Merchants of Kaidan

Merchants of Kaidan is a trading simulation with a revenge story bolted on. You play a merchant's heir who has lost everything, and the core loop is exactly what you would expect from that premise: buy low, sell high, watch your margins, expand your caravan, and gradually piece together the mystery of your father's murder. If you have ever color-coded a logistics spreadsheet for fun, this game will feel like home. If you have not, expect a steep learning curve with a tutorial that does just enough to get you started and not much more. The trading mechanics are the heart of the experience. Prices fluctuate between towns, supply and demand shift over time, and figuring out which goods to stock for which routes is genuinely satisfying once it clicks. There are RPG elements layered on top - character skills, combat encounters on the road, and story decisions that gate certain quests - but none of them run particularly deep. Combat is functional rather than engaging, and the narrative exists mainly to give you a reason to keep optimizing your trade runs. Think of the RPG layer as a progress tracker, not a storytelling achievement. Where the game earns its hours is in the mid-to-late loop. Early sessions feel slow and occasionally punishing; a bad trade or a rough combat encounter can set you back significantly, and the economy does not hand you easy recovery paths. But once your caravan is rolling with decent gear and you have mapped the most profitable corridors, there is a satisfying rhythm to it. The depth of decision-making is modest compared to grand-strategy titles, but it rewards patience and methodical thinking over button-mashing or luck. The Mixed review score at 67% positive tells you something honest: this is a niche product that will resonate strongly with a specific type of player and frustrate everyone else. The UI is workable but dated, the pacing is uneven, and there is no mod ecosystem or post-launch content to speak of. AI behavior in combat and on the world map is serviceable but not clever. If you are hoping for a deep narrative or tactical combat, you will be disappointed. If you want a low-cost trading sim with a light RPG wrapper and a genuine challenge curve, the core loop holds up well enough to justify the time investment. Approach this one as a patience exercise. Plan your routes before committing, do not blow your starting capital on risky high-value goods, and treat the revenge storyline as a background motivator rather than a main event. Newcomers to the genre can get traction here, but they will need to accept that the game rarely explains why something went wrong. For veterans of trading sims, Merchants of Kaidan sits comfortably in the mid-tier: not the sharpest tool in the category, but a competent and occasionally absorbing one. Diego, Scout Team