Wow, What can I say really? I never really do game reviews. But the more I play this game the more it pisses me off! It is by far the most buggy game I've ever played EVER!! It seem like it would be quiet a wonderful game, very interesting strat setup, only to have it crash, error out so that you can move the camera or freeze in battle mode. If you want to get this game, saving every couple minutes will save you getting so pissed later. But do note! Your saved game may even become corrupt. So you may want to save 5 different times when you do. My analyzes? Don't get it, it's a waste of time and money!

I really tried to get in to this game, but it just went nowhere. The game play is easy enough to figure out, but once you do that it all just become repetitive. The patches culminate in the, "Designer's Cut", which, unfortunately, removes the one area of the game where you feel you have any input: The dock view. With that gone, it just feels like a maths puzzle game with some tiny ships moving between equations.

Paradox publish great games or good simulators, and this is definitely the latter. I'd avoid the, "Designer's Cut" patch. I had no issues with V1.06, and suspect V1.12 had more to do with stopping 3rd party trainers than improving game play.

It is a nice game, with a good concept, but it likes unconcluded. The interface is clean, but has a lot of annoyances wich became worst at time. The good artwork is nice but not functional - for sample the city images are beatiful and realistic, but you select buildings in a text menu.

The economic model is nice, but limited and about the same at each game, so the replayability is low, except for naval battles, everything else is about the same. The game is moddable, but options are limited, since you can not mod the map.

Many ships historically accurate and with different functions at game are also a good thing.

At bargain price, if you like naval battles is a nice choice. If you are a harder trade sim fan you get some fun, but for just a while.

Since Nitro Games appears to disappear we can just wait for someone else get the title and do a version 2 of nice concept and beautiful work with more depth.

Just miss the very old Uncharterd Waters II from Koei - crappy graphics but a immersive and complex game mechanic, about the opposite of this.

At this price - I just use some of my blue coins - is a nice bought for some hours gameplay and to return to him from time to time.

Very slow game not much to it very boring

Great game! If you like trading games and a little combat this game has it all. Building a fleet, getting the best trade deals and using diplomacy as a tool makes the game unique to other simlar games. A lot of expansions for it too, so you will never get bored!:)

This game focuses more on the economy than on battle - ship fights are pretty frustrating and take forever. Capturing ships can be extremely difficult if you are slower than they are, and if you auto resolve battle you will never capture their ships (at least I never have). Still a very fun game.

As a tried and true gamer I take pride in my ability to spot stinkers a mile away based uopn reviews and playing the demos. I was unable to find this title at my local gaming stores and wondered to myself "how good can this game be then?" It turned out to be a pretty good game that provided me with hours of entertainment.

Now that the game has hit the "under $10" mark I think it is a can't miss for anyone looking for a few evenings of light entertainment.

Be warned in advance it has the typical simulation game rinse, wash and repeat aspects and it is not overly complicated to figure a grand strategy once you've gone through it. You can read the manual to pick up a few tricks but the interface is easy to figure and if you've played a few strategy type games before you'll find you probably don't need to read it. You may want to just dive right in or as some of the other reviewers have noted you can read all you need from the handy tooltips making it an easy learning curve.

For under $10 it's a cheaper night of entertainment than a beer and a dozen chicken wings.... :o)

I bought East India Company and expected a complex trade sim. However, the game is somewhat disappointing both in the trade and in the gameplay aspects. There is almost no difficulty in mastering the trade system of the game and the action seems pretty slow. Graphics are good. Nonetheless, they are not espectacular. I believe the spin-off Commander to be a better buy right now,

East India Company was a game I was really looking forward to, being a fan of the genre (Trading Sim set in the Age of Discovery, or thereabouts) But unfortunately compared to similar games (Uncharted Waters, Pirates! and so on) East India Company doesn't quite stack up. That's not to say it's a bad game, it is fun for a short while, it benefits from an easy to learn, easy to use interface and the graphics are quite nice, but it gets old very quickly, resorting to a sail here, pick up goods, sail back home, sell goods scenario.

It's fun for a little while, but EIC probably won't have you hooked for long. 3/5

I don't think that is a good game.the battles are slow and boring and the trade thing lets you tired after some time.

You take part of a leader of an European East Indian Company. Your mission is make trade route between Europe (your home contry) and Indian, Middle-east, Africa and so on. Your goal is be more succesful than other contries companies. It up to you if you do it making greatest and most succesful trade convoys or do you sink competors convoys or maybe do both.

Game has good economic sytem, not as great as Patricia III or Patricia IV but good anyway.

Naval battles are very entertainig and you should least try them.

This game is way too simple. This is just yet another weak naval trading game, that you get bored of after a few days. You can trade, you can do naval battles. That's it.

