support) so I can change this review.