Recent reviews by Binary-2

It seems like it was written by the creators of the Halo TV series or Star Trek Picard.

Not a lot of atmospheric music either, most of it is focused on battle themes and intense action. The beauty and wonder of Hw1 and 2 are kinda missing, replaced with forced characters and immediate chaos. Not even witnessed or experienced chaos, just people telling you there is chaos in the galaxy. Many missions start off with overdramatic cutscenes that run too long and then extensive hand-holdy objective explainations that will get draining as well. Do not recommend.

Looking back on what I might've wanted from this experience is maybe a more open-ended one. To be clear, open world is over done but maybe some kind of narrow system of missions that let me choose what I wanted to prioritize since the last two games were about being forced into running/fighting, why not turn it around? All in all, it felt inept, HW1 and HW2 looking extremely competent from a story standpoint while this follows many rehashed sci-fi beats. Like many other 2020's era sci-fi stories, it leans too far into it's cliches in the hopes it breaks free and comes out as groundbreaking, but stumbles horribly out of the door and ruining the potential previous installments may have given it.

We got an overcooked TV series and a waiting game that lets you mass your forces around an objective and come back in 26 minutes to a victory.

The following is the total negatives I experienced playing the game:
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1. Can't skip many in-mission cutscenes/speeches
2. Target Priority is difficult to tell, attack-selecting a large batch of enemies will regularly have all forces target one or two of the enemies instead of splitting off on their prefered matching
3. Old homeworld strategies are extremely simplified, support frigates acting more like medics in Starcraft 2 which is similar to HW1, but they're so overpowered you can keep 15 around of them to tip the scales in any fight. No sight of gravity wells or defense-field frigates.
4. Every ship has an active ability and nothing feels like a strong addition to the fleet. Spam assault/ion/missile/support frigates and you will win. Strikecraft inconsequential.
5. Ships move incredibly poorly around obstacles, large fleets will commonly be stuck in terrain objects
6. Combat movement does not feel as "ad-hoc" as either previous homeworld games. Many ships will waste time and take damage trying to manuever away from or around their target. Ships have a tendancy to point away from their targets sometimes, it's hard to say if it happened more than a handful of times but was still frustrating.
7. I eventually turned off all game audio due to the overdramatic music and constant fake-depth speech infecting sci-fi lately, I liked the chatter and music of HW1 and 2, but this keeps the context intensity set at high during slow moments. "Shunt the files to my console" Ok gamer.
8. I get the feeling they gave up when trying to design interesting space maps and fell back to 3D FPS experience, many later levels taking queues from landmasses and level design. It lacked a three-dimensional feeling to it, despite the development focusing so hard on ships pathing around objects in space. The micro-management required for the poor pathing made for a net negative if using it as a strategy, you're better off just maxing out ship population.
9. The last mission gave me a stomach ulcer.
10. "The whole galaxy is at stake!"

The following is the total positives I experienced playing the game:
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1. There are nice set pieces in this installment of homeworld that look very pretty.
2. A lot of time went into reworking the controls, yet I only played on the HW2 remaster controls, in this game they worked sometimes.
3. You can rotate the mothership.

In a world of build your own adventure sandboxes and online multiplayer shooters, this game provides a much needed single player experience that has a narrative and a simple yet satisfying combat system. I've played other games in this genre such as resident evil and dead space so I'd like to believe I have a good idea of what to expect.

This game genuinely feels like the remnants of Visceral studios coming together to make a new game in the genre with different twists. I like how combat flows and isn't completely reliant on gunplay, but instead mixing it with a melee style that has simple dodge and block systems. It is somewhat silly when you're clearly outnumbered and enemies will wait patiently while you combo some fella.

None the less, it has been a nice experience both visually and decently challenging on normal without feeling too constricting. Playing on a harder difficulty right off the bat would make getting used to the system a chore and not very fun.

As of 8/13/2025, Rocketdev has come out on the steam forms saying updating the steam page and the community is something they would rather not do and that they see steam as becoming less of a platform for them in the future.

