Mercenaries Saga Chronicles

Genre: Turn-Based Strategy-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Mercenaries Saga Chronicles is a collection of three games (Mercenaries Saga: Will of the White Lions, Mercenaries Saga 2: Order of the Silver Eagle and Mercenaries Saga 3: Gray Wolves of War), all Turn-Based Strategy-RPG games that were released on Smartphones (with the latter two also going to the 3DS). These games present themselves as a game in the same vein as Final Fantasy Tactics, albeit a simplified version, and while that will certainly appeal to some, it’s also a large part of the game’s problem.

All of the trappings of Tactics-style strategy-RPGs are here, with the grid-based battle system, the character classes, and so on. Furthermore, it goes a step farther by taking on a similar presentation to Tactics, with a similar medieval fantasy setting and a politics-heavy story. However, this game is no Final Fantasy Tactics.

The first thing that will become clear upon playing this title is that the graphics are painful to look at, old-school in a way that makes even Final Fantasy Tactics look generations ahead, and not in that faux retro charming sorta’ way either. In addition, the music is nothing to write home about, and that “simplified” version of Final Fantasy Tactics-style gameplay strips out much of the nuance of those games.

To Mercenaries Saga Chronicles’ credit, it does do a few things that are all its own, such as an “aggro” system that tracks enemy grudges against the player, and this is technically three full games here, even if each of them in itself is small compared to a game like Final Fantasy Tactics… or Disgaea… or…

Yeah, that’s the thing. The Nintendo Switch is a paradise for fans of strategy-RPGs, with Fire Emblem: Three Houses on the way, multiple games in the Valkyria Chronicles series, Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle, or if you really want something close to Final Fantasy Tactics, multiple games in the Disgaea series are right there, oozing with personality and all sorts of inventive directions it takes the genre. Next to all of this, Mercenaries Saga Chronicles looks outright archaic.

That’s not to say Mercenaries Saga Chronicles can’t be enjoyed, there’s still decent strategy-RPG gameplay here for those who have already played through… all of those other games I just mentioned (and numerous others I haven’t). But you have to be a pretty big hardcore fan of the genre to find this collection worth your while.

tl;dr – Mercenaries Saga Chronicles takes the strategy-RPG gameplay of a game like Final Fantasy Tactics, strips out much of its complexity, gives it terribly dated graphics, mediocre music and story, and then plops it onto the Switch, where there are countless other better games in the same genre. Die-hard fans of the genre may enjoy this, but only once they’ve tired of everything else.

Grade: D+

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