Ancient Space

I really wanted to like this game, but my impression was that it seemed to take the wrong lessons from Homeworld. Maybe it's gotten better since I tried it several years ago, but I haven't gone back to see.

The game itself is a 3D RTS with a persistent fleet, a few different resources to manage, and a story based on explorers getting themselves into some outer space sci-fi madness, and the voice acting for the game included Ron Glass's final role, so it caught my interest. It's also graphically smoother and more detailed than Homeworld or HW: Cataclysm, though no one will mistake it for Elite Dangerous in 4K or anything.

Unfortunately, I found the control scheme for movement and camera angles to be needlessly awkward, like they were trying to find a way to mimic the intuitive Homeworld controls without actually copying them. The zoom distance is also pretty short, making it more difficult to get my forces organized than it felt like it should have been.

Other reviews tended to list some glaring downsides. Many mention that the pathfinding to be hilariously bad, but I don't remember one way or the other, so I can't confirm or deny that part. Others say the computer also matches its fleet with what you ended the previous level with, so a decisive victory may make the following level far more difficult than it needs to be. I left the game to go play something else before getting far enough to see that aspect in action, but it would't surprise me.

If that hasn't scared you off, then my recommendation is to wait for it to go on sale to the point of Ross's "price of a sandwich" standard.