Originally posted by Rictor
I played a skrimish against the AI, still haven't tried out the single or multi player portions. The game balance is pretty good. I was disapointed that you couldn't build any capital ships other than a Carrier. I hope its not like this in the ful game, cause I wanna see big destroyers and battleships going at it. The backgrounds are nice, pretty stylized though they're bright and "epic". The game feels very much like Homeworld 1 with updated graphics. The gameplay mechanics are almost exactly the same. The ship classes are pretty much the same as in HW, though there is a bit of a twist, in that you have to build a platform for each type (frigate, corvette, fighter etc) of ship. The graphics do the job nicely, though they're not "Wow, thats so cool." Its a bit worse than EVE, I think, though its hard to guess since the styles are different.
I'll post some more later when I've played the SP and MP sections.
I'm going to disagree with you on a few points since I began with the singleplayer game and tutorials as opposed to a skirmish. I can see how you have this type of first impression by trying the skirmish mode first.
The graphics are very impressive when the detail is cranked up as you really get a good sense of scale and the various special effects are very well done. Also, you're not taken out of the action ever and the pacing is much better.
The basic gameplay mechanics seem the same (the rock papper scissors of hard counters), but it seems better balanced then Homeworld 1 where units would become obsolete, each unit has its own strengths even when newer ones are available.
It overall seems like the best parts of Cataclysm were adopted in how you can upgrade the mothership with various devices. So you can have additional firepower at the cost of perhaps not building one of the construction modules, etc.
Resourcing seems to be much better as well since you can salvage debris after a battle. This means you don't have to completely rely on resource rushing. It reminds me quite a bit of Battlezone 1.
The singleplayer mode seems stronger and better balanced.
I'm very impressed so far. From what is shown on the various sites, the full version will be much more impressive with the various capital ships and more upgrades that will allow players to customize their fleets to their liking.
It looks like the upgrade system is loosely based on the ideas in Impossible Creatures. Homeworld 2 is sort of a Frankenstein's monster of their previous games, and it seems to work well.
