about whether the game would be reduced in difficulty from the first one... HW1 was far and away one of the most ball-breakingly hard games ive ever played... scary thing is, HW2 is actually HARDER... and gets harder a lot sooner... i mean, who at relic came to the development meeting for HW2 and said "hey, you know what would make this game great? lets make it even harder!"

im not complaining about the difficulty, though... i like my games hard... the problem is, it isnt hard in the same way homeworld was hard... in the first one, your fleet grew pretty slowly, resources were extremely limited, and real care had to be taken in how you spent them... the loss of even one frigate could seriously set you back, and the loss of a capital ship might never be recovered from... this led to a strong sense of attachment to your fleet, and forced you to think strategically, because just throwing units into the grinder was a sure recipe for defeat, if not in that mission, then in one down the road...

HW2, on the other hand, is ALL about the meat grinder. thats what the game is, really... one big meat grinder for spaceships... resources are abundant, and let me tell you, the game designers expect you to USE them... not some of them, ALL OF THEM, in *every* mission. i tell you now, if you havent completely FILLED your fleet TO THE UNIT CAP, you are going to lose. period. and you have to be constantly building to KEEP it up to the cap, because youre gonna lose ships. lots of them. LOTS of them.

see, the difficulty in HW2 doesnt come from clever design, or interesting tactical situations... no, the difficulty is made up entirely of enemy ships. HOARDS of them. an inexhaustible, never ending supply of enemy ships. they cover the screen like locusts, and are constantly replaced, FOREVER, until you meet whatever the mission objective is. in the first homeworld, the computer player was constrained by available resources, just like you were... in HW2 this is NOT the case. in most missions, they dont harvest at all, they just crank out hundreds and hundreds of units from thin air. in the missions where they DO harvest, they arent harvesting FOR THEM so much as they are harvesting AGAINST YOU. they dont use those resources. they dont NEED them. i know. ive gone out of my way to hunt enemy resourcers, a valid tactic in the first HW... in HW2, makes no difference... theyll just keep cranking them out. constantly. non-stop. forever.

this is not my idea of fun. this is my idea of, oh, command and conquer / borecraft in space.

dont get me wrong, im still enjoying the game... its beautiful to look at, and in a way its nice to return to what was a very rich game fiction... but i can already tell im going to tire of this game long before i ever finish it... and when that happens, im going to give in to the urge to reinstall the first homeworld and finish it yet again... but frankly, the sequel cant hold a candle to the original...