Here, you'll start by trading in just two resources, food and furs, and gradually move on to others as your status rises. The result is more of a mess than a meal.Merchants of Kaidan is a Trading Simulation game with a focus on arbitrage, the practice of buying low in one location and selling high in another to turn a profit - compare this to games like Star Trader, Trade Wars, and Dope Wars, to give you an idea what you're in for. Yet the title throws these tasty ingredients together in slapdash fashion, with little care for how they work together in the end product.
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Its setting is full of detail and vibrancy. There's a variety of options to explore to make money. The idea of a trading game with role-playing elements is solid. Merchants of Kaidan has all the constituent parts to be a successful game. But the speed seems to suddenly change from easy to impossible. In some taverns you can play a knife game where you have to time stabs between the fingers. There also appear to be some outright bugs. And dreadful grammatical errors litter the dense and ponderous flavour text. The map itself looks lovely, but without place names on the towns and villages, navigation can be a nightmare. One resource, the illegal Hill Herb, always costs about four times as much as it sells for, everywhere on the map. Indeed, much about the game seems to be a mish-mash of poor design decisions and rushed execution. So it's a shame you can only afford the manpower to do this late in the game. Then you set up your employee to make and hawk their goods. To found an outpost you have to clear out a likely site, which involves hiring hordes of mercenaries to get ride of monster infestations. In some respects, this is the most interesting method of profiteering. Your final major source of moolah is the ability to employ monks and miners to run enterprises on your behalf. Again, there's a lack of variety, with most being variations on the pick-up and deliver theme. There are also lots of little side quests to do as another alternative source of income. The pool of events is limited though, and it doesn't do much to add to the narrative. The latter kinds of event are a good way of making precious extra money. Sometimes it's abandoned chests or lost nobles. On your travels you'll have a variety of random encounters. Trading isn't the only way to make money, though. So you're back looking for a workable transaction again. The prices look to be random, however, so you're left guessing until you stumble onto a profitable route by accident.Īnd after you've made a couple of money-making journeys, the supply and demand economic model flattens the prices. The game also slips you hints about certain places being good to buy or sell particular kinds of goods. You might imagine you could buy food and olive oil on the cheap in a village, and sell for a profit in the city. But the economic model seems somewhat arbitrary.
You spend most of your time trudging from city to city, buying and selling from a large roster of goods. Because this is a very unforgiving game indeed. Whatever the reason, you want to check this box. I'm flummoxed by why the developer might have done something unrealistic to increase the difficulty. There's also a little box underneath saying "realistic trading model (easy mode)". There are various game modes, one with a plot to follow and the others free-form careers of varying lengths. Trading on its own is not only a bit dull, but an often precarious and difficult proposition. Its second is the same one that many other trading games have fallen foul of - what made Elite so enjoyable was the marriage of trading with real-time action. That's Merchants of Kaidan's first mistake. Instead of piloting a gleaming spaceship, packed with technology you're pulling a rickety old cart. It transports the action from the cold dark of outer space to a rich and detailed fantasy land. The latest game to try and capture the magic is Merchants of Kaidan. Its perfectly balanced formula of exploration, unpredictability, upgrades and excitement has been elusive, however. Possibly the most transformative title in the history of gaming, Elite, was essentially a trading game.Įver since games have sought to follow in its hallowed footsteps.
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