Homeworld: Emergence

I admit I am most biased in favor of Cataclysm. I love the cheesy story I love the whole idea of the beast. Is it well acted? not really! is it well written? OH MY NO. That's part of its charm for me anyway it's a truly camp scifi RTS and there really is nothing else like it on the market even today.

Disclaimer I tried finishing the game on highest setting (very hard), but ended up restarting on one setting lower (hard) due to the game being… well, too difficult. I recommend people familiar with Homeworld to not start with highest difficulty. Tips on running this game https://www.gog.com/forum/homeworld_remastered_collection/homeworld_emergence_in_dx9_32bit_1920x1080_60fps If you used dgVoodoo before, then you are in luck – aside from janky launch where initial company-logo videos run at low resolution, the rest of the game can be made to run with dgVoodoo wrapper. TL;DR It has great story and some great mission mechanics that keep you on your toes. Unfortunately if the only Homeworld you know is the Remastered versions then this may be more difficult to get into because it doesn’t benefit from years of game development progress that’s been made when Remastered collection got made. And since the source code was lost – we will probably never get an accurate Remaster of this game. Not so TL;DR This could be considered a story-campaign DLC with all-new units for the original Homeworld. This story takes place not long after the first game, and is not canon for Homeworld 2 (damn shame, since story is good). You will play as a mining fleet that answers a distress signal from fellow Hiigarans. Little do they know that their involvement in battle will set off a series of events that will release a new, dangerous enemy upon the galaxy. It will be up to those miners, barely having any means to combat such a threat, to save the world from danger. Lowdown If you liked original Homeworld, but for some insane reason you skipped this treasure – play it now. If you liked Remastered and didn’t play the classics, know that it will take more effort to learn to play this as it lacks many QOL features of the Remastered engine. I still recommend playing it though.

I never knew this game existed until I heard it being mentioned during the homeworld remaster. It's shame they were unable to remaster it but GoG at least brought us back the original and I thank them for that. If you are coming from the remaster, the lack of camera pan and some of the other features in HWRM are going to be a little missed but other than that this is as good a game as the original HW and a very interesting story campaign. Highly recommended

I think it actually benefitted me, in hindsight, that I played Homeworld 1 and 2 before Emergence. While both 1 and 2's campaigns had their moments ("Kharak is burning" comes to mind), there's really not much going on as far as characters are concerned. Karan S'jet, overall, doesn't really evolve much as a person. The captain of the Kuun-laan, on the other hand, does feel like they become more confident as the campaign progresses, and isn't nearly as stone-faced as Karan throughout the game -- there's regret, anger, vengence, and relief shown with enough restraint that it remains professional, while making one feel so, so much more invested in the fleet. If you're here because you watched MandaloreGaming's video on this game, spoilers or not, play it anyways for the story. There are some really satisfying moments in there I won't soon forget... I'm sorry about Gozan IV though.

HW:C was my introduction to the franchise, and considering how much I love HW as a franchise I'd say it was a good introduction.