Rating: 
Summary: Too hard for a newcomer
Review: I bought this game today and played it tonight.First, about me: I'm 35. I'm not new to computer games - I'd list computer games as one of my top, if not the, top hobbies. I don't consider myself stupid: I have both a helicopter and plane licence. I enjoy RTS and first person shooter games. I have owned an N64 and Dreamcast, and I now own an XBox and a high-end (gaming) PC. I saw this game and thought I'd give it a try. I like RTS and this was labelled as RTS. An earlier reviewer said 'Trying to fight off the constant barrage of enemies whilst also trying to get at the resources whilst also complete your objectives' (my words paraphrasing). It's true - I too just want to relax and play, not be driven out of my mind and frustrated at this game. This game will be returned tomorrow. If you're a Homeworld fan, then perhaps you're used to it, if you're a newcomer, you'll probably be tearing your hair out at this game - I am. Oh, one more thing: the tutorial is *NOT* comprehensive enough. It teaches only the basics, and you're left to fathom out the rest in game (whilst constantly being barraged by enemies, etc, etc, etc).
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing and frustrating
Review: The original Homeworld had concept and graphics going for it, if not gameplay. Amusing, if tedious...I remember setting things in motion and literally going away to eat lunch, then returning to see how it was proceeding. Homeworld 2 has exactly the same concept, noticeably improved graphics, a modified interface, and abysmal gameplay. Those who enjoy RTS titles and play games for enjoyment--and is there any other rationale?--will be frustrated beyond tolerance by H2. Long missions with multiple objectives, wave after wave of too powerful opposing units, inadequate resources, intrusive cutscenes and no provision for adjusting difficulty settings remove most of any sense of fun and adventure. With more imagination in the design and testing, this could have been a worthwhile successor to the original. Instead, you will either find yourself searching out cheat codes--which remove any point to playing a game--or uninstalling without finishing. Despite the many negative reviews, if you are still tempted to try this title wait for the reduced price jewel case version.
Rating:
Summary: Visually spectacular, very hard, not for casual players
Review: In light of completing Homeworld 2 twice, the review is a brutal truth of what the game is---a game so challenging, so hard, it just simply isn't worth your bother. Ordinary gamers will derive no enjoyment from this. In a manner of words: this is a game with spectacular graphics, breathtaking naval fleet warfare, all hampered by arduous game play. Fifteen missions long, the average player will find themselves struggling by just the fourth, if you finished the third by the skin of your teeth. Rapidly changing mid-mission objectives, wave after wave of enemy forces, you'd better be up to the challenge of preventing your shipyard from hostile takeover to graduate to the real fun. Then mission 4 hits you, hard and heavy. Players are simply not prepared so early in the game, after such breezy missions, for one of such difficulty. Continual enemy attacks never leave you alone, never giving you a breather, to collect resources, to replenish your ragtag fleet. Don't grin that smile yet, that massive frigate assault will wash it away. There's no time to get a feel for ship classes, what works best against which enemy unit, to experiment on new technologies. Took a stunning number of weeks to beat that mission alone. Just concentrate on bombers and pulsar corvettes and she'll be right mate. Homeworld 2, it seems, is one heavy mission after another, broken up by occasional missions so quiet you could sleep through them. Those restful missions would be ideal to build full your fleet to full strength and maximum unit numbers. A detrimental mistake! An unbelievable attribute of the game---the stronger you are, the heavier the next mission's enemy forces will be. The astounding stupidity of this is simply shocking. Try full unit limits from the tenth mission onwards, when enemy forces are already considerable, you'll see. This isn't so bad, really, but it makes hill into a mountain. Homeworld 2 is a Real Time Strategy game of its own, nothing like Starcraft-type games. Even the hardest Starcraft mission gave you time to rebuild a weakened army, fix your base up. You could explore the darkened map, tease the enemy from different sides. H2 won't let you do that. This game demands strict obedience to the mission objectives. You play to fulfil them, not your own agenda. Even more absurd, whatever forces you have