Review by: Todd Brakke

East India Company (EiC) is the kind of strategy game that has a lot of the elements necessary to be great. It models a historical period and theme that don’t get a lot of play in games. It lets the player competitively run a company using some of the most iconic ships of the 17th and 18th centuries to trade goods between dozens of different ports across Africa and Asia. And it has a fairly robust tactical mode that lets you wage war ship-to-ship and fleet-to-fleet against competing trading companies. That’s a lot of stuff that could make for a truly unique game if it all works together, and a lot of it does. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of avoidable pitfalls that make this a less compelling game than it deserves to be.

East India Company is a game that breaks down into three core components: Strategic mode, Port mode and Tactical mode. Each of these modes has its perks and detractions, but the overall effect of breaking the game into three core components does make it easier to wrap your mind around the whole. You direct your ships in Strategic mode, handle trade and construction in Port mode, and blow your adversaries out of the water in the Tactical mode.

The Strategic mode, which is incredibly simple to use, is probably the best of these. Consisting of a gorgeous map of Europe, Africa and some of Asia, you use this mode to see where your fleets are, who –if anyone- is around them, and to what ports they should be heading. The artistic merits of this bright and colorful mode can’t be overstated. Frankly, the game would be better served if more information were accessible here and if there were more for you to do. As it stands you pretty much just click one of your fleets to select it, click where you want it to go and then watch it sail away.

The Port mode can also be charming, if you leave the game’s 3D ports enabled, but it’s also a very different visual style that is a bit of a disconnect with the more colorful strategic view. In Port mode you buy and sell trade goods, repair and crew your ships, modify fleet and fleet commander assignments, build new ships, etc. It works well enough, but it’s also a bit superfluous because a lot of what you can do here could just as easily be done from the game’s Strategic mode. Yes, the Port mode provides some atmosphere and context, but you’ll find yourself constantly switching back and forth between modes. That’s a lot of wasted clicks; a problem that is compounded by the fact that a lot of necessary information also takes too many clicks to access. Worse, because it takes interminably long to switch from Strategic mode to 3D Port mode, it won’t take you long to disable the 3D, robbing ports of much of the old world atmosphere they provide. (On the bright side, switching from Strategic mode to Port mode without the 3D is instantaneous, if you have patched the game. Installing the release-day patch is absolutely essential!)