Review - Prima East India Company eGuide

As anyone who has required a game guide for something as elaborate as World of Warcraft or Mass Effect will attest, flicking between pages while navigating a keyboard/mouse combo can be quite demanding for those of a mere two-armed nature. Prima’s ever-expanding catalogue of electronic guides rectify this somewhat, with navigational controls and the obligatory search bar ensuring that you wont have to spend ten minutes searching through a 30-page bestiary ever again.
 
Given the multi-layered quality of its naval conquest gameplay, East India Company’s eGuide is an especially useful addition, and feels pleasantly concise in its assistance despite being 120 pages in length. Everything from the basics of fleet-to-fleet combat to multiplayer tactics are detailed by strategy guide veteran Bryan Stratton, though one minor niggle is that this eGuide doesn’t feature the Pirate Bay expansion which was released simultaneously with the full game.
 
Unfortunately, this advantage comes at a price, and it’s a rather steep one at that. At $19.00, this virtual guide isn’t particularly cheaper than the physical alternative, and the additional $2.99 for Extended Download Service only twists the knife in further. Nevertheless, for those with dual PC screens and a partiality for heavily researching their game mechanics during play, the eGuides are very well designed, with concept art and exclusive screenshots throughout. For a more extensive game such as Lost Odyssey or pretty much any MMORPG, an eGuide would most definitely be worth the download. By opting for the digital substitute you’ve also saved another tree… or at least a very small piece of one.
 
For further information visit: http://www.primagames.com/.
 
Review by Carl Doherty