Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak Reviews

Played the game straight through for 15 hours on Campaign. Enjoyed it tremendously.

Wont play. Cannot set ANY settings - this ran at medium on a 6600k and gtx 970, so ofcourse with a CPU and GPU newer than those on my newish system I wanted to increase from, you know, Not Low, and have to alt-f4 to get out of settings menus, and none of the settings options shows up. Oh, and Epic Online Seriveceiciesiees... (started as a typo, went whole hog in to point out how shite it is, because) my computer locked up a minute trying to run the spyware.

I enjoy the game but I do have things that could be better it needs more resources. give a hire troop count. get the game to know that you have the right amount of resource to research or build something other than that at this time I like the gams

Why in the fuck does a game released in 2016 not have a pause feature or ability to skip cutscenes? or even mid-mission saves? at least give us one or the other, esp since missions can easily stretch on upward of a few hours.

Great RTS! I've always been a fan of the homeworld games and story. Would say play it if you like the RTS style,

This game is an absolute gem for a strategy fans. It takes the classic Homeworld formula and brings it down to the planet’s surface, without losing the series’ unique atmosphere. The battles are genuinely spectacular — watching massive land carriers clash with swarms of vehicles feels epic every time. The main story really surprised me too; it’s emotional, well-paced, and ties beautifully into the larger Homeworld universe.

I haven't played any Homeworld (yet), I was pretty much looking for the closest thing to a Dune game in the style of the original Dune 2, the father of RTSes. And I was not disappointed! Well it's not like in Dune 2 since you're not building a base, you're building a -moving- fleet. But it's a great RTS and the feel of Dune is present. Didn't care much for the plot, though, which is supposed to be connected to the rest of the Homeworld series.

Great game. Excellent Homeworld origins story. The Fleet Carriers made for an excellent game mechanic that felt similar to the original (space based games) -- a unique game mechanic for ground based RTS' that I enjoyed quite a bit. Didn't love the separate resources (CUs vs RUs) and the resources available per map didn't always seem to scale properly, not to mention sometimes missions would end abruptly (after completing the primary goal of course) without me being able to fully harvest the map. There would (1) either not be enough resources on a given map or (2) have a monster battle at the end of a mission, lost many (sometimes most) of my units) only to not have enough time or space to restock minerals for the next one. Overall great, enjoyable game. Loved the soundtrack homages weaved into the music when discovering different parts of their history throughout the storyline.

Patch 1.4 in 2023 added an always-online version of EOS (Epic Online Services) to the game, which adds a further overlay to the game. While introducing other UI issues it soft locks the game menus if connection is lost. Not sure why this badly implemented additional DRM was added so long after release but it makes the Steam version more unstable in general and prohibits any offline play. Regardless of how good a game may have been don't support this aftermarket restriction that fails to add any benefit to legitimate users several years after purchase.

Unfortunately I can't recommend this game ever since it now forcibly downloads the overlay from Epic ever since 2023 from what I can tell. From what I've read, this was done when the game was given out for free on the Epic game store. Issue is is that the game now has what I consdier equates to DRM, you are entirely unable to play the SINGLEPLAYER CAMPAIGN offline, no wifi, no game. You are not even able to edit game settings because for whatever reason you need wifi to even CHANGE game settings. Having an Epic overlay was also to help bridge the game between game owners on Steam and Epic so they can play multiplayer. So why in hell is the SINGLEPLAYER CAMPAIGN need a wifi connection for?