East India Company Collection Review

Nitro Games' East India Company was released rather quietly last year with not much fanfare surrounding it. This year we are presented with the updated version; East India Company Collection. This comes with the director's cut of the main game and all previously released DLC and expansions, which are Pirate Bay, Privateer and Battle for Trafalgar. 

The original game was received largely as being a mediocre maritime sim, where the objective was to start off with a small ship, representing a small company and set up trading routes all over the seas to make your fortune and eventually put rival companies out of business. That remains largely true with the other campaigns included here, but there's a little more focus on the naval combat.

For those of you who have never played the original, you started out in the year 1600 and your aim was to build your company by, of course, buying things cheap and selling it for profit.  The easiest way to set up a trade-route is to simply click on a fleet, then click on the port you wish to trade with; the rest is automatic. This is convenient of course, but it's not very involving and each port only deals with one major trading item, meaning it's probably wiser to keep an eye on your fleets manually than leave them to their own devices.

You'll have to prove your mettle in sea battles too, which can be up to 5 vs 5 sea battles. These look the part, with the sails blowing and giving you an idea of which way the wind is blowing, the waves and the sea in general is gorgeous sometimes and you can see your crew running around on deck preforming their various duties. However they can get tiresome after a while and if you opt to use the auto-battle system the game offers you, it punishes you by awarding you no loot and no experience. I would understand giving substantially lower rewards, but none at all is a pretty big blow and a way to shoe-horn you into partaking in every battle manually.

It's like a maritime version of Civilisation, or rather, a mix of Civilisation and another well known Sid Meier's game, Pirates!  However it doesn't have the polish or the addictive nature the aforementioned games have. East India Company is good, and it is time consuming, but every so often I'd find myself wishing I was playing one of Meier's games instead.

The extra content included adds different things to the game, Pirate Bay will allow you to control pirates instead of a company, and you're more focused on sea battle than trading, obviously. But unlike the main campaign, you only have twenty years here to make your fortunes. Once finished though you can upload your scores online to compare them with other players, which is a nice touch. While Pirate Bay is a DLC option, and not very big at that, it's launched through the main game. 

Privateer which also comes with this collection, makes Pirate Bay somewhat pointless. It takes the theme of playing as pirates (or rather, men for hire in this one) and expands on it, with three options; two different twenty year campaigns, and a sandbox campaign spanning the full length of the game. Your main method of earning money here is accepting missions from anyone who'll offer. These can range from smuggling people or items to different ports, or being ordered to destroy a ship. They aren't particularly outstanding and are things you'll likely be doing anyway to make money. To start Privateer you have to load it up through it's own executable meaning exiting the original game to play it, a minor, but annoying problem.

Battle of Trafalgar offers us authentic ships from the period, and sees you taking arms during the height of the war between the British Royal Navy and the combined might of the French and Spanish. This will include historically inaccurate battles which are nothing like what you've read about. The most authentic things here are the ships and the names used, such as Lord Nelson aboard the HMS Victory. However it's also the most fun you'll get out of East India Company as far as sea battles are concerned. With more ships, tougher AI and more tactics needed, it's definitely the one to play if you're only in this for the combat.

East India Company isn't a bad game, nor is any of the additional content here bad. It's just passable. There are better games out there, but EIC has to be commended for trying to mix the trading aspect and the battling aspect with more detail than most offer. The graphics when you're at sea in battle are impressive at times, the music score is fantastic, with different variations of the main theme used for different occasions and if you give it time and put a little bit of effort into all the sea battles you're forced into, you can have some good fun with the game.

Available currently on Steam for £24.99/$29.99/€29.99 it's worth picking up, but only if you enjoy this type of game. It involves a lot of time invested into it and if you aren't in the mood for trading and setting up trade routes, it's likely better missed.