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