When comparing Mercenaries Saga Chronicles vs Titan Quest, the Slant community recommends Titan Quest for most people. In the question“What are the best ports for the Nintendo Switch?” Titan Quest is ranked 4th while Mercenaries Saga Chronicles is ranked 15th. The most important reason people chose Titan Quest is:
Titan Quest is over 10 years old now, and it is still widely played. It even saw a remastered "Anniversary Edition" in August of 2016, drawing in more players, old and new.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Easy to jump into thanks to simple and easy to understand mechanics
The mechanics are easy to grasp within the first few minutes of gameplay. There's nothing convoluted or over complicated, and the game doesn't attempt to be anything it's not. Skills and abilities do what they say they do without a lot of fluff. For example "Throw Stone" does exactly that. Each ability also tells you exactly how much damage it's going to do before you use it.
Combat takes place on a grid based system, taking turns with the enemy as you move your units around, attack, cast spells, and heal. The distance in which you can move or attack is marked with highlighted tiles so you'll never have to guess how far each unit can move or what the range of their attacks are. It's all spelled out for you in visual format.
As in most typical RPGs, between battles, you can buy weapons, armor, and items with the gold you earned, as well as level up your characters with your experience points in a clean and simple UI.
Pro Lots of different ways to build each character
All the characters in the game initially start as one of the basic fantasy classes (fighter, thief, or caster) with a limited skill set. As you level up, you get to choose specializations at certain milestones. At level 10 you get to choose an intermediate class, followed by choosing an advanced class at level 20. Each of these class specializations have their own unique set of skills to use on the battlefield.
For example, you may start as a fighter. At level 10, you have the choice to become a mercenary or a knight. Once you hit level 20, your mercenary can now evolve into a sword master or battle master; if you chose the knight tree, you can now evolve into a paladin or general. As you progress, you keep all your skills from any classes previously chosen in the tree resulting in characters that genuinely feel more powerful and dynamic as they grow.
This end result is an exciting class system loaded with fun class advancement choices that can be used to create a bunch of different and unique combinations for each and every character on your roster.
Pro Thieves are especially fun to play due to some of their non-combat abilities
Thieves add a really fun element to play that isn't battle focused, and allows for some interesting choices where you have to choose whether or not going for the treasure chest on the edge of the map is worth more than using your thief to attack enemies. Not only can thieves unlock and disarm traps on treasure chests, they can also steal items off enemies. That means even if you go into battle low on items, strategically using your thief to pickpocket and plunder may still give you the upper hand by acquiring more during the battle itself.
Pro Starting battles with zero mana leads to more rewarding and satisfying spell casting
Unlike most tactical rpg games, Chronicles opts to start each character with zero mana at the beginning of each battle. This means you'll need to play strategically with your wizards by positioning them properly so your other characters can defend them while their mana charges. If you want to wind up that big fireball, you'll have to work towards it instead of just unleashing it right off the bat. When you finally do get that big spell off, it's much more rewarding to watch the enemy fall knowing that you set it up through skill rather than brute force openers.
Pro Good port
A lot of care went into porting the games from mobile and Nintendo 3DS. The graphics for all three games were redesigned and well optimized for the Switch.
Additionally, some of the newer gameplay features from Saga 3 such as aggro and minion summoning skills were retroactively implemented into the earlier titles, meaning even if you've played them before, you can play them again with these new features added.
Pro A chance to play Mercenary Saga 1 in English for the first time
Prior to Chronicles, the first game in the series was only available in Japanese. It's been fully translated into English for this special release, making it accessible to a wider range of players.
Pro Getting 3 games for the price of 1 is a great value
Chronicles is 3 different games released as one title. All three games are accessible from the main menu which includes Mercenaries Saga: Will Of The White Lions, Mercenaries Saga 2: Order Of The Silver Eagle, and Mercenaries Saga 3: Gray Wolves Of War.
Pro Holds up incredibly well
Titan Quest is over 10 years old now, and it is still widely played. It even saw a remastered "Anniversary Edition" in August of 2016, drawing in more players, old and new.
Pro You can choose the speed you want to play at
Titan Quest is unique among ARPGs in that you get to choose the game speed. You can be a leisurely player and take things slowly, or you can go hard and play the game on very fast settings. The fact that you get to choose adds another level of enjoyment to the game.
Pro Replayability through different classes
There are a plethora of classes that open up upon leveling to the second level, once one is chosen the others will be gone for that game session. This means that a different playthrough will be needed to explore what all the different classes offer, making for quite a lot of playtime.
Pro Lots of loot to find
There is quite a lot of loot in the game to be found, which drives the player to continue playing, just to find that better weapon or piece of armor. The loot is also color coded when dropped, making it easy to discern what is worth picking up or leaving behind.
Pro Tons of customization
There are 30 different classes of characters to choose from within the game with 150 character skills that they can learn. This way users can customize their character to their liking and playstyle.
Cons
Con Difficulty spikes between battles means you'll be grinding a lot
The difficulty spikes from battle to battle are sometimes way too steep. You'll often have to grind side battles called "Free Battles" to level up your characters before you can progress the main campaign. These battles happen on the same maps you've already done, so it tends to get very boring and repetitive after a while.
Con You'll be stuck with the same perspective of each battle for the entire game
Each map battle is displayed with a 3/4th overhead view, but the camera is unable to be rotated around for various views of the board. You're out of luck if you want to view the action from a different angle.
Con The color of gear quality in the weapon shop is confusing
When you go to upgrade weapons or armor in the shop, red colored gear is an upgrade and blue colored gear is a downgrade. This is the exact opposite of most similar games, which can be confusing at times and cause you to make costly mistakes when purchasing gear if you're not paying close attention to the stats.
Con The stories are extremely generic and can be skipped without missing much
Each game in Chronicles features a different kingdom under attack, with the characters all wondering how they are going to bring peace to the land by defeating the big evil bad guys. The writing doesn't do much to leave this familiar fantasy territory that we've all seen a thousand times before, making all of it generic and able to be skipped.
Con Each game in the series is the exact same gameplay with a different story tacked on
The only difference between each game is the characters, dialogue, and the story. The battle mechanics, menu style, skills, and gameplay of each game in Chronicles is the exact same. It may start to feel repetitive if you plan on playing the 3 games back to back.
Con Combat feels a little static
Con Save anywhere does not save character placement
This means that there will be some retreading of areas once a save is loaded as the character will not be in the same place as where they were left off. This will waste time and can be frustrating having to do this every time you load the game.
Con Disappointing loot at later levels
Even when the player has reached a high level, they will often find loot meant for low level characters. This can be frustrating when trying to find better gear and just adds a lot of clutter to ones inventory as the majority of items found won't be that useful.