East India Company (PC)

The soulless pursuit of money feels even emptier.
7/31/2009 10:26 AM | 3 Comments | Page 1 of 2

If you think Microsoft or Google are powerful companies, a little historical perspective is in order. The companies that controlled trade between Europe and India from the 17th to 19th centuries had their own warships and could break governments. The British East India Company was, for all intents and purposes, the real government for hundreds of millions of people. Only when this governance provoked a bloody revolt in India did the age of businessmen/pirate kings come to a close. It's a great story of a commercial empire that flourished under the protection of the Royal Navy, and collapsed once Parliament decided that the extortion of the locals was really a job for politicians.

It's a complicated story, too, so you can forgive Nitro Games for just sticking to the easy stuff. East India Company is a trading game. Buy exotic goods in the East and then ship them back home for big profits. You can choose from eight European powers whose only difference is how far they are from open seas -- Portugal has a big advantage, time-wise. With enough warships you can conquer foreign cities and limit your competitors' access to those goods and ports of call. The name of the game is accumulating money to expand your fleet so that you can accumulate more money. Drive everyone out of business, or conquer India, and you win.

There used to be lots of games like this. East India Company is a seafaring Railroad Tycoon -- the price you get for your goods will depend on how glutted your local market is. It is a more unfriendly Trade Empires -- your rivals have lots of guns at their disposal. It is a more civilized Merchant Prince -- no need to explore the world or kill the Pope. So, East India Company is a relic in almost every sense of the term. It is a holy balm for those aging gamers who want a more relaxed pace than RTSes usually provide. It is rare and almost an anachronism. And it is, sadly, just a piece of something larger -- a disembodied digit when you want the whole hand.

East India Company is a very good half of a game -- but the missing half is where much of the longevity would be. The biggest problem is the game's purely economic focus. There is diplomacy and naval combat, but the diplomacy is fairly inert and the naval combat mode is slow and uninspired. So you are left with an experience that is all about shipping cargo for no reason -- easy mission goals aside -- beyond making more money. And that money gets immediately reinvested in the company. This gets a little dull after a while, and the promise of new ships in 1700 is hardly enough to get you through the Grand Campaign.

Compare those three older games I mentioned. Each of them offered something that lifted it above a simple buy-low/sell-high game. Railroad Tycoon let you directly compete in your opponent's markets, fighting them for a share of the passenger traffic or running fast routes to take all their materials to your own factories. Trade Empires had an elaborate resource chain that challenged you to find the most cost-efficient way to produce manufactured goods. Merchant Prince had money as an avenue to political power, letting you compete for offices and open cities to the world, often on a randomly generated map.