Goodbye forever RocketDev, I am glad this game is not included in sales lately because it quite frankly is a complete mess that brags about features that only come in many hours after survival crafting and much learning regarding the systems involved, providing few benefits or goals to the player.

Play minecraft with mods for a more satisfying experience.

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As of 2/12/2025, Kitten Space Agency has been announced and updates to stationeers are getting more infrequent and rely on discord-only posts for any roadmap or progress update.

Do not buy in this condition, as all of the systems included in this game are fun and engaging once you learn them, but are left in a state that does not prioritize fun or intuitive uses for players.

I love dwarf

This is an incredibly true to form sequel to xenonauts. I'm unsure where the story is going but the core gameplay and styles have only been amplified by the transition to 3d.

One of the most surprising things I'd like to point out for old Xenonauts 1 players is a lot of the art seemlessly transitioned to 3D, to the point where it looks like the old 2D views. Lots of love and care was given to this game's grid and art system so I would very much like to congratulate the developers for their 3d modeling and design work.

Gameplay is everything you wanted from Xeno1 but better in 3D as the camera will jitter less, allowing you to have a more concise understanding of the map you're on. As for progression, already in this alpha stage the technology and advancements are quite interesting, minus a few missing research report entries being saved for future updates. Everything is extremely fun up to the current cutoff which in my experience seems to be around day 250~ and then it stalls out, presumably due to the mid-late game not being implemented yet.

All in all, I highly recommend buying this game on release, and buying in if you want to support the developers early on.

//EF-24G Update//
More of the same, but not in a positive way. Even less voice acting this mission set update. More systems that require externally reading someone else's explanation of said system.

While the previous systems provided are fun, the new ones offer nothing but new concepts that have yet to be refined or put into a fun gameplay loop. There's no "Accept this defense contract from nation x for y amount of dollars" used to outfit your aircraft, maybe even buy a new aircraft or a wingman and build up a fleet, but instead there's "don't go over x amount of dollars this mission" with no real progression. The individual mission sets included with the current aircraft offer little more than "What could be" as an inspiration to the community. And while that's fine and all, I'd really like more from this game which has already been out for so long.

If you were hoping mods would give the game life, and there are quite an extensive amount of them at the VTOL VR modding community, none of them really stand out as the killer mod needed to make the game more engaging. Cosmetic adjustments and some custom missions are nice, while rare custom vehicles show signs of chafing, having to supply their own code instead of using the already robust MFD and HUD system.

I would refund the game and each DLC if I could. Much like War Thunder, this project is going nowhere except to a security violation review one day.

//Previous Review//
Poor tutorials but the amount of depth and complexity in the game's flight combat shows a real genuine interest and enjoyment of the genre.

I just wish the dev would make a compelling story or gameplay loop because as is you're paying for 3 aircraft with a random assortment of missions, some grouped together under a loose framework with poor mission planning, while the two other DLC aircraft feature difficult airframes due to added complexity and suffer from the same mission issues.

The helicopter is extremely true to life and will filp out on you immediately while the tyro just sucks and it's only enjoyable bit is the twin seat that gets old quick. The three main aircraft are enjoyable yet will constantly leave you wanting more due to a lack of features.

Overall, I can't recommend this game despite how much fun I've had in it. The learning curve involves a lot of out of game and VR prep, some of the community literally LARPing together a NATOPs manual for each airframe. Combat is just terrible and any in-game tutorials equip you only with the bare minimum needed to fly and some of the ways to target enemies.

The dev has established themselves as a great KSP modder but maybe not so great as the sole developer for their own game. Community updates are few and far between, while the discord server itself is a breeding ground of mil-sim addicts that constantly one up themselves over small nuggets of military aviation knowledge.

Taunts you with "what could be" only to then slam you against a wall of "Geometa" that grinds any and all fun to a halt as you rebuild/restock. Friendly AI are brain dead units that will happily sit still and die to enemy fire even with countermeasures attached.

It was almost like stormworks but with working concepts that provided relatively short and quick engagements, but instead you capture 3 islands and then get slammed into the ground by bad logistics and systems.

I like the mod but how turn on flashlight

Please play this game

It was less fun than getting over it by bennett foddy