Okay, I got sucked into this discussion, purely because:
I loved Homeworld. A game that collaborates with Yes to make a 9 minute final credit music track gets my hat tip.
I felt Barking Dog had created a better control system in Cataclysm, and I happened to play that first if I remember correctly, so I had to go backwards a bit when playing Homeworld.
Homeworld 2 was pretty shoddy, I didn't feel immersed at all, and, in my mind at least, the game had a lot to live up to with it's predecessor.
When I got to mission three (I think) and couldn't capture the enemy ship using the...whatever the name of the ship is you use to capture enemy ships, the game lost all interest.
I do still hope for a HW3.
RE: Whoever mentioned X3: Reunion, is it better to play X3: Terran Conflict, I hear that it's interface basically included all the good mods that were made to 'fix' Reunion?
X10