left you begin with next mission. Scrape a mission too finely, and what are your chances of survival, really, when the enemy hordes come, and come in numbers they will. What H2 steals from you is enjoyment. This is for the determined player. Who doesn't want a challenge in a game? But it's not fun. Move! You can't sit idle at any time; you can't split your fleet up, to feint at an enemy base from different angles. You want to live, keep all eggs in one fleet. The menu controls are shocking. Mouse scrolling doesn't work in H2. It takes valuable time to position and drag the tab down the page. You can't even press the ENTER or ESCAPE keys, only mouse commands. Such is the Idiotic Intelligence of the developers, that you can't authorise commands with an ENTER tap. The screen panels where you click to load or save games are so slim you really have to position your mouse precisely over them. The method of saving is a joke. Strict alphanumerical order, the starting letter or number determines its placement in the list. It's better to save games chronologically, like Starcraft and Jedi Outcast. In-game auto-saving works against you; replay a mission, and you might re-save over it. Where in the game booklet does it say docked strike craft repair automatically? Just an offhand mention in the Vaygr Battlecruiser. How would you think to dock your fighters when you need them active at all times? It's pointless to target warship subsystems like engines or weapons, when destroying the ship takes just as long. It's pointless to capture an enemy ship, not only from limited unit numbers you're allowed, but the ship will always target your marine frigate. Still haven't gotten cloaking technology, despite playing the game twice. You'll spend considerable time looking at your radar screen. It's the only way to see enemy units and positions, and easier to select targets for attack. Like viewing a sphere of blinking red and green dots all game long? Graphics are awesome, ship details commendable. A mouse-wheel scrolling allows easy panning and rotation of the camera angle. Fun to follow behind a bomber group on their attack runs, or zoom right in at besieged warships about to be missile volleyed. With high comp system requirements the occasional slowdown when too camera-close to ships is only an infrequent bother; a close-up exploding warship is cool. Mid- and inter-mission cutscenes are simple but satisfactory. Fleet Command voices sounds too similar, whereas Makaan is chilling as the Vaygr warlord, smooth and polite. Game music is largely repetitive. Only two tracks stand out. The oriental Hindu-like music of the Keeper missions, and those too-brief scores in missions 9 and 12. Hammered by endless Vaygr fleets, your heart pounding as fight for survival, why did they finish after a few minutes? It was haunting and daring, before fading to that mundane battle music. There is nothing special about the mysterious Sajuuk, the one hope of your homeworld. It would be a spoiler to say, but the game designers are criminal fools to make the guy just that. If that doesn't inspire your outrage, behold the short, simplistic final cutscene of the game. This is Homeworld 2. Visually stunning, but badly designed. You'd do well to think long and hard before sampling this farce of fun. It's all well and good to spout rave reviews and the shine the five-star flag, but honest and informative feedback goes a long way to whisper the truth.
Rating: 
Summary: The story, action, and strategy is GREAT!!!
Review: I bought this game after it was out about 1 month. I installed it, though of it as a little weird, interface was alot different, then I got use to it and I was thinking to my self like WOW!!!! I love this game to death. After about 2 days I mastered the key to this game, having tons of fighters, corvettes, bombers, and your nice frigates and capital ships, not to mention your battlecrusiers. But after I mastered what is needed in every mission to defend and win each one I had no trouble getting through all missions above mission 3 ( well I had trouble but it was easier hehe ) Now, in homeworld you run out of resources alot of the time. In homeworld 2, you don't. You always have enough resources if you have a knack for being a good commander. Me, im excellent at commanding and I could always replace my lost battlecrusier or frigate, and I liked that alot. The enemy is very fast at attacking but you can be even faster at attacking I realized. Just speed think like I do and its all a go. The grahpics are amazing!! the best I ever seen in my life!! The story is wild and excellent!! Gameplay is a jewel! I tell you, if you're a excellent Homeworld player than this is your game, its not a waste of money at all!!!
