In its original state, the game is too shallow to beat the original in a number of ways. The game consists for 80+% in turn-based battles with an inflexible 90° cover system and weird line-of-sight rules for seeing enemies; aspects of the game I'm not too fond of at times. Also, base building is very space-restricted with few choices as to what to build next and where. In these surroundings, the game would be less than 2 stars for me, as there just isn't enough meat in there. What greatly improves the game is "Long War", a total conversion mod changing and adding a huge lot. With the mod, the game reaches the 4 stars I gave it, making it a long and hard battle against the aliens ("Dynamic War" possible). Mostly for comparison, I'd recommend playing the game as vanilla first. After that, "Long War" is the far superior experience, paired with "Second Wave" options of the player's choosing. (The mods also allows changing hundreds of variables in its config file, allowing the player to even more tailor the game to one's wishes. Plus, a debug build of the game executable allows using the console for cheating should missions be too difficult (happens to me rather quickly).) Recommended.
For the players who have never played Loom, on youtube you can find the currently missing "Audio Drama", which serves as an introduction to the game and the lore of the world. For a comparison between the original EGA version (currently not included) and this VGA, CD-Talkie version, I will point to this good review video by "DOS Nostalgia". Warning: SPOILERS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRJD0OrGulU
On the plus side, there is the new and more modern graphics engine and support for multiplayer (I think). Also, chances are that you will spend at least half an hour resizing and moving HUD elements about... What I don't like is the voice-over they did for all spoken dialogue. Both Homeworld 1 and 2 were worked over, and for people like me who have the previous voices stuck in their head and expect to hear them, the new style doesn't sound good. It's not just the different voices that bug me (at least for Homeworld 1; it might even be the same ones that voiced Homeworld 2 years ago), it's that emphasis and name pronunciation are now different. And I don't like it. At all... Yes, I also got the original versions, but for me these remastered ones don't replace the older ones and make them obsolete.
As the topic comes up from time to time, I'd like to comment on the existence of the soundtracks for the Quake and both Mission Packs. This release will place 3 CD-images in the cue/bin format in the installation folder, which DO have the soundtrack for Quake (game.cue), Mission Pack 1 (gamea.cue), Mission Pack 2 (gamed.cue). The problem is that none of these will be mounted automatically when you play the Windows version "GLQuake". You could either 1) search for unofficial mods/patches which add the music, or 2) mount the corresponding CD-image under Windows, and see if the game finds the music tracks. (Haven't tried that one.) 3) This Quake release also supplies the original DOS version of Quake (v1.08), which you can use to play all content with. Provided, that you mounted the corresponding CD-image correctly under DOSBox with imgmount (the .cue file has to be pointed at).
