User Reviews (11 - 21 of 123)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Veteran Strategy PC Gamer

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 17 / 29
Date: July 21, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is my first review from what I've seen so far.

Everything on this game is being tweaked. People complain about the graphics, yet one must know more before considering such comments valid.

Homeworld 2 continues to dominate even its superiors. ORB is so basic you can count the polygons and vertices, zooming out and moving dots around degrades it further. The best computer takes much time to load such an odd game, as its saving grace stands only to satisfy a VERY hungry gamer.

HW2 will have slightly less graphic strength than Hegemonia, because that is the point. This is when compared to Hegemonia, where you have excellent graphics, but few ships at any given time. Players can hardly call what they have "fleets". Veteran, non-biased players supplied this very information. HW2 allows for hundreds of ships from entirely distinct races. Swarms of detailed fighters rage around massive captital ships protecting one-another with unheard-of Artificial Intelligence. The game is optimized for lower-end PC's as a mercy to those who haven't followed the curve of PC's. Those with Higher systems are treated when the engine automatically (and manually if you like) adjusts to use your systems strength, activating dorment "Eye Candy". This is to enhance game-play, so that you can even play the game at all.

Finally, the games story and sound technology have Never EVER been beaten, and there are absolutely no negative points to give this game. Dubbed "Perfect" by all credable sources with the original, this improved generation sequel will test the merits and validity of reviewers to come. May it yet again receive an unbiased "Game of the Year" from all reviewers as before. This game is "the most advanced tactical game ever" - part 2.

A short review

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: October 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is a sequel to its revolutionary predecessor Homeworld, the first 3D real time strategy game. This game itself however, is not revolutionary. It's just the old Homeworld with some graphical improvments. This means, great graphics, drains your video card a lot, and not much more in terms of everything else- music, sound, gameplay, story, etc. In fact, the story is much worse then before. For those who don't care about stories, then I should also point out that the gameplay isn't better neither. The variations of squad formations in the original is completely gone, which is a huge loss to players who likes playing fighter squads. Almsot all previous fighter strategies are eliminated through this change. The game does allow 3 types of fleet formations, but these options are as trivial as choosing whether you want fighters, frigates, or capital ships on the front. Unit's target selection is automated, so each ship engages within an area the units it kills best. This may be nice for some, but there's no strategy to it other then pumping out a large fleet of everything. It can be boring because there's no longer battle strategies, only research and production matters- you won't see someone beating another player with the same type of units in lesser quantities because he's better at battle-micro anymore.
There is not a lot of improvments with unit variations. If you expected to see lots of new ships and factions, be disappointed.
A lot of players I talked to say the single player campaign is too hard.
Music and sound is mediocre. Certainly not better then the original.
For fans who owns a pumped up computer with high end video cards, buy it for the nice graphics. Otherwise, it's too expensive to pay for such lack of innovations.

Amazing space combat and multiplayer

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: September 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Strategy gamers and space fans rejoice! Homeworld 2 is out and the graphics, gameplay and multi-player options are simply amazing!

When the original Homeworld came out, it was stunning. The complexities of fully 3 dimensional space combat had been brought into a computer game, with rich graphics, sounds and plotline. It took them several years to come out with Homeworld 2, and it was worth the wait.

The built in tutorial really helps you learn the complex systems you'll need to manage. You have groups of ships, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Instead of normal combat where you only have to worry about driving along roads or crossing mountains, in Homeworld 2 there are the full 3 dimensions to work in space. You can sneak around behind someone ... or you can sneak around UNDERNEATH someone.

The graphics are simply amazing, with the tiny details of the ships and the vastness of scale when you put a tiny scout up against a huge mother ship. You really feel like your actions are affecting a real situation, and the plotline is very engaging. It's hard to stop playing at 2am even when you're sleepy.

The multiplayer game also ensures that even when you finish the campaign, you've only just begun to play. You can easily spend months and months challenging players around the globe to a number of scenarios. In essence, the gameplay can go on forever - or at least until they come out with Homeworld 3 someday!!

