Homeworld: Emergence

This is Homeworld: Cataclysm, renamed to avoid copyright issues with the newest holder of the "Cataclysm" name (guess who). If you have seen Mandaloregaming's video review, you know what this is, if you have not: This is a story as-if-not-more engaging as HW 1, with a twist, a horror twist ! that works ! Through brilliant voice acting you feel for the people you command, you fear for the lives of your ships and get thrown in, not as the fated heroes, but just normal people put through extraordinary circumstances. You resume command of a mother ship, not THE mother ship but a glorified mining barge and are tasked with increasingly difficult, well scripted and amazingly voice acted missions, scrapping fleets together to conquer the odds, with a few new and better rounded systems added onto the HW1 engine. I loved every minute of this game, its cheap when not on sale and a steal when on sale, seriously, get this.

Just finished up the single player campaign after what must have been about a decade or so since my last time playing. Still as good as I remember it and my favorite of the Homeworld Series in both terms of gameplay and narrative (sorry Deserts of Kharak, it's a really high bar to meet). For those who are unfamiliar with the Homeworld Series, it focuses entirely on Real Time Strategy in a truly 3D space environment (aside from Deserts of Kharak, which is the prequel). You start each game with strike craft, which consist of fighters and bombers, and slowly build and research your way up the tech tree over a campaign to the point where you are fielding battle cruisers and dreadnoughts. What makes Emergence (Cataclysm for those of us who have that name ingrained in our head, but I digress) different from the other games in the series is that you play as Kiith Somtaaw, a group of miners who aren't particularly well known for their prowess in combat. However, most of your ships occupy niche roles that fit between the more traditional factions you face to give you exceptional flexibility in how to deal with a given situation. For example, while the other factions field interceptors and different types of heavier corvettes, Somtaaw fields the Acolyte fighter that packs a single salvo of missiles to provide additional heavy firepower that other factions would have to bring in Attack Bombers to take on. This Acolyte fighter can also couple up with another identical fighter to form a light and nimble corvette that can also overload it's engines in order to emit an EMP burst against enemy ships to stun them and pick them off while they're drifting in space. While the gameplay itself is fairly interesting and dynamic, the story campaign is one of the better executed I've seen in a strategy game. You slowly transition from being a timid Mining Fleet to a battle hardened and unconventional Battle Fleet... and it actually makes sense in the context given. For those who are really into story and single player campaigns, I can't recommend this game enough. I'd recommend picking up the original game as well, it's a good game in its own right and definitely gets you immersed in the setting that this one takes off from.

It's not only a decade, but almost TWO decades now, since I played this game in my college days....people often prettify those good things in their memory to make them better than they actually were, but this, this game lives up my memory so well. The story is engaging, even tried to dig into the Bentusi. For all RTS with single player campaign I've played, this one does the story telling best. Voice acting have more personal emotions in it if compared to the "cold" HW1, some old fans don't like this, but in my opinion that's what it should be for a group of miners in galaxy rim..... they are not powerful fleet command, just commoners, and should act like so. I enjoyed both styles in the end. Music has the tension, direness, desperation feel all over it---again different from HW1's space opera feel, but again suits the game very well. It's a pity that there was never an OST released for this one. Lastly, gameplay is far better than HW1 due to really diversed two factions, while HW1 is really just two sets of ship models. In all, this is a must have if you enjoy HW1. Aside from the dated graphic and the ability to mod, I'd say it surpasses HW2 in every single aspect as well.

So glad that Gearbox didn't completely abandon this game and re-released the original version, even though they were unable to remaster it like the others. The story is a bit of a deviation from the other games but not an unwelcome one. Instead of battling with nefarious empires for the future of your race and fulfilling ancient prophecies, you'll go toe-to-toe with a mysterious (and hella creepy) alien organism inspired by creatures from movies like The Thing, or Alien. It's completely different in tone from what you would expect in a Homeworld game but the mystery surrounding the creature and the ability to play as an underdog caste of the Hiigaran society really adds to the depth of the storyline and expands the lore in a satisfying way. The biggest improvement over the original in terms of gameplay was the time compression. Back in the day it was a real godsend since you could finally skip those excruciating moments when you had to wait for resource collectors to finish their job before moving on to the next level. There are also other quality of life improvements, like the lack of fuel on small fighters or new, useful ships like the processor, which is way more useful than resource controller from the original. The biggest issue that I have with this game is that the scripting can sometimes get buggy and it makes some missions unnecessarily difficult. TL;DR - GREAT GAME! You should definitely grab it if you enjoyed the HW Remastered Collection - just squint your eyes a little and don't pay attention to the low res textures on ships. The backgrounds still look beautiful, even today.

This game is simply put a masterpiece in space based RTS that manages to inject a powerful bit of survival horror into the mix. The Tension the emotion, and the urgency are all there, with the constant threat of annihilation from the Beast. Every word i could say here would spoil a bit of the adventure for a person that hasnt experienced it yet. So all i will say is this, buy the game, play it, fight through to the end, and become elevated to "Beast Slayers".