I really love the game with the art, the soundtrack and also the voice-over. It is a real gem, as others have already pointed out. Especially the story is well thought of and has some ideas worth meditating over. What I didn' t like where the puzzles. They are - at least in part - rather frustrating. Things like "you have to do X three times and no one warns you, it might behave different on third try" and also the death mechanic was a bit arbitrary (from a conceptual point). Whereas some action (make yourself noticable) will lead to certain death in one situation, it is required to solve a puzzle in a different situation. In principle, the game (at least on modern style) autosaves, before you could die. So, why build in death as a concept at all? Other point and clicks manage by letting the character say something like "this would be incredibly stupid" and refusing to act. All in all: I wouldn' t have solved it without a walkthrough and yet I wouldn't wanna miss the game and story.
This game is so annoying in its grindy-non-rewarding way it is almost funny. You have to farm to get money (d'oh) and to do so, you have to water your crops daily. To do so, you need at least 42 clicks per game day. The quests are a joke. Most of the quests are like "I have forgotten my lunch and can't leave my post, would you help me?". Typically, to fulfill these requests, you have to grow some crops. This will be done strongly sequentially like "I need 5 tomatoes" (growing tomatoes takes 5 in-game days, meaning 210 watering clicks). After you finished growing the tomatoes, the same NPC tells you, he now needs 5 grapes (there go the next 210 watering clicks) and so on. If you do not have to grow crops, the quests are simply running around the world from person A to person b "buy me eggs at Aunt Christies'". Fighting is 95% boring and 5% panic. Boring as you soon get the feeling how to beat almost any enemy without really thinking and panic, because if you meet 3 per-se simple enemies, you must not get hit once or you are dead. Why? Those enemies might stun you for like 10 seconds and three of such enemies will reliably perma-stun you (one of them hits you after the other) and in the end, you can only sit by and watch your mighty warrior get killed. Also, there are opponents who are not aggressive unless attacked first. You might take a guess, what the KI usually chooses to attack if you do not pick an enemy? Well, sometimes even if you select a specific enemy because if said enemy only approaches you visual range, the lock might be lost and then the KI is free to choose an innocent bystander again. I am now on roughly 2500 watering-clicks within the game and the original quest ("prevent calamity") is long gone. I have no idea, how re-inventing pizza, brewing refreshing beverages and farming the same bosses over and over again gets me closer to rescuing the world.
If you are expecting a successor of homeworld (cataclysm) you will be disappointed. While in the original homeworld game (and especially cataclysm) there was a good balance between fleet-management and micro-management, DOK shifts that balance completely in the direction of micro-management. Without using the special capabilities of your individual units and keeping track of which unit goes where, wou will very soon find yourself without any fleet at all. This would be ok, if the controls were suited to support you in this direction, but they are not. Even basic things like telling you, which units are currently selected have been redacted from homeworld (where you had a textual representation and could select similar ships). While losing the concept of formations might be forgivable in itself, it also gets rid of one important fleet management technique: In HW if you click on one unit within a formation, you select the entire formation. This is not possible here. If you have not pre-arranged your units within the 10 preselection slots, you have to select them one-by-one. Be aware, you might accidentally send your carrier arround, because it is damned easy to select the carrier while selecting freshly produced units. The visuals make it easy, not to realize, which ships got selected as well. All in all it feels like home-world with your mouse hand tied behind your back. The petty is, it looks really nice, has fantastic sound and the voice actors did a good job. It could have been a really great game, if it hadn't been left behind the original homeworld games with respect to unit-management.
