Never managed to beat HW2 either, but it was more of a story issue for me. HW2 uses adaptive difficulty scaling where the larger your fleet is, the more enemies spawn.
All missions in HW2 was designed and heavy scripted to be rushed by player. You stop charge for a moment and immediately overwhelmed by waves of enemy forces. The HW 1 allowed to build slowly and the gameplay was slow and, uhm, viscous (I'm not sure it's right word) that, I think, correspond with story of journey across the galaxy and exploring deep space.
Karan S'jet seems to be getting younger despite however many decades are passing... and apparently sh'es been working since the end of Homeworld 2 as a fashion model.
Good clinical immortality tech. The galactic civilizations seems to have high enough technology level. Back at Kharak the plugging into mothership was considered irreversible. But at Higara she was successfully unplugged.
Karan S'jet seems to be getting younger despite however many decades are passing... and apparently she's been working since the end of Homeworld 2 as a fashion model.
Good clinical immortality tech. The galactic civilizations seems to have high enough technology level. Back at Kharak the plugging into mothership was considered irreversible. But at Higara she was successfully unplugged.
She's regular Ash Ketchum. In all seriousness though, she may have been de-integrated from the mothership, but I don't think she was ever fully "unplugged." Just double-checked some media, and she's always depicted as bald and plugged into something. Even in the Homeworld 1 ending cinematic, she's trailing wires that clearly go to some sort of equipment.
I guess I'm just a grumpy old man yelling at clouds. I don't like it when well established character designs get waifu-washed. The old design clearly reflected her character as an integrated trans human, and still remained somewhat mystical. She really had the feel of being not so much Fleet Command as a bona fide religious leader. It was unique and stood-out especially considering how she's one of the few individuals actually depicted throughout the franchise.
New design looks like it's optimizing pretty over unique, which is a shame. Especially if the game shifts to a character driven narrative. I mean, they even had her put on some eye shadow before she popped into the bacta tank. I disagree vehemently with the idea that important women can't also be pretty, that's not why I don't like the new design. I don't like the new design because it feels like some marketing exec was concerned that gamers wouldn't like her if she didn't look dateable.
I just watched someone play through the first level of homeworld 3 and I do not like the storytelling direction they've taken the game in.
Having "Fleet intelligence" being "a guy", engineering being "a guy" and mothership/karan s'jet being "a girl" makes it into way too much of a person driven story.
In the original, Karan S'Jet wasn't just the voice of a woman plugged into the ships driving seat, she functioned as a sort of disembodied representation of what remained of the species and of the mothership itself.
The disembodied voice of "Fleet intelligence" may have been one voice, but it came across more as a representative spokesperson for a council put in place to advice the mothership and the fleet.
That also sort of worked with all the other ships and species as well.
The new S'Jet woman seemed young and unprepared based on her voice-acting which was very fitting, but I preferred when that was a sort of underlying part of the horror like in the first few missions of homeworld 1, rather than seeming to be a major story element to be explored.
I've only played through the introductory scenario, but thus far it hasn't grabbed me. There are many lengthy, slow-paced cutscenes that for how long they are tell you almost nothing about the situation and the threat you're being dispatched to deal with. Thus far it's all atmosphere and very little substance, story-wise.
There are also changes to the UI that make things very hard to control if you're used to HW1 and HW2. There is a legacy control mode, but that the new system is so cumbersome is not a good sign.
Sadly, I must concur. Even on the gameplay front alone, ignoring the downright-awful campaign, it's a definite step down from HW2. Dumbed-down capital-ship attacks, fewer ship options... it's not good. I get the impression (from adding unit 'abilities' that require serious Actions Per Minute to optimally spam during combat, emphasis on the multiplayer co-op mode, and the aforementioned simplified capital-ship interactions) that this was yet another corporate attempt at "Let's make this new game ESports-ready! Try to lure away some of that lucrative Starcraft/Dota/LoL playerbase!" which just gutted the things that made a Homeworld game a Homeworld game.
Welp, guess it goes onto the same pile as Dawn of War 3, Victoria 3, Evil Genius 2, and so many others.
