[PC] HomeWorld Remastered review

[briareos_kerensky]

A bit early on this as Amazon postponed my Collector's Edition but sent a Steam code as an apology.
Upon launching the game, a splash screen lets you choose between the remastered or classic versions of HW 1 and 2; I went for the remastered HW1, and after Gearbox's logo the game shown a black screen.

Uh.

Talk about good first impression. A click later and I was at the profile screen. After customising options I start a new game and...no selection between Kushan and Taidaan, or ship colours? I can't exactly remember if the original HW let you choose that from the start though.

The graphics are very similar to HW2 now, from ship detailing and UI. There are some new effects, like depth of field, HDR bloom, more light sources, and resource asteroid change as they get harvested, and it all looks quite impressive. Depth of field can be a bit intrusive when zooming in on single Strike Crafts, as it blur the foreground as well, giving the picture a "miniature" feeling. Radio chatter has been re-recorded, and instead of the generic voice with heavy radio feel of HW1, comms are very clear. Fleet Command and Tactical are still the same, though if my ears aren't failing me, some voices sound like out of the original game while others are new/from HW2; it's a very subtle difference, and probably noticing this because I'm used to the original voices. No customised voices for single units (like Cataclysm or essentially every RTS out there), but that's hardly a problem.
From what I remember of the original HW, voice samples in Remaster sound spoken faster, like everyone hurried in delivering their lines; some voices sound also very amateurish, like producers at Gearbox went around the office and asked if someone wanted to record lines for Homeworld Remaster. It's not excessively bad, and again being used to the old game might make more susceptible to certain things.
Like reassigning formation keys to shift+function rather than function keys only. On formation and tactics, I don't remember strike crafts being so unruly, unable to properly slow down to have every member of the formation fall in place, or breaking up immediately after being assigned a target. I do recall that HW wasn't exactly perfect in managing strike craft formations, but a bit better than this remaster.
The new UI takes from HW2, with a lot of overlay panels rather than full-screen menus. I'm kinda torn on it, because it's better than the original screen swap in HW1 but sometimes it's too big (build/research/launch menu) or too small (good luck understanding how many same-type ships there are in a multi-type selection). Then there are small things, like production/research tabs you can access looking like tabs you can't, or the scanline effect (that you can turn off, luckily) over the whole UI. At 1920x1080, it looks like some scanlines are twice as tick as others; it might be done that way, but against certain colours it looks like a badly rescaled effect; not game breaking, but HomeWorld can be a very slow game in single player and you tend to notice these little things while you wait for your collectors to crawl to the nearest drop point.

Mission and balance wise, there haven't been many changes, the only big difference I've found so far is that there are only two hostile Assault Frigates in the third mission (I recall three). Salvage Corvettes are still the most important unit in the game. Strangely enough, both enemy Frigates in the third mission are scrapped if you capture them. As there haven't been major mission changes, some tasks are still incredibly boring: resource collection during the first missions is one of those. Unless you strip a map clear, you'll end up being short on cash later; HW2 automatically collected all resources when a mission was over, and I haven't found any time compression option. It might not be needed for HW2, but it would have made certain sections of HW1 flow much better, like post-mission fleet replacements.
Like the original game, the Mothership is immobile when playing, and her guns usually stay silent until set to aggressive and actively given a target. The Mothership has HW2-like modules on it (resource drop point and engine), but I don't know if they have an actual impact on single player. Strike Craft/Capital Ship balance is as in the original, so expect Frigates being able to take a lot of punishment from small crafts but being essentially useless against a swarm of those; possibly the Ion Cannon Frigate is more powerful, but I'm basing that on a single encounter between Kushan and Turanic ships of that class, my single Frigate being able to devastate Ion Array Frigates while I was trying to capture them...which prompted me to restart the mission.

I think I've also stumbled on a small bug, my research ship was under fire once for a two-three minutes by Turanic Corvettes but its health never dropped.
So far, I can say that HomeWorld is still Homeworld, with all good and bad that comes with it. The extra graphical detail is great, but the remaining additions are in the "mmmhm...." territory, but probably because I'm used to the old game.

[briareos_kerensky]

Some more impressions, that will correct some statements of the previous post.

