What begins with the desperate flight of a decimated people on board a vast mothership ends with the search for their original homeworld, then continues on to an attack by deep-space warlords and a quest to reunite three mysterious cores. A few components might feel rusty or unwieldy, but it’s mostly a joy to play.

It’s not hard to see Homeworld’s roots in the ’90s real-time strategy boom, yet there’s also something oddly timeless about its epic take on deep-space, ship-to-ship combat something awe-inspiring that hasn’t dimmed in the dozen years since the sequel launched. It brings Homeworld and Homeworld 2 into one superb retro remaster, and while this means it misses out the first game’s Cataclysm expansion, this still makes for a meaty single-player saga. Homeworld Remastered Collection might have some extensive visual upgrades and some tweaks to the controls and gameplay, but the best thing about it is the underlying game. If only all old classics aged as well as this.

Homeworld ship