When comparing The Pirate: Caribbean Hunt vs Merchant, the Slant community recommends Merchant for most people. In the question“What are the best free games for Android?” Merchant is ranked 2nd while The Pirate: Caribbean Hunt is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose Merchant is:
The game has a nice retro pixel art style. From the menus to the dungeons or shop there is a very familiar aesthetic to the overall design that would have fit in quite well on consoles in the 80's.
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Pros
Pro Great game mechanics
From raising or lowering sails too maneuver faster and boarding ships with your crew, to transporting people from port to port and finding survivors out in the sea, this game packs a solid punch when it comes to various ways of doing the same thing. It adds logical complications to normal tasks, such as wind, and not being able to sail up against it. All in all, even if there is so much stuff to worry about, the experience is very enjoyable, and filled with surprises.
Pro Real world
Although the fastest way to get around is to use a 2d map, if you wish to do so, you can jump in a ship and sail to any location in 3d. The whole map is seamless, and contained in one scene. The game even encourages the players to do so by adding hidden docks at strategic locations, giving a sum of money to the player when the ports are found. And by putting ship wrecks with treasure island maps, wich can only be reached in open world.
Pro Completely open world
The main goal is definitely to battle ships, but you can do anything your heart desires from building farms and taverns in your ports, to attacking ports for a ransom, and rolling dice aggainst an AI for money.
Pro Good graphics
Although it does not have the best graphics out there, the game deffinetly looks nice compaired to many others, and is well optimised; wich means it can run on even budget devices.
Pro Pixel art
The game has a nice retro pixel art style. From the menus to the dungeons or shop there is a very familiar aesthetic to the overall design that would have fit in quite well on consoles in the 80's.
Pro Fun resource management mechanic
The player can sell their loot (gathered from a dungeon) for in game money, to then be spent on needed equipment or can equip their loot to try harder dungeons to get better loot to sell for new equipment. Each action is a gamble and may or may not pay off for the player.
Pro In active development
Merchant is still in a very active development phase, which means there will be plenty of bug fixes and new features and tweaks to the gameplay added.
Pro Dedicated subreddit
Merchant has a dedicated subreddit page where users can discuss the game, strategies and bugs.
Pro Completely free and zero permissions
Merchant is a completely free game that also has zero permissions.
Cons
Con Can get boring
Although there is allot to do in this game, once you have tried it all, and own the biggest ship, there is nothing very exiting left.
Con Current version has both ads and in-app purchases
Con Wait times
There are wait times in the game for both crafting and adventuring. This makes it impossible to sit and play for any length of time and makes the user have to come back to the game often in order to make any significant progress.
Con Lag/delay of action
When pressing buttons in the menus there is a noticeable delay until the requested action actually takes place.