Homeworld® Remastered Collection

I take issue with this statement: "As a free bonus, this collection also includes original, non-remastered versions of Homeworld Classic and Homeworld 2 Classic, preserving the purest form of the original releases with compatibility for modern operating systems. " Specifically, the word "preserving" is the one I take issue with. The original Homeworld had LAN play. Homeworld Classic does not, Gearbox inexplicably ripped it out. That's not preserving games, that's crippling them. Single player is still great, but the fact remains that for some people multiplayer was a large part of the experience, so 3 stars from me.

Homeworld 1 Remastered is in 2019 still broken, due to the engine change. The game looks nice but small ships, stances and formations have become a useless feature. Gameplay boils down to build big ships, select all, attack all and wait. So there is no more tactics or strategy involved. Ressources are not collected automaticaly after finishing the mission. The original is integrated in the collection, but I can't stand to play that pixelsoup anymore. Homeworld 2 Remastered plays better than 1 Remastered, but boils down to micromanagement in the campaign. which is ultimately not really fun. The user interface and the controls are well done, but he 3D movement is not necessary for both games, so the camera controls are needlessly cumbersome, and the overview is often lacking, what makes micromangament even more tedious. I guess there is a reason why so few rts-games use 3D space, and why Deserts of Kharak gave up on 3D space and uses hight advantage an a 2D plane.

The game might be fun, but I'm basically stuck on the 3rd mission and can't win it without going back to the second one and playing it differently. You might think I'm a bad player, just whining because I can't "get gud" and beat the AI. Unfortunately it's quite the opposite. I've played so well on 2nd mission that on the beginning of the next one I face about 7-9 powerful enemy ships. They destroy 2 out of 6 cryo pods before my entire fleet is out of the main ship. To make things worse, it all happens during cutscenes so I can't even maximize my micro management by making ships asap, rebinding ships and attacking the enemies. This is gamebreaking and other players reported this issue. To make it winnable I should basically destroy my own fleet before going into the next mission because the enemy power scales based on my own. Why even build more units then before going into the next mission? I would love to get a "patch" players made to turn this game breaking feature off, but I've found it only on steam so far. tl;dr The game forces you to play bad and if you don't comply, you will get punished in a way that makes the game unplayable and a chore. 1/5 do not recommend. Ps. You can technically play the "original" version where this feature was not implemented. From what I've read however it's a thing in original Homeworld 2.

- Homeworld 1: I'm gonna be harsh... Get over it and play the 1999 version. If you give it a chance, the overall audio-visual experience created all those years ago can still sweep you off your feet.. This game has a horror element that got lost with the remaster and you don't want to miss out on this. The audio is mindblowing and did not need ANY rework, ANY new voice acting, nothing; it was perfection. It's up to you, I'm just telling you that when you play the remaster then you are not experiencing what makes this game so special! - Homeworld 2: The remaster works better for this game, but HW2 is also the game that needed improved textures the least. The thing is that when I'm busy playing the game then I'm not really caring that much about the textures on the ships because I'm usually not zoomed in enough for it to shine. So in practice the difference between the original game and the rm is just not that impressive, I mean the effects in original Homeworld 2 still look really good as well so that's a wash too. I'm giving it four stars because I think the total package on offer here is worth the money, but by and large that's on account of the original games being that good. The remasters per se aren't really worth it I don't think.

This really focuses on the HW1 remaster. The main problem is the fact the game scales things up depending on the amount of ships you have. The Bugger your fleet the more ships get thrown at you. The other things are not that annoying but this makes the game really goddam frustrating. I could handle that until Mission 5. Sweet Mother of Jesus. Vanilla enemy force. 9 Assault Frigates, 3 Ion Cannon Frigates, 2 Destroyers, a single Carrier + Strike craft. Tough but manageable. Remastered. I didn't count the rest of the stuff (there was a LOT) as the sight of the 1 destroyer followed by 4 destroyers lumbering into view kind of broke me. I don't even know if that's all of them as that's where I ragequit. There could have been 5 more sitting there for all I know with yet another giant wave of smaller stuff. This punishes the Player for playing well and preserving your fleet, and encourages gaming the system By retiring your fleet and rebuilding it at mission start on the nest mission. Which would get tedious fast, Thankfully there is a fan patch that gives you the option of Removing this. Search for Homeworld Remastered 2.3 Players Patch. Apply it. It fixes bug and does further rebalancing as well as the option to remove the Scaling. So, basically... it breaks my heart, but I have to give this a 4/5 due to the scaling issue. Everything else I can forgive, but that broke me. If you want to play Vanilla HW1 then play the original included in this bundle and enjoy a 5/5 experience, graphics be damned. If they didn't include that then my score would be lower. Also, bear in mind I haven't tried the HW2 remaster yet, but again Vanilla HW2 is included so you can just play that if you have issues with scaling. HW2 is a very enjoyable game, different to HW2 but a 5/5 in its own right.