IN CLOSING
Commander: Conquest of the Americas is better than
East India Company, but not by much. The game’s excruciatingly slow pace remains: you must accelerate time because so little profit is earned early on, due to the high cost of maintaining colonies and having access to only a few items to sell. Because of the lack of loans, you have to be really, really careful never to carry a negative balance, as there is no way to rebound (since you must spend money to get goods to trade). It can be quite easy to "break" the game by going in to debt (you can be one building away if you plan poorly), relegating you to an old autosave or restart. The automated trade means the game will play itself while you wait for profits to slowly increase, constantly shuttling goods from your handful of colonies to the home port. It’s impossible to see a list of all goods in order of price, a really distressing limitation that still not fixed. Your advisors will give you some goals along the way, which is a nice way of providing guidance to new players, although their requests are similar each time you play. Once you do earn enough cash, there are lots of buildings to construct that will produce advanced goods that earn slightly more income. Ships can be given upgrades when they are built: a nice touch. The limited diplomatic options are disappointing. The AI is typically hostile, but it does provide an efficient challenge. The tactical battles are the same, except for the odd removal of multiplayer, but you do get some nice graphics. I would still like to be able to get goods from enemy ships when auto-resolving conflict; why have the option if you are at a disadvantage by using it? I am being harder on Commander: Conquest of the Americas because of my familiarity with
East India Company, but I think that's fair for a $40 semi-sequel. It's a better game overall, but with sequels come higher expectations. Things are more interesting when international tension is involved, but Commander: Conquest of the Americas would have fit better as an expansion based on the totality of changes contained herein.
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