Review by: Troy Goodfellow

Ever have a game and developer that you want to love? A product that is so devoted to what it is that you can't help but cheer for it? Nitro Games is one of those companies and 2009's East India Company was a game I desperately wanted to love but couldn't – it was too shallow, too repetitive and too slow to get to the good stuff. The sequel, Commander: Conquest of the Americas, elaborates on that same trading gameplay model by adding resource chains, colonies that have needs and morale and, importantly, a mission system that lets you try to please the masters in your homeland.

Too bad that none of it is really interesting to do. Once again, Nitro fails to find the hook to keep you interested in playing for very long.

The game is set in the age of Colonization, but there's no sense of discovery here. You open the game cruising along a coast line looking for a spot to settle. These are sort of randomly generated – they will vary from game to game, though the resources tend to be appropriate to the real climate – spices in the south, fur in the north. As your settlement gains population (imported from the home country) its sphere of influence grows, pulling more and more resources into your colony's orbit. The early missions teach you all of the stuff you need to know to get your empire going.

This is a trading game, so the bulk of your time will be spent picking up goods in your colonies and selling them in the home port. Some goods can be processed into pricier products – hides into leather and then into leather goods, tobacco into leaves into cigars – but not all of them. Dyes and spices stay raw materials for export. The trading interface lets you neatly plan what to pick up and drop off in a much more sophisticated way than East India Company did. You can choose multiple goods, multiple destinations and set up just how much of what you want to carry.

The problem with automation, especially when you have a large fleet, is that you can run into limits with no notice. Cities can hit their population cap while you’re hauling immigrants to the New World and all of a sudden you have two or three fleets full of passengers you need to take back home. If this happens enough times, you hit a death spiral of cash since the ships aren't hauling sweet, sweet loot back to the Old Country. A little warning that you are carrying cargo you cannot unload would be super helpful.

That may sound like a minor concern, but Commander in general doesn't tell you things when you need to know them. A glance will tell you how many ships are sitting in docks, but not how many ships need to be assigned a fleet. Ship bells go off for a number of reasons, when what you most need to know is that your smithy is finally built so you can start on that foundry. Why not use a pop up or a piece of text more helpful than “Information”? A largish empire can have a lot of things going on and I need to know when things are finished.