Commander: Conquest of the Americas Demo

Back in the fifteenth century, every major empire from Europe was trying to expand its borders, preferably by force. Africa, India, and plenty of other locations were targeted by the French, the British and the Spanish, in order to be colonized and assimilated into the empire. In return, the colonies were rewarded with trading opportunities and a chance to get in line with the rest of the world.

Commander: Conquest of the Americas is a strategy game that provides you with a little bit of insight into the colonization of the American continent, along with everything that meant. The goal is to be the last man standing and conquer as much of the New World as possible, while also fighting off the other European powers and keeping your own country afloat by any means necessary.

In the beginning, you start off by colonizing smaller portions on the coast line, in order to get acquainted with the formula. To do so, you must construct facilities and try to connect the colony with the outside world, by setting up trading routes between them, as well as with your own empire. Speaking of which, there are seven nations to choose from, including the British Empire, the Spanish and the French. Obviously, each faction has certain upsides and downsides, which aims to diversify the gameplay a little bit.

Since most of the trading is done by ships, you must take care not to be robbed by pirates, or even find yourself under attack by the other empires. You can train a sizable fleet of ships, however, as well as take part in real-time combat sequences in order to control every ship under your command. If things get difficult, it is always possible to switch perspective and be the one fighting on the ships, although the controls and the gameplay get much more difficult to stomach once you do that.

Speaking of which, although the game features some interesting ideas when it comes to colonies and army control, the developers fell into the linearity trap and the entire thing goes stale after only a few short hours of gameplay. The scenarios are very repetitive and all you have to do is basically trade goods and raise money, although the economy system is broken and not even that is fun.

All things considered, Commander: Conquest of the Americas had a pretty good set of ideas at its disposal, but it did not manage to make the most out of them. Instead, the game is just a repetitive mess that gets old very quickly, unless you enjoy doing the same things over and over again with no real rewards to see for it.