It is already 2018 in Japan, so Japan-based publisher CIRCLE Ent. has revealed their teased January 1 Nintendo Switch announcement: strategy role-playing series Mercenaries Saga will be coming to the latest Nintendo platform. As an even better announcement, the game will be Mercenaries Saga Chronicles — most likely an anthology or remaster of the first three games in the series.
News of the collection’s launch game from developer CIRCLE Ent.’s official Twitter account earlier today when the clocks struck midnight in Japan.
Exciting news! Very soon we will release Mercenaries Saga Chronicles on the Switch eShop – the full RPG trilogy on Nintendo hardware for the first time! More details soon… #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/qwgVUGtPGj
— CIRCLE Ent. (@CIRCLE_Ent) December 31, 2017
The announcement itself is light on details, however we do know that this will be the first time that Mercenaries Saga has been on a Nintendo platform. The series was developed by Japanese developer Rideon, and originally started as a Japanese-only mobile game that is often described as a Final Fantasy Tactics spiritual successor. And while the original Mercenaries Saga never saw a console or Western release, Mercenaries Saga 2 (released for Nintendo 3DS in 2015, and later on iOS and Android) enhanced the gameplay and adapted it for a more-traditional controller layout.
Finally, Mercenaries Saga 3 launched exclusively for Nintendo 3DS in late-2016. So not only will this be the first time all three games are on a Nintendo platform, but also the first time all three games will be available localized for the West.
At the moment, there has been no reveal from CIRCLE Ent. on what we can expect price-wise for the game. However, in the announcement it was noted that the collection would be coming to Nintendo Switch “very soon.”
If you want an idea of what the gameplay for Mercenaries Saga looks like, you can check out the trailer for the Nintendo 3DS version below (though keep in mind the graphical gap between Nintendo 3DS’s 240p resolution and the upward 1080p resolution for Nintendo Switch):