Contrary to popular belief, the British Empire didn't become the massive superpower of its day by being the evil villain in historical Hollywood movies - as much as I like the idea of a sneering, smug-nosed, posh bad guy being a possible career path. Nope, it was a nation that capitalised upon its island status and exploited rare and exotic resources from across the seas to expand its influence upon the world. It was trade that built the British Empire and is primarily why the country still retains a place as one of the top ten richest nations in the world - at least until the recession finally flushes the last remnants of our economy down the toilet. The East India Company was key to this success, a trading organisation so successful in its ability to market items from faraway lands that it eventually became powerful enough to become its own nation and could even use Britain's own armies and ships to defend its lucrative business interests.

Britain wasn't the only country to have its own trading company though, and nations such as France, Spain, Denmark, Portugal, Sweden, Holland and the Holy Roman Empire where quick to mimic the success of the Brits. All are playable in this trade simulator that hopes to accurately recreate the golden era of the sixteen and seventeen hundreds, when most of today's European countries cemented themselves as modern day world powers - and as the two are so very obviously similar, I suppose I should get the Empire: Total War comparison out of the way now. The East India Company looks the same as Total War, with the game split between the real-time strategic view of Europe where all the important decisions are made and the full blown 3D spectacle of battles once ships collide. However, this is where the comparisons end.

Where Total War was about the expansion of your empire through military conquest using a network of spies, colossal armies and the climbing of the technological resource tree, East India Company is all about building up your chosen nation's riches through trade. When fighting does occur, it's always at sea and always something you tend to try and avoid, if only because of the added expense of replacing a lost ship. For much of the game, it's the strategic view that becomes the centrepiece, the one area in which trading companies can either flourish or flounder - and to begin with at least, it's all fairly easy stuff. Build a fleet, fill it with wares from whichever port it was constructed in, then send it off to trade those items in a port that stocks more precious goods, preferably somewhere around India, a continent so rich with lucrative foreign items that even just capturing and holding all the ports there for a dozen years will win the game. While initially all of this is done by hand, it's not long before the use of automated trade routes sends those fleets of ships to go about their task of trading with little other input needed from you. However, it would be wrong to become complacent at this stage; while I found it fairly easy to establish an already wealthy trade company, there are a number of other constraints that would have become too problematic if I'd left them unattended, which could have meant the difference between retaining the top spot as the most powerful trade company in the world and being pushed to one side by a newer, richer competitor.

East India Company is as much about beating the other European powers as it is about maintaining your own wealth; your competitors have the same goal as you, so those profitable trade routes are hotly contested and - just to throw a spanner in the works - the other nations can't be traded with in the main campaign, meaning that if they're quick enough to capture a port you've been using, your profit margin takes a serious hit. Likewise, if you capture a port that they've been relying upon, it may very well start a war. Diplomacy can be used to erase any negative feelings between you and your neighbours and alliances or pacts can be forged, whilst giving money or resources can tip someone's feelings towards you from neutral to positive.

As things steadily progress and each company increases in size and power, the need to retain the top spot becomes the one overriding goal, a task made more difficult as fleet sizes and ship classes improve. On top of that, there are the occasional and troublesome attacks by pirates to endure; their incessant thievery can not only destroy ships but cost huge amounts of money as they steal their precious cargo. However, while things progressively get more interesting and a bit more difficult, there's still not a great deal left for you to do once you've mastered the fundamentals. The campaign modes do at least offer up a wide range of objectives for you to complete, some of which are mandatory with strict penalties if you fail with others remaining optional, but they do at least manage to fight back boredom for a short while, although the actual objectives never really differ that much from destroying ships or transporting specific cargo. Shifting to the port view also offers up some (quite limited) scope in managing the finer aspects of your trade empire. Here, everything from ship construction to sorting out trade items can be done by hand, while buildings such as warehouses can be upgraded to increase their storage. There's not a great deal more to do here, and although the 3D view of your port certainly looks pretty, it doesn't quite justify the long loading times that you have to endure to see it.

Thankfully, the battles fare a little better. Assuming that you forgo auto-resolving a fight when it occurs, you're get transported to a full-blown 3D skirmish between your fleet and those of your enemey. In what is arguably the highlight of the game, naval battles are as complicated as you might expect a historical Eighteenth century to be when it involves sail-powered warships. It's here that the size and strength of ships really counts, as everything from their sails to the amount of ordinance they can carry affects the outcome of the battle. It's realistic, too; ammo is limited, and on those occasions where running is the only option left, any cargo that is being carried can be dumped to increase speed. Different ammunition types can be used to thin out the crew on an enemy ship or to cripple its masts for boarding and capture, but on top of the difficulties faced with choosing the right ammo for the job, you are also at the mercy of the sea, where wind direction can either help or hinder your progress and weather can make all the difference between a quick victory and a long, downward spiral to defeat.

A direct action mode is also available, which allows you to take control of a ship and manually steer and fire at whichever enemy you decide. It's a great concept, when it involves ships that can only rely on the wind to navigate, it's generally something you'll only consider using when close enough, which is the one big problem with the combat: it's far too slow. With a lack of any ability to speed up time, battles can drag on - and even when you do eventually catch up to an enemy ship (which can take forever if you happen to be sailing with the wind bellowing towards you), the time it takes to weaken its hull significantly enough to board it or force it to flee takes so long that any sense of victory is replaced by an overwhelming sense of relief that the whole thing is finally coming to an end. While clearly the combat system can be fun, it was something that I often tried to avoid, as the time it takes for a battle to run its course just doesn't seem worth it. It's also hampered by the fact that there is only a small selection of ships to choose from, and most of them have to be unlocked by first spending huge amounts of money. Consequently, fighting is something best kept as a last resort; taking on a ninety-gun galleon just isn't that much fun when you've only got a sloop and a couple of schooners at your disposal.

The battle sequences at least manage to look the part though, if not quite attaining the same level of visual density of Empire: Total War (there's that comparison again) and lacking any kind of physics or model damage. The weather effects and ship detail are on par with most modern games though, and together with some realistic (if again not quite amazing) audio they can make the battles feel like less of a grind then they actually are. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the map screen; given that it's the one place where you spend the most of your time, it's a depressingly empty area to look at, with huge continents of little more than greens and browns, and only the ports indicating any semblance of civilisation. Ships might occupy much of the surrounding sea, yet the game never quite makes you believe that you're in an era whose shipping lanes were awash with a hive of continuous activity.

Even more disappointing is the lack of an option to play the main campaign in multiplayer, which reeks of a missed opportunity. Getting to play with or against other players in a grand campaign to become the best trading company could have provided hours of entertainment beyond the single player experience, yet the only online support comes in the form of those long and tedious ship battles. While certainly they'll likely be more entertaining with real people to play against, this alone doesn't quite seem to warrant repeated play - and that's only if you can actually find someone else to play against.

There's enough to like about East India Company to recommend it to those who prefer the economic trading aspect of strategy games to the combat, but while it's all competent enough, I often found my mind drifting back to Empire: Total War - probably because even though its trading and ship combat aspect aren't quite as in depth, it offers a vast amount of other options to play with. East India Company just feels too limited in both scope and design; the fact that land battles are omitted (the real EIC did engage in a few themselves) is also a crushing blow. More options and variety would certainly have been welcome here; without them, East India Company is a fun if largely unremarkable experience. It's great for fans of Eighteenth century nautical flavoured strategy games, but everyone else is better off playing.... well, you know its name by now...

Reviewed by Kieron Giacopazzi for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).