East India Company Review

Ship Ahoy! East India Company Review

East India Company is a swash buckling adventure from Nitro Games. In it, you are thrust into the cut throat world of 17^th century politics and economics in a bid to make your company the only company.

The main game mode is the Grand Campaign which is both deep and shallow at the same time. The idea is that, through wealth or power, your chosen nation's company will become the dominant force in the trading of Indian goods. You start at your home port with a single ship and 150 thousand gold. From here you can buy further ships, unlock better ships and buy goods to trade. Then, it's off to sell them around the world. With dozens of different ports to visit, both in Africa and India, destinations are not hard to come by. Making the right choice of where to sell your goods however is not as simple. In each port the value of your goods is different and they will sell you different things. Continuing to make the choices will either lead you to great wealth, or bankruptcy. This is the depth of the game. However it's also the limitation.

While sailing around the sea, with rising tensions, battles can be forced upon you at any time. Or, you can force them on others. Either way, you'll need to fight. Battles take place at a sea level with you in control of your whole fleet. The system is not over complicated, only a simple matter of selecting your ship and telling it to attack. When you win your crew may earn experience and earn special or passive abilities that can be used in further combats.

The depth of the game is in the economic system but this can quickly become monotonous and boring. You can play the game without fighting and just sail back and forth to ports making more and more money. Then, buy more ships, to make more money and so on. Or you could make some money, upgrade your ships and attack everything in sight. The Indian and African ports are attackable and if you take control of them you receive discounts on goods there. If you capture all 12 Indian ports and control them for 10 years you will win the game, regardless of monetary power.

The other game modes are Battle and Quick Battle. In these modes you win when all your enemy ships are destroyed. Simple as that.

Let me sum up by first saying I enjoyed this game. It's different from normal RTS'. Even with it's limited gameplay I had fun playing it. In a world of FPS' and RTS games that only involve eradicating your opponent through strength at arms I applaud the fact that this is trying something else. It's not a game that sucks you in and will have you playing for hours, though I'd recommend you check it out.

Review By: Richard Daniels