When comparing Merchant vs 80 Days, the Slant community recommends 80 Days for most people. In the question“What are the best Android games without in-app purchases/paywalls?” 80 Days is ranked 26th while Merchant is ranked 94th. The most important reason people chose 80 Days is:
The way the game plays out there are many story options that will be triggered due to previous choices in the game. Being that it branches out like this it will take many playthroughs to experience all of the stories options.
Specs
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Pros
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.
Pro Branching story that will take multiple playthroughs to experience it all
The way the game plays out there are many story options that will be triggered due to previous choices in the game. Being that it branches out like this it will take many playthroughs to experience all of the stories options.
Pro Heavily focused on reading
Pretty much a visual novel, 80 Days should interest anyone who enjoys reading and makes for a great introduction to the visual novel genre due to it being spearheaded by a big name in text adventure fiction, Jon Ingold.
Pro Supports portrait and landscape play
80 Days allows for the user to play in portrait or landscape, making for a good game across tablets and phones.
Pro Does not need internet connection to be played
80 Days does not need the device it is being played on to be connected to the internet to be played, which makes for a good game during air travel as well as other places where one does not have an internet connection.
Pro Stylish design based on Jules Verne
With the Steampunk motif and the way that the game transitions, users can see that a lot of style and imagination was used in the creation of the game. Being that it is based off of Jules Verne's novel "Around the World in 80 Days", fans of the author should find a lot to like here and those new to the author should be able to find something they like being that it is an established classic.
Pro Uncovered routes stay uncovered on next replay
Once completing a playthrough the routes that were uncovered will stay uncovered for the next playthrough, thus helping the player chart better courses the more they play the game.
Pro Very replayable
With the vast swath of options in 80 Days players will be hard pressed to replay the same scenarios more than once.
Cons
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.
Con Single playthrough is short
Lasting about 2 hours a single playthrough is pretty short, though with all the branching story triggers there is plenty of reason to play over and over again.
Con Unintuitive user interface
The inventory system in the game can be hard to understand at first and it can be difficult to control the scrolling of text in some areas.