It's a hard one because I REALLY want to like this game as I've been eyeing it for years. It's definitely got promise. Before anyone says anything, I genuinely didn't find this game hard to grasp. It's a fairly easy game to make sense of. I never felt I had resource pressures, or even that the concept of the game was hard.

The issues with the game come from it being unbalanced. The AI gets a significant advantage that takes away from the fun. For instance, you can spend 3 in-game years de-stablising a country (Russia), having 91% popular support, and still end up with only two out of four control points (the other two given to a faction with no support). Then, you'll be in a constant battle of winning and losing control points in that country each turn (win one and then lose one). The AI seems able to gain control even without a councillor being present.

You can also build a like-for-like ship with the AI and it'll somehow have an order of magnitude greater attack value than yours.

The UI is also TERRIBLE. There are constant pop-ups while you're trying to play. Doing basic things, like controlling your fleets, is frustratingly cumbersome. The councillors constantly speak, to the point that I've started playing with no sound. The constant "I'm lending my expertise" is infuriating.

Hands down one of my favourite space games of all time. If not for how fun and addictive it is, then simply due to originality alone - there is genuinely nothing else like this on the market. This review's gunna have to be a long one, because there's a lot to unpack.

First off, the game is basically three games in one; a geopolitical simulation of Earth, a space colonisation game, and a interstellar war simulation - complete with it's own dedicated 'battle' mode (like the total war series). Never before have I seen a game combine so many detailed and complex systems together into one cohesive package like TI does. It's actually insane.

What's impressive about this game, unlike other ambitious titles that tried something similar but stumbled along the way (*cough* Spore *cough*), is that each game layer is deep and complex, and there are no 'gimmicks' or shallow mechanics chucked in for fake depth. All three layers are mechanically rich, complex as hell (to a fault even), and are all interconnected in meaningful ways that (for the most part) serve the core gameplay loop.

You genuinely do feel like a pioneer during the onset of the space age, quietly guiding our species towards becoming a true starfaring civilization. I don't think I've ever played a game that does it quite this well. It really does feel cool to slowly unify Earth > launch the first probes > build a small outpost on the Moon > colonise Mars > build up a fleet > expand throughout the system > finally take on the aliens. Matthew McConaughey would be proud.

Stations and ships are also fully customisable, and designed by the player using a modular based system - which is quite hard to learn initially but provides a very engrossing experience once you actually understand what each module or component does. Whether you prefer to min-max, or to RP, there's something here for everyone.

Hell, even the scientific accuracy of the game, and the way that the space battles are based on real-life physics models, is just the icing on the cake. The solar system is also insanely accurate too, with almost all the real life asteroids present in-game, as well as each planetary body, with realistic distances, orbits, sizes, and everything. Tbh, if you swapped out the aliens for a protomolecule, you'd basically have a grand strategy Expanse game lol.

That being said, there are quite a few shortcomings, as you might expect with such an ambitious vision. The pacing is all over the place, with early-game lasting way too long (literally like 5-10 hours before you even reach space), then mid-game, which is arguably the best part, not lasting long enough, and then finally late-game basically going on forever. What makes it worse is that 'late-game' essentially consists of just sitting around waiting for fleet transfers whilst simultaneously playing galactic whack-a-mole with random alien fleets.

The tech tree is also majorly bloated, which initially seems cool, until you realise most techs are absolute garbage and there is really only a handful of viable technologies to use if you wanna avoid getting curb-stomped by the aliens. The way the tech tree is structured also gives basically zero information on what you should or shouldn't be aiming for, which means you'll likely shoot yourself in the foot early on and not even realise until 20 hours later once you're in an unrecoverable death spiral. Whoops, guess it's time to restart (again).

In fact, going off that point, basically nothing is explained whatsoever in terms of what you *should* be doing, despite having decent explanations of *how* to do things. It's basically like someone teaching you how a plane works mechanically but not how to actually fly it (which, idk, is maybe the more important part???). Unless you have like 500 hours of your life to spare, you basically NEED to use online guides and youtube videos if you want any hope of actually winning.

Depsite all that though, the game is an absolute gem and there's nothing else like it. I had high expectations coming off the back of the Long War mod for XCOM (same devs) and they did not disappoint. Terra Invicta is a one of a kind experience, and regardless of it's flaws, I think it's a game that any space, sci-fi, or X-Com fan should absolutely play.

It's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awesome and I know I'll keep going back to it for years to come.

It's big. It's daunting. It's complex. But if you take the time to learn the game it's got incredible depth. If you like long, deep strategy games with many ways to win (or lose), you'll love Terra Invicta.