Earth Invasion Episode I: Eclipse Review

Earth Invasion Episode I: Eclipse is a real-time strategy game set in space that involves players colonizing planets, mining resources, and building defenses to fight off invaders. The game supports three single-player game modes, including a campaign spanning 15 missions, as well as a survival mode intended to add replay value to the overall package. While all of this may sound great, Earth Invasion may not be for everyone. Also, even if it is, there are some technical issues that keep the game from being as entertaining as it might otherwise be.

The basic gameplay of Earth Invasion is similar to many other real-time strategy games. Players will mine resources to build units that will help protect them against attacks as well as eliminate their foes. To help streamline the process, however, the game allows players to build any units from colonized planets without having to worry about building specific structures or researching specific technologies. This design choice may make Earth Invasion seem simplistic to some, but it seems to serve the touch interface well.

As you fight off enemy invaders, players will have to direct their forces in battle. To do this, players can tap units and either drag in a general direction or simply tap a planet on the bottom of the screen to instruct the unit to move there. Once combat units get within range of an enemy unit, they begin to attack automatically, but players may need to perform some micromanagement in the form of producing more fighters from carrier ships to ensure victory. While this control scheme works, I would have liked to see a way to select multiple units at a time, as building a huge force and sending them across the solar system feels more tedious than it should be.

Beyond this control issue, Earth Invasion boasts some pretty frustrating technical issues can make playing it unpleasant. Because the interplanetary battles can grow rather large in scale, drops in the game's frame rate are not uncommon while playing. I also had the game completely lock up on me toward the end of a mission, which forced me to restart the entire thing from the beginning. Luckily, I only encountered this progress-resetting issue once, but unfortunately, the game regularly does seem to perform poorly.

Overall, Earth Invasion Episode I: Eclipse is a competent streamlined version of a space age real-time strategy game. However, technical issues definitely harm the experience. If gamers are willing to fight through these issues because of a particular affinity for sci-fi strategy games, they should go ahead and pick this game up. Otherwise, I'd wait until it gets updated with performance fixes.