East India Company: Reivews, Previews, Interviews Meta-Thread

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The game was released 4 days ago and already 2 patches.

Dude. You seriously hold it against Nitro that they released two excellent patches addressing most of players concerns in space of a week from the release of the game?
 
... Firewall off and account created and still can't see any online games (and I know they are there because a friend can see them with his version, by the way I talked him into dumping $40 as well).

When you go to multiplayer screen it sometimes takes 5-10 secs for the games to show up. Sometimes they show up immediately.
 
Tacticular Cancer reviews EIC

Before its release, East India Company mostly lived from excellent visuals, and in those respect it absolutely delivers. But as a strategy game, it's lacking in terms of gameplay, depth and long term appeal. From a fleeting look it seemed to fall in line with a certain type of games that offered almost unlimited replayability, namely Pirates!, Shogun Total War or Elite. Now, there is clearly something wrong if a game that would obviously like to play in this league becomes repetitive after one or two evenings. This is where some will say that you can't expect anything else from a trading game, and that it is just staying true to the genre. But I believe the developers approached the subject matter in the wrong way. Commercial expeditions in the 17th century should not feel like running a truck company. Did you know that the first insurance companies were created specifically for the East India Trade? And why? The sea routes were still very dangerous and many voyages ended in failure. But the astronomic profits of successful expeditions more than made up for that. I think this inherent element of risk and chance is completely missing from this game. It could have been very exciting to be challenged with various dangers, with sea voyages into unknown territories, the reward being to return safely and achieve commercial success, but failure always an option. But as you need not worry about much outside your balance sheet, it is much less fun than games like Pirates! which made everything feel like a big adventure.
 
Mikrobitti, magazine: 5/5

"Empire: Total War rewrote naval strategy gaming, but East India Company leaves ETW way behind. If you liked ETW, you're going to love EIC, which is first strategy game since Civilization IV to have more or less all the pieces come together."

"Functional economy, spectacular naval battles and excellent AI make East India Company a game that future naval-RTS games are going to be compared to. Must buy for a friend of quality games."
 
Mikrobitti, magazine: 5/5

"Empire: Total War rewrote naval strategy gaming, but East India Company leaves ETW way behind. If you liked ETW, you're going to love EIC, which is first strategy game since Civilization IV to have more or less all the pieces come together."

"Functional economy, spectacular naval battles and excellent AI make East India Company a game that future naval-RTS games are going to be compared to. Must buy for a friend of quality games."

See, they reviewed EIC after the patches and it came out COMPLETELY different than majority of older reviews where small interface-related stuff ruined the whole joy of playing this game and thus ruined the note.

I sometimes wish I was given the game a week or two before it hit the shelves, I could tell you after a half an hour of playing what EIC will be smacked for. :-|
 
True. I just find it strange that the developers and betas can't tell themselves. They actually live off this.

Ahem. Closed betas did tell and devs knew. Devs just can't bend themselves backwards in a limited time frame with all the feature requests flying around the field. Guys, don't flatter yourselves too much. There was opportunity to apply for the closed beta, you know....
 
Ahem. Closed betas did tell and devs knew. Devs just can't bend themselves backwards in a limited time frame with all the feature requests flying around the field. Guys, don't flatter yourselves too much. There was opportunity to apply for the closed beta, you know....

Fair point. It is far easier to criticise than to build. But there was "opportunity to apply for the closed beta" ? How would that opportunity have been presented to me ?
 
Yeah well, it's a pity I missed this particular announcement. :-|