Highly, highly recommended.

An improvement over the first two.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: October 12, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Homeworld 2 is a great improvement upon the first two installments in the Homeworld universe. Everyone probably mentions the boost HW2 got in the graphics department first, and although I am impressed, I am more pleased with what they did to improve the gameplay.

The first big improvement was the way they changed the way the various ship strenghts and weaknesses. In HW1 and HW:C, the capital class ships (Destroyers, Cruisers, ect) would chew up fighter and corvette class ships without taking much of a beating. That and the fact that they were also good at killing large ships discuraged me from purchasing fighter/vettes. HW2 has changed that by taking away the really powerful anti-fighter/vette weaponry from the cap ships (ie the missile launchers) and replacing them with large and ungainly anti-cap ship torpedo launchers, making it possible for the player to take out a Battle Cruiser or a bunch of destroyers with nothing more than the lowly attack-bomber; unless, of course, the enemy has brought some smaller escorts to guard against that very move.

Another big improvement is the ship limit built into the game. In both HW1 and HW:C, ships shared the limited supply spots based on their size, allowing you to go for a handfull of capital ships (which took more supply spots), a large swarm of fighters (which took less supply spots), or a compromise with a few of each. In HW2, they have changed that by giving each TYPE of ship their own supply spots. Now, instead of having to worry about whether you can buy a fighter and still have enough supply for a frigate, you can build both (as long as you haven't filled up your Frigate spots and your Fighter spots). The benefit to this system is that it allows players to buy up as many capital ships as they have spot for, AND buy some fighters, vettes, and frigates to escort them to the enemy Mothership.

Besides Motherships and Carriers, you get to make Shipyards as well. Shipyards are the only facilities that can make the super-capital class Battle Cruisers. Furthermore, Relic expanded upon HW:C's use of Mothership/Carrier add-ons by making you build modules in order to build certain ships and upgrades. For instance, you need a Frigate Module on your Mothership in order to build frigates from your Mothership. Other modules include Research Modules, Hyperspacing Modules, Gravwell Generator Modules, and a host of others that you can build to "customise" your Mothership/Carrier/Shipyard, and the limited number of spaces for these modules makes choosing which to build on which platform a tricky situation.

Pros:
-Strike craft can take out unescorted capital ships
-Strike craft come in formations that are rebuilt with no additional cost as long as one of them docks with a friendly Mothership/CV/ect
-Customizable "modules" available for Motherships, Carriers, Shipyards, and Battle Cruisers (BCs can't build ships, but they can get upgrades that increase the combat effectiveness of nearby friendly ships, modules that enable them to hyperspace jump, and some others)
-Subsytem targetting allows you to take out the engines, modules, or sometimes certain weapons on the larger enemy vessels. This can be critical in those battles where you really need to keep that Destroyer from closing with your Mothership, or you want to take out the resourcing point so the enemy Carrier can't dock workers.
-Great graphical improvements over the previous two incarnations
-"Skirmish vs CPU" mode where you can fight against one or more AI enemy.
-Multiplayer capable with up to 6 players.

Cons:
-The storyline completely ignores the events from HW:C (probably because Relic wasn't involved)
-Although the single-player campaign is fun, it has a limited replayability. Multiplayer combat (or skirmish against the AI) is the way to go after playing the single player version.
-There is no mission editor (not surprising, but something that could have helped with single-player replayability)

One Game to Change Them All

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: August 26, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The First Homeworld was given a special life I've not seen in games before. The Manual was filled with a race's history, their culture, their people. It read like a novel by one of the great Science Fiction authors. Mission 3 truly brought out everything I had learned about the Higaarans from the Manual..and burned it before my eyes. The background music (Adagio For Strings, Samuel Barber's piece, but done with vocals), the sight of the burning world...not being able to save the first Cryo-Pod before the Taidaan Frigates destroyed the 100,000 lives sleeping within..The knowledge that a beautifully made culture was gone...
It did what no other game, movie, or story could do, and hasn't ever since.

It made me cry.

