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Wonderful Game Before I start, I would suggest anyone who gets this game be sure to download the patch that has been made available. This balances out units a little better (not too much, but a little) and also decreases the difficulty of several of the missions (they are possible to beat without the patch, but they are hard). This game builds wonderfully over the orrignal Homeworld. It has made several improvements in how things are handled and also polishes up things in general. In addition, unlike the orrignal Homeworld the different sides have very different strengths and weaknesses that are readily apparent when playing them. Some nice additions: You no longer build single fighters, but rather build fighters in wings. So long as a single fighter in the wing survives you can send the fighter group back to a carrier or mothership or shipyard and have the unit returned to full strength. This makes fighter units much more useful and practical then the frail things they were in Homeworld. Resource collection at the end of missions has been automized. You will no longer have to sit around for hours after missions sending harvisters out to collect resources for you. Once all enemy units have been defeated all resources in the map are automatically collected and added to your resource pool. Subsystems. You can now build subsystems that give your ships interesting capabilities as well as target enemy subsystems. Large ships (such as battle crusers, carriers, motherships) come with some standard subsystems that cannot be completely destroyed but can be dammaged to the point that they no longer function. This makes hit and run type attacks much more useful then they were previously since you can use them to dammage enemy capabilities or cripple enemy ships, while allowing access to some nice abilities should you chose to build some of the more unique subsystems. The ability to capture any ship in the game has also been added. That is right, capture ANY ship in the game. Including motherships. In addition, the units which capture enemies are much less flimsy so while they do still need an escourt they can be counted on to not die immediately. Fleet formations have also been added. While there are really only 3 choises for fleet formations, they really do make it easy to use ships of different classes together. When used properly these formations are extreamly powerful, however you need to learn when to use a formation and when to break it up. There are a few things I am less than satisfied with however. It is for these reasons that I am only giving it a rating of 4 out of 5. The first major thing I was disapointed with was the reduction on the number of formations. I remember that with the orrignal Homeworld there was a large number of fomrations to chose from. I kept wishing I had access to some of those, particularly the claw and the sphere. While it may be argued that the addition of fleet formations makes up for this change, I couldn't help but wish that I had access to many of the old formations. The interface is something I am not 100% satisfied with as well. While I will agree that it is definately a step up from what was used with Homeworld, it does feel somehow cumbersome. I guess it is a function of too many menues when it comes to building units and researching. Even in this respect it isn't too bad though. Also, the 3D nature of space has largely been ignored. This problem still existed in Homeworld, though it was a little less noticable there since they did fairly often launch surprise attacks from above or below. Homeworld 2 largely just uses the horozontal plane when it comes to combat. Units controled by the AI simply will not try coming from strange directions, but rather take a head on approach. Thankfully I was able to find a group of people to play with online who were not burdened with this problem. My final real problem with Homeworld comes with the addition of a new unit: the shipyard. The reason for this has to do with multiplayer where its importaince overshadows even that of the mothership once it has been built. It has more subsystem slots than the mothership. It is the only unit which can build battlecruisers. It has all the capabilities that the mothership has and more. From a stand point of game ballance I can see why this may have happened (the game designers didn't want players skipping ahead in the research tree right to battlecruisers), however I cannot help but feel that if anything the shipyard should be more of a smaller mothership with more limited capabilities. Somewhere between a carrier and the mothership. All that said, the game is still a wonderful game. It contains almost all of the orrignal Homeworld's good points, and gets rid of many of its bad ones with the introduction of few flaws. If you like the idea of controling an intergalatic battle fleet then I would definately suggest that you pick up this game. The campaign alone would be worth it, but multiplayer is where this game really shines since that is where you will see interesting tatics that can be used once the pesky notion of 2D is forgotten.