If retro gaming interests you, in addition to console games, it behooves you to check out the PC side of things too.
That’s because there’s certain games that simply cannot be translated to console. One of them is Haegemonia: Legions of Iron.
To this day, I have not ever seen a good console conversion of a 3D RTS that’s set in space. A 2D RTS is hard enough to translate to console. But 3D? I don’t think this is something a console can do.
And when I say 3D, I don’t mean an RTS with polygonal graphics. No, I mean something that allows you to interact in all three dimensions of space. You don’t just go forwards, backwards, and sideway. You send your ships up and down too.
But on PC, there’s a lot of good 3D RTS that set in space: Homeworld and O.R.B. come to mind. But I’d say that the most accessible is in a pick-up-and-play sense is Haegemonia: Legions of Iron.
There’s a caveat here. Only play this game if you have access to a numpad. Without a numpad, you can’t change the speed of the game. This is important because the default speed is slow.
But Haegemonia probably is the easiest 3D RTS to control because it acts more like a traditional RTS. To start a battle, all you have to do is select your units and point to the enemy you want to engage with. It’s that easy.
Of course, while all this easy control is convenient, you’re giving up the depth that you had with Homeworld – which is absolutely massive. And while Homeworld’s map gives you many options, it takes a lot of learning. There is no such map with Haegemonia because things are much simplier.
The story is no less interesting, though. You are commanding ships in a Earth-Mars war. You can play either the Earth or Mars campaigns. But that’s not all. Once the war ends, the entirety of humanity unites to expand beyond the Solar system to encounter alien civilizations.
Another thing that makes Haegemonia different from other 3D RTS games is the espionage system which, to this day, is not available elsewhere. This allows you to build a ship that’s invisible on enemy sensors. And they’re used, of course, to monitor other planets, ships, or stations. This is a nice feature that gives Haegemonia more depth!
A few PC gamers complain that this game hasn’t been updated for newer resolutions and widescreen aspect ratios. However, it is possible to set widescreen by going into the registry key and setting the values for your desired resolution. I simply don’t do this because I’d have to keep doing it each time I launch the game. But also, this being a retro game, I can live with a 4:3 aspect ratio.
If you’re looking for a simpler, more accessible 3D RTS set in space, Hegemonia: Legions of Iron is a good choice – just so long as your keyboard has a numpad.
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