Rating:
Summary: Let's be objective
Review: I really can not believe the 5 star reviews for this game. I can only assume that it gets an extra 3 automatically for being the sequel to the "1999 Game of the Year" (as Sierra is so fond of advertising). I'm a big fan of the Homeworld series and enjoyed the two previous installments greatly, so needless to say I was quite looking forward to cracking open HW2. The demo wasn't exactly inspiring, I wasn't really fond of some of the modifications that were made to the game's basic formula. Namely the inclusion of unit "squadrons" and a more emphasised "paper-rock-scissors" balance scheme. Even so, I managed to talk myself into shelling out 40 bucks for the game... d'oh! Despite all the "its too hard!" comments floating around, I was undaunted, I don't mind a challenge. Unfortunately, the challenge in HW2 is afforded mostly by a test of how fast you can click your mouse and navigate around the (nicely updated) interface. A typical campaign mission in HW2 consists mostly of you constantly trying to repel a ceaseless barrage of enemy ships... while trying to complete both your mission goals, AND without sucking up every single resource unit on the map before you get there. I'm giving it 3 stars, for the following things: Graphics, Sound, Design, and an at least moderately fun Skirmish mode. Everything else, in my humble opinion, is just nonexistant. I shudder to think how well a newcommer would fare in HW2, I consider myself a pretty decent RTS gamer and I still find it a frustrating experience. Not to mention, there is only a single campaign, rather than one for each faction... I hope this doesn't become the next RTS trend. In short, HW2 has everything going for it except what matters - gameplay. I play games to relax and enjoy, not to be irritated and driven out of my mind. Very disappointed, I hope Relic lets Barking Dog Studios (who did HW: Cataclysm) handle the next installment of this series.
Rating:
Summary: Way too difficult to enjoy
Review: A game is supposed to be fun but this one is an absolute torture. Like everyone said that this game is such a frustration you will get more enjoyment from reading a phone book instead. Try an older sleeper game - Conquest: Frontier Wars. The graphics is just as good and a much more superior game.
Rating: 
Summary: Better graphics, worse gameplay
Review: After having finished HW1, I was more than eager to start HW2. At first I was stunned to find smoother textures, better graphics, and a better designed interface (yeah, I think it improved). However, the gameplay itself changed, and that much to the worse. In HW1 you could load a carrier with fighters - traverse the galaxy and have escort fighters protect against pockets of enemy aircraft - finally unload the carrier before the target destination to strike with bitter force (or fail). In HW1 you could also send out fighters for reconnaissance missions, and still hope for their return. In HW2 this no longer is possible. With continous raides on your ships, and no time to think about "strategy" you get pounded on every damn free moment - ultimatley leading to only one form of strategy: PAUSE-command defence-UNPAUSE-see action-PAUSE-command repair, etc. No more surprise attacks on your side, the AI knows you're there (which makes sometimes no sense - like in mission 4). Gone are the times where you sent fighters out to explore, they'll most likely not return if you decide too. You're pretty much lucky if you only have one fighter group, and one corvette group attack your ships at any given time (yeah, this pattern never stops). Repetative? You bet! And thats where I believe a game should be entertaining, not frustrating. It really frustrates, since they improved virtually everything else, but changed the gameplay for the worse. If you purchase this game in the belief its a good strategy game, reconsider. If you're more action oriented, with little strategy in mind, maybe this game is right for you. I hope that someone from Relic/Sierra reads the comments posted around the web, a patch is greatly appreciated that stops this redundant game play (less attacks?). And no, I don't agree with the theory that the joy of completing this game is satisfaction. Like you torture yourself through the levels only to see the fireworks in the end? Shouldn't it be enjoyable throughout? After HW1, this comes as a very big dissapointment. I'll stop playing, and am waiting for a patch. If no patch comes, I'll post it on Amazon's Marketplace for sale.