First, HW1 Remastered has been rebalanced, in a way to be more similar to HW2: this means that Frigate are much more susceptible to damage from Strike Crafts, increasing usefulness of Attack Bombers. Frigates, likewise, can take on Destroyers, making missions where the enemy heavily relies on capital ships easier. It also keeps Strike Crafts relevant throughout the game, and Missile Destroyers are a bit less powerful against them.
Capturing ships is still a viable options, although some ships have been toned down: Turanic Ion Array Frigates are good salvage to be scrapped, as their damage is less than half of Kushan/Taidan Ion Cannon Frigates. Captured ships have a slightly inferior firepower, probably to balance odds in single player, but some salvage can give you an early advantage. Interestingly enough, I have captured two Destroyers: the first was left with the original red/yellow Taidan paint scheme, while the second was painted in Kushan colours.

Second, resources are collected when jumping to the next mission, cutting down the end-of-mission phase to just replacing your losses. I still think that a time multiplier would have been a great addition, as certain missions are pretty slow.

Formations seem broken right now, with ships failing to get into position, breaking formation when engaging targets, or assuming strange patterns. Example: 9 Frigates in Wall formation won't assume a 3x3 pattern, but maybe a 3x2 with the remaining ships positioned at the edges of the main line. Ships formation with the Mothership before and after hyperspace jumps is always different, and sometimes capital ships will appear in the last formation assumed behind the Mothership at the start of a mission.
Not that the game is bug-free, although nothing game-breaking: most seem concentrated in the sound department, with quotes thrown randomly for no apparent reason, like "Collector awaiting orders" when harvesting, Fleet Command announcing that unit caps have been reached when there are still several slots available, that a group is under attack when firing on an enemy probe, or an advice from Tactical that a group is under attack during an end-of-mission jump. Voice samples are definitely shared between HW1 and HW2, as Assault Frigates will declare "Flak Frigate under attack" (the Flak Frigate was introduced in HW2).

I've also disabled UI effects and depth of field, not due to performance concerns, but because they are distracting. The UI scanlines and occasional "refresh" effect are just ugly to see, and the "miniature" effect when a unit is too near the screen just doesn't feel right.

[briareos_kerensky]

I think the rebalancing completely destroyed HW1.
As any old-time HW players, I started Remastered with the objective of capturing all ships I could, and like in the original game this leads to fleets past the ship cap and having certain classes before the game allows you to build them (Heavy Cruisers in particular).
So, I reach the 12th mission, and Gravity Generators are blocking my Strike Crafts. In the original game taking out the 2 Generators and their escort took some time, even with two Heavy Cruisers and many Destroyers on your side. Here in Remastered? Less than a minute.
Destroyers have an attack rating of 887 (IIRC), Heavy Cruisers 4800+.
And it's not the "wrong way to play the game", because the original HW had much more resilient capital ships and large scale battles actually allowed to micro-manage Frigates to take advantage of weaker rear/side armour on larger ships, here it's just focus-firing on one ship at a time. And the way I'm playing won't see large-scale battles until the last mission, as I'll continue to salvage as many capital ships as I can.

[briareos_kerensky]

HW1 completed, HW2 started. The games share user profile and options, a good thing.

The graphical engine powering the game is an enchaced version of HW2, so the games run the same, and they look very nice; as said before depth of field and UI effects are more distracting than anything, with motion blur being applied only on fighters only during very special occasions, and it doesn't look that good.

The decision to use HW2-style balancing really breaks HW1. Later missions are seconds-long battles punctuating hour-long fleet movement, making HW1 even slower than it was. Having capital ships destroyed by swarms of bombers influences in a bad way mission flow: taking the last mission as an example, I was able to stave off the initial assault under a minute and started to move my capital ships toward the final objective; 5 minutes later enemy reinforcements: destroyed and new Heavy Cruiser captured; 5 minutes after, reinforcements again. "We are overwhelmed!" announces tactical.
No, we aren't.
And take care of the new Cruiser, will ya?
In the original game the last mission was difficult even with a lot of captured ships, and friendly reinforcements will arrive just in the nick of time, and the situation was even more tense without extra ships. Now with Attack Bombers (and Defenders!) being able to quickly take care of capital ships the balance is broken. True, this makes Strike Crafts valuable throughout the game, but this huge change should reflect in mission and enemy force structure! And don't allow for module destruction in HW1, it makes capturing ships even easier. I completed HW1 with 10 Heavy Cruisers when the fleet cap is 2, I think that's all Taiidan Cruisers encounterd in the single player campaign.

This is evn more apparent when playing HW2, as mission and enemy force structures reflect that Strike Crafts are able to pose a serious threat to capital ships; HW2 also deals away with long movement segments, introducing a more forced mission structure, not allowing players to dwindle too much, making ship balance relevant. I can't say much about HW2 Remastered, because...it's HW2 with a pretty coat of paint. Here the game is still as it was intended. HW1 Remastered, not so much.