I never played this on its original release, neather any of the homeworld games, but i play old games and indie games strategy games often, and i never seen an UI so counterintuitive that i can't catch without some manual or instructions. If you already know the game and you want the nostalgic run, then go ahead, have some good fun, if you never played it, don't even try, keep up with the amazing remasters of the other two games and wait for the third one, but avoid this one like a plague
This game has been marketed as made from the same creator of Age of Empires, clearly he wasn't the best part of the team. Gameplay is ok and ambicious, but the campaigns are terrible, boring, bad designed, and sometimes ruined by the dumb writing applied, music is great.