East India Company Review

2023-02-01

East India Company Review

The name “East India Company” is probably already a pretty good indication of what this game is about to the more history-savvy among you. In case it doesn't ring any bells though, the game is set during the 17th century, while the conquest of the Asian lands was underway. A real-time strategy game with a strong emphasis on naval warfare, it's more than the bland title it may seem from the cover.

Gameplay

The player takes the role of the Governor Director of the East Indies, with the ultimate goal of taking complete control over them and developing a stable economic system to ensure good trading relationships with their neighbors. The game makes a fine blend between combat, economics and diplomacy, and you'll have to very carefully adjust your strategy to cope with the changing situations in some places. In some cases, you may be tasked with conducting peaceful operations instead of going in guns blazing (or rather, cannons in this case).

Combat may seem a bit shallow and lacking proper depth at first, but that only lasts until you've developed some of the more advanced ships and have them join your fleet – after that point, the game truly takes off and opens up various ways to deal with your enemies. Also, keep in mind that even though the focus is on naval warfare for the most part, there are some instances where you'll have to fight your opposition on land. Regardless of the location, battles always play out in a similar manner, and always unfold in real time – so make sure you react quickly!

Graphics and System Requirements

East India Company may not look quite as impressive as other RTS titles nowadays, but it's not exactly bad either – we'd say that a most proper description would be “lacking uniqueness”. That is, if you examine all of the game's assets closely you'll find lots of highly detailed and meticulously designed models and textures, but the problem is that the game just doesn't manage to stay in your memory after playing it for a few hours, and it's hard to recognize it by looking at screenshots.

Still, it does run pretty smoothly even on mediocre machines, so we can't really complain about how the folks at Nitro Games have handled the engine. It doesn't require a very powerful video card to run well, and all you'll need are a good processor and lots of RAM to handle it appropriately. Multiplayer plays smoothly as well, and the work on the game's netcode is amazing, with no lag whatsoever.

Other

If you want to get the complete East India Company experience, we'd recommend trying the Director's Cut, which is available for download from the developers' website. It will enhance your game with some new features and functionality, while also fixing some small bugs.

Conclusion

It's not a groundbreaking title and it's certainly not something that can compete with the popular strategies at the moment – but it's still a very fun experience that will give you lots of hours of entertainment.