The 'expansion' if it could be called that, Cataclysm, did not have the same effect...no, instead, it did something different, something else again. Yes, I've been surprised, yes, I've been startled. Yes, thanks to Dark Forces I'm deathly afraid of venturing into water for fear of dianogas.

It made me cringe. The screams of your crews as they died a horrible, painful death. A single snip of conversation embodies that game for me: "Wow...look at these organic circuts..we could learn so much from this!" "...Just keep in mind that those were once your Kith-Brothers and Sisters."

And now Homeworld 2 comes. It has plenty to live up to, but I can guarantee it'll meet the challenge and immerse you in a universe thats whole, something which many, many stories could come from.

Homeworld 2 - A Gamers Review

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: September 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Hi There,
first of all I want to say that Homeworld is one of the few games that keep me playing it over and over again. When the first part was released i played it every night and day and it was even more fun playing it with friends on LAN.

I've downloaded the Homeworld II Demo yesterday and I must say that it is so impressive. The 2 missions gave me a good overview about the changes in gameplay and graphic. I pre-ordered HW2 1 hour ago and I will count the minutes until it will arrive.

HW4ever

Homeworld 2 is GREAT!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: September 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is a great game. I got it as soon as I got out of school. I drove through a very nasty rain storm, all the way across town to get, and I did not regret it the slightest. Last night I stayed up until about 2:00 in the morning, I have not done that since I got Homeworld back in 1999. It takes a great game to keep me concious for that amount of time. They have smoothed out the interface to make it easier for players who have not played any Homeworld before, but it took a long while for me to get accustomed to it. The graphics are amazing and even putting all the settings on low make the graphics far superior to Homeworld's or Cataclysm's. I have been waiting impatiently for Homeworld 2's release since I first heard of it, and I feel no regret for being so eager about its release, unlike a slimeball of a game called C&C Generals which was the worst excuse for a rip-off of C&C I have ever seen! But Anyway! This is a great game and the capital ships are so immense, they make heavy cruisers from Homeworld look like mechanical fruitbats. If you are a fan of Homeworld, then go buy this! If you are not, then go buy it! AND if you hate RTS, fleet based combat, or you're just a total idiot, then go buy it!

Sometimes the little things just don't matter...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: October 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Ever since this game came out, I have been playing it and watching to see what people on the web thought of it. Most it would seem love the game immensly. A few, however, have brought up some good points about Homeworld 2's shortcomings.

These shortcomings are very real. The Tactics that were required to beat Homeworld and HW Cataclysm are simply not as prevelent. The only time I really needed to use a Defense Field Frigate was for a mission specific objective. I rarelly used capture vehicles because I was never very low on money and the cost of lost Marine Frigates was higher than winning an enemy warship. I liked the story enough but in comparrison to the origional, it was sorely lacking. Even the voices from HW and HWC were more soulful and gripping. And one argument that I have yet to see is the new weakness of frigates, which seem to die with alarming speed once in combat. Only four to five heavy missiles from a destroyer will kill.

But as I read all the complaints and found myself agreeing, I also realized that it didn't matter. HW2 is just as incredible as I wanted it to be, shortcommings aside. I sat just as enraptured as my fighters swooped in on enemy carriers. I was just as saddened when my valiant warships burst into flames and groaned loudly before they dissapeared in a ball of burning gas. And even if I wanted the first Mothership to reach home myuch more than I wanted the new one to suceed, when it did, I was cheering just as loudly.

That is what HW2 is about. The game is the garnish. The experience of stepping back into the command deck of the Mothership is priceless. Don't deny yourself that chance.

Good for amatures, great for hardcore and modders

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: May 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Hey all you who play HW or HW2 its Hiigaran|SF.

First, a clarification: Homeworld 2 is NOT Homeworld with better graphics and another story line; it is a completely new game. It has many similar concepts and basic designs from Homeworld, and it integrates the same history, but it is 100 years in the future (reletive to Homeworld) so don't expect it to be the same.

