Overview for Gamer.ru

There are a few themes in the gaming industry that always resonate with me. One of them is the sea. I have never read Stevenson, never opened "Captain Blood", and historically, the era of piracy, trade, and the East India Company has not interested me.

But in games — for some reason — I just love to look at the sea, command a ship, and spend a long time sailing from one dirty port to another. It's like I breathe this salty air.

…Now, let's get to the game. Today we will talk about the economic strategy "[East India Company](http://www.gamer.ru/games/1553-ost-indskaya-kompaniya)". I've briefly written about this project in the review of the gaming industry and everything related. But that was, if I may say so, a light preview of two or three impressions, and now it is a fairly ordinary categorical review.

Buying and selling — we live very happily

"[East India Company](http://www.gamer.ru/games/1553-ost-indskaya-kompaniya)" is a real-time economic strategy with a smart pause and the ability to speed up time. Something similar exists in the "Europa" series from Paradox. The player manages a power and must lead it to victory. You can win either by sending beams of goodness against your opponents (that is, you simply trade better, transport goods faster, and do not interfere with anyone) or by getting to know the dark side of the force and sinking everything that doesn't fly under your flag. You can capture ports and arrange battles at sea (tactical battles are present like in Empire: Total War). However, all actions in the game occur only on water; there is no land component.

If we compare "[East India Company](http://www.gamer.ru/games/1553-ost-indskaya-kompaniya)" with other projects, it partially resembles "Port Royale" and Empire: Total War, where everything that happens on land is removed. Thus, we mainly have to simply transport goods, build new ships, develop colonies a little, and fight against opponents.

I hope you now have a rough idea of what this game is and to what genre it belongs. This means we can easily tear it apart, praise it, criticize it, or flush it down the toilet.

First steps

Before starting the game, we are offered to choose one of the nations, which we want to make the strongest, most influential, and adorable in the entire world ocean. However, the main menu does not mention the pros and cons of the countries. Only the flags and faces of the leaders change, but what merits England has and what disadvantages the French face — God knows.

In addition to choosing a country, we need to decide on the type of campaign. You can start from the year 1650 or from 1700. Choose a struggle for resources or victory by force. And the difference between all this is significant.

If you play as the English from the mid-17th century, you have only one port, one ship, and a miserable captain. The government will give you a little money, assign a simple task, and wish you a good voyage. You will have to build world dominance from scratch. On a sloop. You sail, buy spices in India, then long and hard you carry them to England… You make ten round trips and maybe you will gather enough money for a new ship. Buy yourself a sloop…. and the conquest of the universe will be one step closer.

If you choose to play as Spain at the beginning of the 18th century, it will not look so trivial, slow, and vague. You won’t have just one captain — but ten. And they don't sail on sloops. Each commands entire armadas that even Somali pirates would think twice before attacking. And you have about seven or eight ports, each producing very important goods that competitors have long been eyeing. It's a completely different game, with completely different sensations.

Not everything is so smooth

Sounds fancy, right? Trade, fierce competition, ruthless division of India and Africa, epic naval battles where we're even allowed to control individual ships. A mix of "Pirates!", "Corsairs", and "Port Royale".

But why does the game tire you out, why do you want to sleep, play a hand of poker, clean the house, but not engage in such an exciting naval war? Let's take a look at what "**East India Company**" consists of.

Let's start with the early eras. We enter the game, receive a sloop at our disposal, and an order from the command: "Transport 50 tons of tea, porcelain, spices, and fabric from India." If we accomplish this in 15 years — honor and praise to us; the company will make a lot of money, and life will be joyful and comfortable for the entire population of Earth. We're delighted with such a prospect and eagerly throw ourselves into the task. We need to find India on the map (2 seconds), select a port with the necessary goods (4 seconds), send a ship there (3 seconds), and wait for it to arrive, load the goods, and head back (10 minutes). Once we’ve done that, we repeat it. Just with one exception — it now takes half the time to find India and choose the port, hurrah!

This is how you'll have to play for an hour or two. Then you’ll buy yourself two or three more small trading ships, and sailing might get a little quicker. Especially if the vessels don't go together but with a three-minute interval.

But the actions are always the same: the ship arrives, we enter the port (oh yes, you can't perform buying and selling on the global map, so everything freezes, and we spend a long time poking away at keys in the city; it's all very inconvenient, slow, tedious, NIGHTMARE!), we struggle with the menu, load the goods, go back to the global map, and wait. After which we repeat everything again.

