Anyone familiar with any of the Merge style of games will feel right at home with Merge Stories by Playtika LTD. You know the drill, acquire objects, merge similar things together to get better things, make money and follow the storyline.
Story
Merge Stories: Merge and Battle doesn’t necessarily stand out in the plethora of different merge battle games, but that isn’t necessarily bad. You gather resources, combine them, improve items around you and slowly build an army. There are a couple of things that it does differently like the ability to raid other lands around you. Also, to gather even more resources, all under the watchful eye of a Jason Momoa-esque merman. Under Mr. Mermoa’s tutelage, you learn to combine the different island-themed objects together to create a different and better object which upgrades different things around the island such as lighthouses, huts, ships, and soldiers which you can train.
Hands-on
The controls are user-friendly and intuitive albeit slightly oversensitive at times. You will spend some time selecting the wrong object or character and then way overshooting your intended target. The graphics are sometimes a little iffy. It’s hard to tell what an object is supposed to be when you select it. It’s a basic lather, rinse repeat of merging, making money and building. Then you go to a new area to repeat the process. The only thing keeping it somewhat interesting is the addition of new objects characters as you progress in the game. You start off the game seeming extremely powerful at the beginning. But once you pass all of the tutorial-type levels you’ll head right into those paywall levels. It’s around this time that the game loses most of its already wavering appeal. If I’m going to spend any money on a game it’s going to be on a much better-developed game.
Final thoughts
While it’s not overly complicated or groundbreaking, it will keep you occupied or help you kill a few minutes when needed, which is all you can ask for in a free mobile game. It just doesn’t offer anything unique enough to stand out against the endless other choices you have for merge games. The raids are a little lengthy, and tedious at times, once you start a raid you can’t back out of them and you’re going to HATE tapping on barrels after about 20 minutes in. Another nail in the coffin is the paywall and random crashes you will experience. The replayability is extremely low on this one as it loses its appeal early on in the game. All in all, it’s just not really worth the time and effort to build your base and character to be stopped by a paywall early in the game.
