Merchant of the Skies is charming, it's a simple game with just enough to invest you in its world.

I wish I could give a neutral review - the game is functional and a bit charming, and I don't have a lot of playtime. However, you can figure out pretty quickly if the game is not for you and return it if not, but if you have preferences like me I can maybe save you some time. And it really really wasn't for me.

The game play is akin to navigating a JRPG overworld and going into towns - but you'll be trading, not buying potions for that next dungeon. That's kinda what I wanted; exploration but with some trade and some idle-game kinda stuff. What I experienced was fetch quests and foraging. Unlike a decent JRPG map, it's clear from the start stuff is just kinda spread around sorta randomly and much of it feels quite the same.

The starting ship does not go far (you are given some emergency batteries, however) so you'll find yourself stopping town island to town island for fuel every minute (literally) and hopefully finding an island with a resources in-between to sell (if the merchant accepts the item - which they often don't for reasons I didn't figure out in my short play). Then there are fetch quests - take a person here, a letter there - more complicated quests ask you to build infrastructure but I didn't get that far. From what I can tell, it's ultimately going from here to there on a completely open map. One reason I didn't get far was the very tiny inventory of the starting ship (four slots, one with the batteries) enabling me to carry two resources and probably a third thing that I don't know what it does or no one will buy it. Also, I might be wrong but finding deals is basically done by retreading towns and seeing what's cheap.

It kind feels like a menu / idle game, but not quite, not everything is a quick menu away. Plus, the menus are quite oddly placed. It kinda feels like an exploration game, and while charming, the map is flat and open and player movement is minimal (steer the ship anywhere). In towns, there are shortcuts to all the buildings and by the third town I felt no reason to move or look around at all. Maybe one very pretty sprite and a menu with everything would make more sense.

I think the game could've done with more ambient music and then something more exciting in specific locations, it gets tiring very fast.

If you like moving stuff around and foraging while upgrading your ability to, the game could be for you. I'd rather just have a menu idle game or a more involved adventure game.