This is the core of the game, the storyline. But there are also secondary quests intended to diversify the game. Sometimes, we are asked to take up a certain task. For example, an anonymous person asks to deliver a letter to one of the hot ports of Africa. The actions are as follows: we look for the needed port (10 to 40 seconds), select a captain and a ship for the delivery (since we have to enter the city and struggle with the stupid interface — 4 minutes), send the ship (3 seconds), wait (5-15 minutes). Very exciting additional task, isn’t it?

There is, however, something a bit more original. For example, we're given a squadron of very cool ships that we won't be able to build for many years and are asked to capture any Indian settlement. We choose one, send troops there, and immediately find out we’ve won. It’s impossible to lose because we’re performing a storyline task where the fleet is given by the command, and it can’t be improved. You can either issue an attack order or not. The second option, however, will lead to Game Over.

Adult life

Alright, fine. It’s boring to build a trading empire; it’s routine. That even makes sense. So, ideally, when it's ready, and the great struggle for every piece of land near the sea begins — it should be very exciting. Is it?

If you start in the year 1700 (instead of reaching it on your own), it'll take a long time to figure out what's going on. A bunch of people under our command, all on ships, provinces everywhere. Your head is spinning.

But once you understand what the company is up to and what goals lie ahead (and it’s not difficult to figure that out), you can proceed, according to the developers, to the most interesting aspect — war. In economic strategies, it usually looks a bit ridiculous. Or amusing. The creators typically make battles unintrusive, simple, and quick. More like an add-on. But in "East India Company", it’s not the case. Here you can personally lead the fleet and manage individual ships. Just like in real "Corsairs". But only castrated and boring…

Wind plays almost no role, sail type either. I tried to escape from a pirate sloop, sailing downwind (which, I remind you, hardly moves in the wind — the sails are diagonal), and what do you think happened? It turned out to be faster because it has a higher speed stat…

I played a lot of "Corsairs" and spent a year in Pirates of the Burning Sea; I really love "Pirates!". I've been battling on ships for ten years. So, in "[East India Company](http://www.gamer.ru/games/1553-ost-indskaya-kompaniya)", some of the worst naval battles are presented. Some may argue that they are deliberately simplified. But look at the arcade battles in "Pirates!". They are superb. Sure, they get tiresome over time, but they are still wonderful.

Here, we face completely stupid AI, idiotic allies, and an ugly sea that is just unpleasant to look at (I repeat, I played PotBS, where the water detail was terrible, but it was still much prettier), and absolutely horrible ships.

In fact, the entire game is ugly. There’s nothing beautiful about it except the loading screens. The ports are horrible, painted with dull colors and put into a pathetic three-dimensional engine. There is not a single beautiful thing on the global map that would catch the eye.

But graphics aren't everything; the game itself is extremely poorly thought out. The global map does not account for wind direction. That is, ships sail in any direction at the same speed. The weather also never changes; it’s always sunny and clear, and in battle — a slight storm.

Now, let's talk about the purely economic aspect. There are about 10 goods here. There’s no point in thinking about what to buy and where to buy it. You just send a ship to a port, pick up the product that brings the highest profit (directly in the buying-selling menu it's marked what the profit will be after you bring goodies home). Prices change very rarely, and amassing a fortune is just elementary. For example, I became rich by exporting spices from one of my colonies. I initially sent two small ships there, then with the money earned, I bought a large one, and then two of those, three… I earned about half a million per round trip. Considering the government paid a maximum of 50 thousand for the most important tasks. On average — 20. And this is in an economic strategy! In "**Return of the Legend**, everything was much better thought out and complicated. What to say about "Port Royale*" or any other game where trade is the foundation. Here, we don’t need to think*. Everything is done automatically and intuitively. So what, for God's sake, is the point?

Ah right, let's not forget that the only difference between all the countries is their geographic location. Whoever has a shorter route to India is the winner. That's it.

With great difficulty, I spent a few days with this "most captivating" project and reached a somewhat interesting stage. When enemies start actively competing, prices change dramatically, and we have to seize ports to secure resources. But the hours of life spent — it wasn’t worth it. For me, the game became a benchmark of tedium. Some might say that it’s just such a strategy. Very simple, easy, where you don’t have to sit with a calculator and write down hundreds of product names. Perhaps it’s a new genre. But for me — "**East India Company**" is simply boring. When all missions boil down to "bring from point A to point B exactly this product within such years that you could walk from London to India", it seems to me it’s just a scam. Sorry to those who liked the project, but I really can’t talk about it in any other way but derogatorily. And as one defender of this wonder said on a forum: "Well, at least there’s no annoying Jack Sparrow here!". There. Such are the merits of the game.

…It’s also not about World War II or American Democracy. Which, of course, is also a plus…