The Merchant's Guide to the Kingdom Reviews

I really, really enjoy the vast majority of the mechanics here, and the environment and setting are well designed and realized, for the most part. The Merchants Guide to the Kingdom has enormous potential as a compelling management game styled after fantasy MMOs - I think there's a certain niche demographic for which this could have some seriously deep appeal, and I believe it could be made user-friendly enough to find fans in a much wider pool. All of that said, [b]I cannot recommend to a general audience for purchase at this point in it's early access journey, outside of those like me who find the concept and bones especially compelling and would like to support the game's continued development[/b]. There are a number of foundational issues with the implementation which stand in the way of acceptably smooth and pleasant gameplay, most notably in the broad categories of performance, UI, and UX/QoL. Nonetheless, [b]I am inspired to continue to play it[/b] and check in on it's development moving forward. What follows are my reflections on why you might hold off for a bit - and also some speculation on my part. If I am interpreting the issues with any accuracy, I believe all of the problems are reasonably surmountable obstacles. [h2]Performance[/h2] I would categorize [url=https://pcpartpicker.com/b/JtXbt6]my aging system as "high-mid grade,"[/url] but it struggles to achieve smooth gameplay here, at any quality setting. It isn't that far into a session or save that mouse interactions start exceeding the magic 400ms response time, making everything feel just a bit more sluggish. Similarly, animation and movement can appear fairly choppy. But the greatest offender is the game freezing for a bit when you perform various interactions. Most notably when opening different interfaces, and often in item management interactions. In a game where the majority of the experience is interfaces and item management, this is a very accentuated problem, and all those half-to-several-second freezes really add up. I believe there is good evidence of this being a matter of underlying data and entity management more than anything. There are hints that some data is duplicated across several places, and the freezes seem to coincide with displaying, modifying, or filtering/sorting collections. If so, fixing these things may be a considerably far-reaching refactor, but the patterns are well defined and readily available, and would be widely applicable and repeatable... I feel like there's a good chance that some day a release may see most of these particular performance issues disappearing in concert. [h2]User Interface[/h2] The UI needs a lot of love. Apart from lacking aesthetic polish, there's not much in the way of overarching design cohesion, with the way in which you are presented information or interact with things varying wildly and inexplicably from application to application, and often in entirely different styles. It didn't take me too long to wrap my head around most of the game's interfaces - thought there are still a few which I do not understand - but it's a struggle, and some interfaces don't make much sense on the whole. Many lists are lacking useful filter/search/sort functions (and those that have them tend to freeze the game when used, as mentioned prior). The UI elements also struggle with regular and consistent input handling. It is not unusual to have a couple panels overlaid, and hit registration might trigger the foremost element as you'd expect - but it's also not uncommon for it to trigger an obstructed one in the background. Or even buttons in a portion of a list which is scrolled out of view. Or failing to respond at all, presumably because something else is consuming the interaction. All of this amounts to a peevish problem of you sometimes doing things which you did not mean to, and possibly even being unable to discern what you did by accident, and correct the consequences. Lists updating will on occasion change the display in some manner, such as the scroll position, so sometimes you don't click on what your mouse was over a moment before. List updates having a tendency to freeze the game for a moment makes this even more problematic. Ultimately, I could sum up the UI as cumbersome and not intuitive. I think that between the mechanics and the environment and the graphics and the UI, [b]the UI is the lowest denominator, and makes the game feel a lot more prototypical than it might otherwise.[/b] [h2]User Experience/Quality of Life[/h2] There's a lot to be said here, but I think I've already rambled far too long, and about more imminently important things - QoL features in particular can wait, and I'm talking about many things which are likely being explored and subject to change. So, just a couple examples. Most of the interfaces and interactions don't really feel like they're currently designed for the end-user, which makes sense in EA perhaps. A good example of this might be the tutorial, which probably made me more confused than less - each task just obscured all of the UI except for whatever button I was currently supposed to click, without really explaining why I might want to or what it was accomplishing. It wasn't until several hours in that I discovered that there was a textual guide and entries which did a considerably better job at describing what the interactions did. Some of the features behind the interfaces don't make a lot of sense. There's an "item stash" which I have only found to be accessible through the store management screen, but it's not clear why I would want to stash items, apart from weapons and armor which I wouldn't want to leave for my NPC guildmates to use, or keep in my general inventory and risk accidentally selling or destroying them. It could be nice for sequestering materials and the like - but given the rate at which you often acquire items it doesn't make sense without some sort of auto-sorting functionality. It is also irksome that items cannot be marked for sale or destruction while stashed. [h1]Epilogue[/h1] I think TMGTTK is a really compelling concept with a lot of great mechanics, and a nice diversion from my routine niches - I feel it has immense promise. It is not a very pleasant or smooth experience as things stand, but I find myself enjoying it even in it's current state, and I really look forward to what it's future might hold.