As a child whose development was compromised by Tim Burton from a very early age, my first exposure to the threat of alien invasion was the 1996 documentary Mars Attacks.
For most of my life, I believed the life skills I learned from that film would go unused, as the quirky, evil aliens never bothered to knock on my door. However, after years of these talents going to waste, Terra Invicta presented the perfect opportunity.
This Pavonis Interactive title first reached players in 2022, but it is now leaving early access. Terra Invicta 1.0 is not a paradigm shift compared to earlier iterations of the game, but it is the kind of polished release a lot of AAA games could only dream of.
Earth is Under Assault
At a surface level, Terra Invicta looks and feels like your average grand strategy game that could be mistaken for a coloring book. The 2026 start scenario offers a fairly detailed simulation of global politics, democracy, and economics, and if it weren’t for the shady, secretive organisations obsessed with aliens, Terra Invicta had a shot at being the most comprehensive modern grand strategy game out there.
I was surprised to see that current events, such as the war in Ukraine, were depicted there at the start. This plays a big role in influencing how you play the game, as Russia is one of the most popular countries players like to control early on. The ongoing war adds another challenge to manage.
Terra Invicta had a shot at being the most comprehensive modern grand strategy game
Alas, that relatively serene start with only earthly problems is gone fairly quickly, as alien activity escalates. Spaceships crash here and there, sometimes with survivors who escape into the countryside. Elsewhere, you start hearing of abductions.
It all settles into a pretty monotone routine until one day, while your councilors are busy sifting through a forest in Peru to reach a crash site, you start hearing of alien spaceships orbiting the Earth. It’s all downhill from there: bases across the galaxy, more ships detected, and the occasional ersatz Godzilla rampaging through a city somewhere.
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Like most good strategy games with any real depth to them, unless you prepare for certain events, you will not be able to react to them appropriately once the time comes. For example, having aliens chilling in your orbit is a problem you can only solve by evicting them from there.
That requires a fleet with adequate weaponry, which requires research, money, and a lot of time. I liked the punitive approach to careless management, even if it makes the early game a tad hostile to complete newcomers.
Face the Interface
By simulating politics, economics, and spacefaring at appreciable depths, Terra Invicta runs into the problem that plagues most grand strategy games: interface bloat.
Every little aspect of the game needs managing or displaying in some form or another, which leads to it being a little menu tucked away inside the other menu that you activate by hitting the button on that corner of the game.
To Pavonis’ credit, the interface in Terra Invicta is still significantly less offensive than your average Paradox map coloring game, and it’s an issue that is more intrinsic to the genre than to any specific title.
Core systems like habs, ships, and councilors are accessible through buttons with clear imagery on them, and just about every important object has a button that focuses the camera on it. In practice, this meant that I could find all time-sensitive things with a click or two.
I still have some annoyances with the execution, but they are not crucial. The game is not particularly consistent about what requires a double click to activate and what is a drag-and-drop, for example. Bothersome the first few times, but considering how many hours long a single Terra Invicta playthrough is, you get over it pretty quickly.
When Boring Combat is Good
I spent most of my time with Terra Invicta playing as The Resistance, and part of that meant having the privilege of shooting alien ships on sight. Now, as much as Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica were cool with their rendition of space combat as an extension of fighter aviation, that doesn’t really match reality.
Now, while Terra Invicta is hardly a simulator, it does one thing right, which is to portray space combatants primarily as your average satellite or space station, but with a big cannon bolted onto it.
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This means battles are fairly slow and boring, but in a believable way. Having an engagement happen at all requires extensive manoeuvring prep from the combatants to be in the same zone, and that’s assuming neither side slips away before the shooting starts.
I was a little confused by the HD Space Invaders visuals that came up initially, but past the goofiness, the system is as good as you need it to be for the scale that Terra Invicta plays out at. Less good is my propensity for picking fights I don’t have to, especially those I have no clear shot at winning, but to hell with it. To paraphrase Johnny Rico, I’m from Earth, and I say kill them all!
The game gives you enough warning about incoming alien ships, often a few weeks or even months. That’s just about enough time to move your existing pieces to meet them, but not enough to build and field a new unit most of the time.
Past the goofiness, the system is as good as you need it to be for the scale
Given that the core objective of the game is not let the Earth succumb to an alien invasion, the bare minimum you have to do to secure the planet without long-range interdiction is to have enough firepower on call to blast anything that enters the Earth’s orbit. If you manage to keep the aliens at bay while replacing your own losses appropriately, the planet’s land armies can take care of whatever does slip by.
Visuals From Earth, For Earth
Terra Invicta’s in-game graphics are top-tier for grand strategy. The 3D models have decent detail, the celestial bodies are all nicely depicted, and the visual effects are quite nice. The neon lights depicting orbits never really get old.
This is an unfortunate contrast with everything that happens outside of the game, where the production value has a noticeable drop-off. The cutscenes and menus still have that lingering ‘early 2000s AA release‘ feel that, while not critical to the gameplay, does leave you wanting more.
The soundtrack, on the other hand, hits the spot just right. The setting in a contemporary Earth and the tension are perfectly captured by the electronic and orchestral fusion that permeates the songs. Terra Invicta sounds more like a Nine Inch Nails soundtrack than the one Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross actually worked on for Tron Ares, which is saying something.
For all the convoluted interfaces and slow pacing inherent to grand strategy games, Terra Invicta delivers where it matters most: a deep, coherent long-term simulation that keeps you engaged for at least a few years. After that, you decide you’ve learned from your mistakes and start over.
Game code provided by the publisher. Reviewed on PC.
Review Summary
"After spending enough time in early access, Terra Invicta has rightfully earned its full release badge. Pavonis Interactive has done a colossal job crafting a grand strategy game that simulates things from the influence of the oligarchy in Romanian politics to bloody space battles playing out around far-out alien bases. The awkward pacing and occasional production-value issues are no excuse not to join in defending the Earth from the alien threat or to submit to it. It's your call."
Pros
- In-depth simulation of Earth geopolitics
- Sleek visual identity
- Believable, slow space combat
Cons
- Low production value in cutscenes and menus
- Not beginner-friendly, even in suggested scenarios with tutorials
- Convoluted interface for non-critical items
