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Name: Commander: Conquest of the Americas

Commander: Conquest of the Americas developer Nitro Games seems to have taken a leaf from history. Columbus sailed across the Atlantic hoping to find a better trade route to India, and much like him, Nitro have taken their game from India into this bold new land. Does sailing across the ocean bring Commander wealth and riches, or should it just take its chances around the Cape of Good Hope?

There's no structured story per se, aside from the context taken from history. You control one of six European powers in trying to colonise and populate settlements on the New World. For the most part, you are let loose to do what you will, but the presence of four advisors giving you missions and orders does lend some direction to your actions. Usually, these will come in the form of constructing new buildings in your colony to deal with the burgeoning population better, but can be quite varied, from delivering a certain amount of a resource to your Home Port in time or dealing with a meddlesome pirate squadron.

Despite the title's talk of commanding and conquesting, the name of the game is trade. While you're given an ample amount of money to set up your first colony, in order to make a profit and fund further expansions, you'll need to set up trade routes. The way this works is quite simple - any goods you produce in your colonies will sell for a high price at your Home Port, for example, London, and goods from your Home Port will sell high in your colonies. Selling silverware and tobacco may give you wealth, but transporting colonists and soldiers are also necessary to grow your towns. You need to find the right balance of shipping people from your Home Port as well as goods to sell in order to progress.

Yet as soon as you get comfortable, things start to go wrong. Eventually, pirates will begin to roam trade routes, and as prospective colony spots run thin, nations will turn on each other in order to seize the wealth of resources found there. Fielding warships to protect your trade vessels is essential to running successful supply lines. Since most trading vessels sacrifice firepower for cargo storage, and with the base-level trading vessel having no cannon at all, you need to make sure you can protect yourself. The loss of a full load of resources, most notably in the cost of ships, can be absolutely devastating. With the greatest sell-high items also being the most expensive to purchase, you can easily empty your coffers looking for a greater reward, only to be cut down making the voyage across the Atlantic.

When battle calls, you have the option to auto-resolve it, allowing the computer to calculate the statistical victory, or dropping down into a 3D battlefield and exchanging cannonballs personally. Choosing from the three types of cannon shot; solid balls for hull damage, chain shot for sail damage, and grape shot for crew damage, you can also choose between an RTS control scheme or Direct Control. While RTS is your standard box-drawing and right-clicking armchair masochism that has been around since the invention of the genre, Direct Control allows you to command your vessel's direction and fire the cannons at your command. While I would be happy to let my ships fire for themselves, the RTS mode is afflicted with pathfinding issues. Often as not, my ship would keep at a distance where cannon fire wouldn't reach the enemy ship and, most bizarrely, when commanding more than one ship at a time, one would vanish completely, still listed on my battle menu but nowhere to be seen. Hopefully, these issues will be addressed in patches, but for now, auto-resolving is the better, less confounding option.

Minus those issues, the game is a fine example of a strategy game, appealing to no one who isn't already acquainted with its trappings. This is more evident seeing how Commander deals with its tutorials. Rather than having them a separate option in the main menu, it attempts to incorporate them into the active campaign. However, it doesn't do them very well or concisely enough. By the time I had a full grasp of the game mechanics, I had led myself into a financial rut that I had to begin the campaign anew, equipped with what I had learned. It raises the question as to why it wasn't a separate option to undergo these tutorials. Even in its predecessor, East India Company, in which it shares so much of its gameplay, it was a separate option, and it worked well because of that. It becomes a non-issue once you've learned everything, but it does little to ingratiate the game to you in those critical first periods.

Yet, in having patience with it, only then does the game open up and become very satisfying. Nothing about the game is fast-paced and exciting, particularly naval battles with ships sailing at a whopping 1 knot, and anyone expecting edge-of-your-seat action will be disappointed, but there's a lot of satisfaction to be had in building up a colony from nothing, creating an effective trade route and then protecting it from attack. This is the crux of the game, and it's entertaining over its long campaign, which is great, since there's little else to occupy you. While the campaign has three difficulties, six factions with different perks and bonuses, and is varied between the standard campaign and a free campaign with fewer restrictions, only a custom and quick naval battle option is available to play. There is absolutely no multiplayer to speak of, campaign or battle-based, so essentially all the gameplay arises from the campaign.

On its highest settings, the game looks quite pretty, throughout its environment, textures, and all manner of different models, even if some are incredibly small. While the campaign map contains as much detail as it needs, the naval battles are quite nice to see. The warships stand tall, you can see the sails unfurl and the crew on deck. The water is also lovely, both in battle and on the map. The music is mostly background fare, though the scant voice acting from your ships is quite stilted, being the only blemish in the presentation.

Commander: Conquest of the Americas is an evolution and reimagining of many of the elements of East India Company. It's a slow burn, but when all your plans are in motion, all your ships sailing where you tell them and trading what you give them, when all your enemies are pushed back, when colony after colony is founded under your banner, there's immense pleasure to be taken from it. It may lack the longevity of multiplayer, and depending on your preferences, it may be too slow-paced, but if you warm to its quirks, there's a lot to be seen and enjoyed.