Rating:
Summary: A short review
Review: This game is a sequel to its revolutionary predecessor Homeworld, the first 3D real time strategy game. This game itself however, is not revolutionary. It's just the old Homeworld with some graphical improvments. This means, great graphics, drains your video card a lot, and not much more in terms of everything else- music, sound, gameplay, story, etc. In fact, the story is much worse then before. For those who don't care about stories, then I should also point out that the gameplay isn't better neither. The variations of squad formations in the original is completely gone, which is a huge loss to players who likes playing fighter squads. Almsot all previous fighter strategies are eliminated through this change. The game does allow 3 types of fleet formations, but these options are as trivial as choosing whether you want fighters, frigates, or capital ships on the front. Unit's target selection is automated, so each ship engages within an area the units it kills best. This may be nice for some, but there's no strategy to it other then pumping out a large fleet of everything. It can be boring because there's no longer battle strategies, only research and production matters- you won't see someone beating another player with the same type of units in lesser quantities because he's better at battle-micro anymore.
There is not a lot of improvments with unit variations. If you expected to see lots of new ships and factions, be disappointed.
A lot of players I talked to say the single player campaign is too hard.
Music and sound is mediocre. Certainly not better then the original.
For fans who owns a pumped up computer with high end video cards, buy it for the nice graphics. Otherwise, it's too expensive to pay for such lack of innovations.
Rating:
Summary: Just another game i WANT to like
Review: I bought this game the day it came out i think, i played it for a while that day, and stopped playing it for about a month. Just today i started playing it again, and i remembered why i stopped playing. I guess the biggest flaw is this game is HARD. For some reason it seems that pc games only have two settings these days: easy and impossibly hard. This game is definatly the latter. The units in this game are evolved around the old silly theory that one unit is strong versus an other type of unit, but completly helpless against some other type. Which always seemed rather stupid to me. A .50 m2 machine gun was designed to be an anti-vehicle weapon. Does that mean it's completly useless against personnel? Uh no...it just happens that it's MORE effective against personnel, because of its obvious over-powerment. So In the game you have to figure out what the enemy's strengths and weaknesses are, and exploit them with the appropriate unit. However...the enemy rarely has just one type of unit, in fact it usually has a pretty well rounded force. So you have to create a well rounded force yourself to deal with them. However the enemy is much faster than you, and can pick and chose your ships while you're trying to make sense of the battle. It amazes me every time how surgical the ai is when it comes to wiping out your force. You'll have a large, well rounded group one second, then notice the enemy is targeting solely one type of unit of yours. Once that unit type is gone, you're force is essentially crippled as it now has a large hole in it that can be easily exploited. It amazes me how the enemy can target those single unit types in a group of 50 other ships, when you can barely even SEE what types of units are in their groups. Add this to the fact that the enemy also has unlimited recources and ships, and you have a rather frustrating puzzle. Every mistake you make is cumulative as well. You cant just barely win a battle. As you'll go into the next battle with basically no units. You always have to find a way to win the battle without crippling your chances for the next battle. The battle really does not give you much time to think either. You have a research capability to improve your units...but you're rarely given a single uneventfull minute to figure out what you want to research. The graphics in this game are pretty stunning...i guess. I run a high end computer (2.6 p4, 1 gig ddr ram, geforce ti 4600 128 mb ddr ram) and the graphics are still EXTREMELY choppy in parts. It's ok if you zoom all the way out, but if you zoom close into the ships everything becomes choppy and the game slows down significantly. The story completly escapes me. I read the little overview of the story in the manual, and i still have no idea what the game is talking about. I never played the original homeworlds, so sue me. Overall...it's just another game i have around that takes up space.
Rating:
Summary: If only this stupid game would work...
Review: I think the video card in my PC won't let me play this game - I wish it had said something on the Amazon site to tell me that. I can't get the game to play. I may just wait until this Winter when I get a new PC.... Very disappointed - liked both the other Homeworlds a lot...
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