I'll start with the firing-back-at-insults section. Many people claim HW2 sucks, so I'll run you over the truth of things:

Number one insult: "In Homeworld I can control my fighters, in Homeworld 2 I can't"
This is BS. In Homeworld 2 you have a squadron system, grouping your fighters into different size squadrons, depending on the type of fighter. These squads generally range from 9 to 3 fighters in size, the more powerful fighters and corvettes having lower group sizes (but all a similar cost, around 400-700 RU). These squads fight together in formation in battle, providing much more effective firepower and organization.
Now some facts: When will you need a single fighter, ever? What good is a single interceptor or bomber? organizing into units means that I never lose one of my fighters somewhere in a battle. This can all add up to tip the balance on a very small map, especially if all the fighters break up and scatter across the map. So, organizing into squadrons allows you to keep track of them. They do often scatter when opposing area-effect weaponry (like flak turrets) but then they regroup.

Number 2 insult: "Homeworld 2 has no strategy!"
If you say this you deserve to be SHOT. HW2 has many more features which involve strategy, including shipyards, subsystems, more dynamic maps, better and more complex environments... you get the idea. In Homeworld, you often have to worry "how can I move my ships around so they dont get picked off" in Homeworld 2 you worry about "Here are my options, how will they effect the future of the game, will it work? What are the pros and cons?" It's more strategy in Homeworld 2. You can use much more tactics. In Homeworld, you use several basic strategies which I can name right now: swarming, capital ship rush, or a mush of both. Battle tactics: not very sophisticated, just click on a ship and boom its dead.
Homeworld 2: you can surgically strike a ship in battle. Lets say you have barely enough resources to win. You get a few bombers, and go and take out the enemy carrier's resource drop-off point. Kill the collectors. Then get a Marine Frigate in there to capture the carrier. By the time you've captured it, the resource drop-off is repaired, and you probably have enough defense there to ward off attackers. Then you get your own collectors in there to collect using the enemies pocket; there you go. In Homeworld, you just choose which pocket is yours and collect there all game, no attacks on it, its pure fleet-to-fleet. In Homeworld 2, you can get it ALL. You also have an improved diplomacy system, like transferring ships

now modding: modding and mapping for Homeworld is INCREDIBLY easy. Mabye not on the same scale as other games, but its pretty damned easy to do. mapping is REALLY good with its LuaC capabilities, programming a map instead of telling it (in 3D coordinate system) where to place each little pebble.

id go on but i gotta sleep.

btw JOIN TEH SOBAN FORCE (SF) CLAN IT RULEZ
join at: http://soban-force.fragism.com/recruit.html

BEST RTS EVER

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: June 13, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Reading over the previous reviews I see a lot of 'inefficient interface' or 'poorly thought-out controls' For those people I can only say Read The Manual and follow the tutorial! I've played all the Homeworld games and HW2 is a worthy successor to the original. [...].There are some that are never mentioned in the tutorial, but if you look into the keyboard layout in Options, you will find all of them there.

The missions increase difficulty with the strength of your fleet, and the AI are not likely to do the same thing twice. So if you saved mid-mission and try one thing, then go back and try something else, the AI will react with another strategy. It feels much more like playing against a human opponent. This means you'll have to think on the fly and think strategically. This is, after all, an RTS game. Unlike most others, HW2 actually fulfills the meaning of the genre.

But no matter how strong the enemy is, you will always have more than enough resources. This is actually a drawback for me. Unlike the original Homeworld, where resources are limited and you must collect every spec of dust and rubble on each map, HW2 gives you the freedom to build to your heart's content. I miss the resource limitation, as well as the limited fuel in the corvette and fighter class ships and group formations. The unit variety are not as diverse as in the original, but the interface is practically flawless (if you learn all the commands) and the game is just fun (if you like to use your brain).

Bottom line, get this game if appreciate (the best of) space combat and (real) Real-Time Strategy (and micromanagement). This game will require a decent amount of learning time, but it's worth it for the graphics, the game play, and the strategy. Plus, it's dirt cheap now.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next 

Actions