>>714380317 (OP)The Mercenaries series is a lot worse, 7 games basically copypasted and the first 4 unbearable due to their lack of QoL, so the only decent entries are the new engine games: Blaze, Rebirth, and Lament.
Defined characters with 4 branching job paths you'll inevitably pick up, equipment synthesis is a RNG affair and BiS is complete elemental immunity, you'll Earthquake spam for a shit ton of gold to even afford it (no animation skip in those 4 first games), no deviation in map objectives of rout/defeat commander, post-game is NG+-exclusive for 4 okay maps and a 10 floor slog against higher-level enemies than 40, so you either solo with said Earthquake user who's grinded to 99, exclusively use 100% accuracy skills on your others, or skill spam for 10/20 EXP to even compete level wise.
Cross Tail's reclass system and build synergy, better synthesis system, varied objectives on Shaima's route, and NG+ Felix's route for the true ending & 4 challenge maps was pretty enjoyable for me, honestly.
>>714394051It's kind of repetitive since the AI is so passive with small movement ranges of 3~4, so you can turtle/gangbang every map that's rout the enemy and completely ignoring setting up traps.
Archers and mages are superior due to their range, AoEs, and generally low M.DEF, while you can also beat the game purely with Guild Master & Goblin Slayer's parties since they're overtuned (besides Polar Bear Priest and Lizard Priest).
I guess the most noticeable thing is you're required to do a few generic quests before each story mission, which is mutually exclusive generic NPC recruits (some can be good) and equipment (pretty obsolete by 1~2 chapters later), then you can get them all in post-game, which is like a 20+ floor slog with no real reward.
You'd mostly be playing it for the story and characters, which is decent and really centered around Guild Master with the narrator speaking in 2nd person. Goblin Slayer's party maybe gets like 3 story scenes of screen time.
