This is one of the worst examples of failed game design. The rules booklet is rather skimpy and the tutorial is a joke. For a complex war game, that's the kiss of death. Basically, the "tutorial scenario" does not actually teach anything in any interactive way. Instead, you have to refer to less than two pages-worth of crude instructions in the booklet about the tutorial scenario and what you should do with it... and these notes don't even work! Very frustrating. Very confusing.

Which brings me to the next issue -- the interface, both clumsy and confusing. There are oodles of different screens showing various versions of the same map, but none of them seem to do the job at really showing what you should know in any kind of practical, useful manner.

The game map scrolls uncontrollably depending on where the mouse pointer is located on the screen. The mouse pointer moves rather jerkily and this makes it tough to hit some of the tiny interface icons. Because this is a "real time" war game you have to click the correct icons "on the fly" while a bunch of events take place that you can't really control (or see very well while hunting for the pesky icons). There is a pause mode, but it isn't obvious when it's on (lost in the map clutter), which ads to the confusion. When the game is indeed paused, many of the interface icons are no longer active. Again, very frustrating when in the middle of a battle.

Gameplay is totally baffling. It's unclear what's going on, who's attacking whom, whose troops occupy what province, what the historical events actually do (other than spamming the screen), etc. After a few hours wasted trying to the master the "tutorial", I just gave up.

Because of the overall high complexity of the game, poor user interface, downright bad functionality, Great Invasions becomes virtually unplayable. The boys at StrategyFirst/Nobilis need to take a long, hard look at successful games on the market (say, something like Medieval Total War for example). To make matters worse, StrategyFirst's tech support is ineffectual, and as of yet, I'm still waiting to be able to use their online forum, days after registering.

Definitely DO NOT BUY!