I finished the game after a day of playing. I bet it is possible to win the game afk too, with auto-trading routes.

The graphics are nice, but there's no content behind the graphics. The Patrician series released well over 10 years ago had everything in this game and much much more.

If you are looking for a somewhat complex strategy/trading game, this one is not for you.

East India Company is a new kind of comercial-strategic game. This game can be played for 3 kind of users because, if you enjoy a simulator of eighteen century naval battles this is your game. If you enjoy colonial strategic games and conquer new ports or you enjoy economic and comercial games you will enjoy this game a lot. I like this 3 thinks of this game and i play every day. This game deserve a 9/10.

Review of the core game, no expansions

Well i had been looking forward to this game and finally decided to bite the bullet and purchase it.

The interface it pretty easy to get a hang of and the learning curve makes the game easy to get into; unfortunately the learning curve doesnt really increase.

Once you discover how to set up auto trade routes the money rolls in by the millions, its almost like player interaction is not really needed in the game as your company tends to run quite efficently by itself.

the only difficulties the player will tend to face is the deadline to deliver X ammount of item to your home port by a certain year and the occassional pirate raid.

combat in the game is a hit and miss affair. capturing a port is an autoresolve affair but ship combat is actually interesting. the ability to direct control your ship is a nice addition and actually seeing your ship bopping up and down on sometimes large waves makes timing your shots important.

for a game i was looking forward to i must say the core game did not have enough to hold my interest, it was too simple and it was untimately uninstalled.

Bought the game more out of support than for interest, so my expections wasnt very high. I would however recommed the game to anyone who has any interest in trading/ ship fighting battles. The game is worth the money just for the ship battles, the trading system was at the beginning a little dull and the game was generally lacking flavor and user friendlyness. However after the release of the latest patches and explansions packages the game is a lot more fun and has definatly showed its great potential for even further expansions packages.

This game is a rather nice game with lovely graphics and detailed ship combat. However, the big draw really is only the ship combat and the trading portion is more of a side thought. It's a good game, but I myself enjoy the Pirate Bay add-on much more then the core game since it's focused almost solely on the combat.

If you do like the meta aspects of gaming though you might find this game right up your alley without the pirate bay expansion, though I would still recommend you check it out.

Having just finished my very first grand campaign in East India company, it might be beneficial to share my overall impressions of this game with fellow Gamersgate members.

I glimpsed at the manual while I waited for the game to be released, but there were all these letters... I did not spend six years at university to have to read that much again in my life. Well, I looked at the pretty drawings and when the game was finally installed I decided to forget about it all together and sink right into the game.

And it turned out I did not need it. The interface is user friendly and very easy to get into, as are all the commands available, together with the tool-tips which tell you what is what. Thus, I give this game a thumbs up on short learning curve and ability to sink right in.

The trade system is relatively simple and straightforward, buy low, sell high, and its even more obvious where to buy and sell what. Its very hard to go wrong. Does this dumb down the game and makes it boring?

Luckily, no. Trade is deceptively simple, it works a bit different than in most titles of the genre that we have seen over the past years. Usually one had to juggle between the extremes of suplly and demand price curve, in EIC, this curve is but a single early economic strategy. As the game progresses, more economic strategies involving become available, and more importantly, the game pushes you to develop them on your own.

Overall, the strategic part of the game is a well balance 4x game with focus on trade and gaining competitive advantage over competition.

The switch to tactical mode battles can be both an entertainment and annoyance as one breaks away the concentration from trade networks, but as the autobattle feature makes these optional, the player can use them at leisure. But since all ships the player may combat have to be built and do not spawn out of thin air, the naval battle quantity feels just right and you don't get that feeling of getting drown with opponents that spawn out of thin air.

The battles themselves I am yet to make my opinion of. There are these ships, and they move slowly, and they fire and I win, but I dont feel like my commands and input made much difference. Perhaps this is more realistic, but I'm used to more dynamic battles and ships that go fast and turn fast and do all sorts of neat manuevers... ARG!

Importantly, the game has shown to be remarkably stable. I've played cca. 18 game hours and had not experienced a single crash, a rare quality in todays PC games development.

Finally, in my opinion, this is a solid and entertaining strategy game and I'd recommend it to anyone with interest in this time period and theme. While it might not appeal to ueber-hardcore-micromanagement junkies, its straigtforward style is just the thing a more casual and noncommitial gamer might prefer. Instead of having to drown in complexity and a myriad of technical features, one can focus on

If they patch it to add a bit more complexity this could be a great game. A little too simple as it stands now, but still very fun and I think it would be much better in multiplayer, which I haven't tried yet. 4/5