Iron Marines Invasion PC review: An enjoyable port of an already satisfying mobile RTS

In all honesty, I had not heard of the franchise before I was to review the Iron Marines Invasion on PC. However, when I found out that it was one of the many cute RTS games for mobile devices, this PC port certainly piqued my interest. While it’s not the perfect experience, I genuinely had fun managing my little squads of soldiers and battling my way through a series of short but sweet stages. That said, nearly every time the game would start to build some goodwill with me, I would find something that was just a little bit frustrating.

Ultimately, I think it’s a game that fans of the franchise and those who like the mobile style of RTS games would enjoy. Iron Marines Invasion is far from a bad experience, perhaps it could have used a little more time in the oven.

Iron Marines Invasion brings the mobile RTS experience to PC players

It's easy to get into Iron Marines Invasion (Image via Ironhide Game Studio)

Ironhide Game Studio is a group known for making solid, reliable mobile RTS experiences. After doing a little research, I found I was pretty excited to play Iron Marines Invasion for this review. While I personally prefer turn-based strategy, I’ve been a fan of the RTS genre since the days of Command & Conquer: Red Alert.

The problem with that style of game is that they can feel incredibly long. The longer you play, the bigger the stages get and the more time you have to invest. Failure feels crushing and can really turn off players. Thankfully, this is a port of a mobile game, so you don’t have a lot of those feelings here.

The stages were divided into manageable, bite-sized chunks that, more often than not, could be completed in 10-15 minutes at most. The game starts kind of slow, but you’ll unlock more and more potential units and factions as you play through the stages in Iron Marines Invasion. While there were lots of units, my favorites had to be the frog people. They gave me a kind of Battle Toads, but in outer space feel.

The lack of microtransactions in Iron Marined Invasion elevates the gameplay experience, and you don’t feel like you have to spend money just to keep playing. In this game, you go from planet to planet, battling against the forces of evil, recruiting small groups of units, and tactically making your way to the objective.

You don't unlock heroes with microtransactions, instead, it's via gameplay (Image via Ironhide Game Studio)

Honestly, it’s pretty simple to play; even newcomers to the RTS genre should have no problems getting through the game. With a variety of hero units and minions, every stage felt like one of the Warcraft 3 or Starcraft 2 custom maps.

As you play, you can upgrade your units and things of that nature using points earned in battle, and that part I certainly liked. Although I don’t think the upgrades were titanic, they were useful enough from stage to stage.

You can also use coins earned in each stage to buy items like bombs that you can activate in certain missions. You have to refill these, so you have to be careful how you spend them. Running out of these important combat items can lead to having to grind them out to restock them.

Iron Marines Invasion is fun but offers some frustrating gameplay moments

The flexibility on your teams is admittedly quite enjoyable (Image via Ironhide Game Studio)

While I enjoyed playing Iron Marines Invasion, it’s certainly not without flaws. It felt frustrating to target specific units, and it was seldom clear what my range of units was. There were multiple moments where I was taking tons of damage because my units were just standing there instead of engaging.

This is very much a 2D game, and that’s where I really began to run into problems. So many units were untargetable because they were suddenly behind an object on the map. I had to restart more than one map because my squad was completely wiped out due to this seemingly minor technical fallacy.

Other than that, the maps themselves were fun. I liked being able to bring three different faction types, each with its own attacks and costs. You’re limited by how many units can take part in a battle, so you have to form your squad carefully. Unfortunately, that’s really the limit of the tactical portion of the game.

The menu for options is a bit on the scarce side (Image via Ironhide Game Studio)

However, there are some pretty serious negatives. One of these was the camera. The camera moves incredibly slowly, and as someone with three monitors, I was required to play in full-screen.

Otherwise, I’d drag the mouse off-screen instead of keeping the action moving. The default “Normal” felt incredibly slow. The “Fast” speed is okay, but not being able to move the screen with anything but a mouse was also to the game’s detriment.

I also found the lack of volume controls frustrating. You either have sound, or you don’t. Thankfully, I have an external program like Wave Link to adjust specific audio on my PC because it was otherwise unbearably loud.

Iron Marines Invasion has a cute presentation

The presentation of the story via comic book panels was an amazing decision (Image via Ironhide Game Studio)

The visuals of Iron Marines Invasion aren’t for everyone, but I sure liked it. It has a cute, charming, cartoony presentation. On top of that, each of the stages is wrapped up with a cool comic book page, where you see the story move forward. The story being presented in a comic book format made me think of the classic SEGA game Comix Zone, and that’s a good thing.

The music was decent, and I liked the grunts and attack sound effects in the game. But like I said, I just wish I could adjust these sound effects and music tracks without having to mute them in the game.

In Conclusion

It can be challenging, but Iron Marines Invasion is filled with satisfying, short RTS experiences (Image via Ironhide Game Studio)

Iron Marines Invasion is a neat game, but I do think it needed a bit more care and a bit more time in development. The absence of some features — mostly in the control department — on the PC port made themselves felt on several occasions.

I don’t especially mind that you can only click on specific unit groups instead of individual units. That doesn’t bother me, but I can see that being a hurdle for some gamers.

Once you’ve realized that’s how the game works, it becomes easier to manage. It’s fun, playable in short bursts, and honestly, can get a little addictive if you get over the quality of life changes the game sorely needs. Either way, it’s a neat, short RTS title.