One of the hidden secrets in the tactical world is the Mercenaries Saga series. Rideon’s been quietly becoming adept at enjoyable strategy games that don’t always look all that different than something like a Final Fantasy Tactics, letting players have fun obsessing over character classes and building armies. Cross Tails, from Rideon and KEMCO, keeps that same kind of vibe while also attempting to inject a bit more story into things. While the characterizations and motivations aren’t enthralling, the gameplay can be.
What’s a nice bonus and different from many of Rideon’s Mercenaries strategy games is Cross Tails features two stories. You can either follow Shaimaa from the Republic of Hidiq cat-people faction or Felix from the Kingdom of Ranverfurt dog-people one. Both offer a different take on an ongoing war between the two sides. It’s pretty rudimentary and quickly sets up that something’s going on to try and encourage further conflict. Also, while the opportunity to choose a side is there, it didn’t feel too different.
Image via KEMCO and Rideon
The story and characters are generally fine, if a bit bland, but it’s the battle and class system that makes Cross Tails special. To start, there’s a pretty interesting class system, which lets you unlock and upgrade skills from a tree. Doing so grants you access to new abilities and passives. Money is tied to this, so even if you haven’t been using someone, you can still invest in them to make them more valuable when they are deployed. This also makes it easier to rearrange and reclass folks, as it means all you need to do is go through some mainline or optional fights to better tailor your crew to your needs. Since there are 24 classes, including unique ones, and sub classes, as well as a “Faith” system that lets you choose which stat-influencing god they serve, there’s tons of customization.
Maps are generally pretty fun, and the balance is good. Fights are challenging, with opponents after the first few introductory chapters starting to pose an actual threat. Each location tends to have an array of heights, allowing ranged units like archers or mages to find higher ground or tank-ier heavy knight to guard chokeholds. This is combined with an aggression system. Using certain actions, which includes supportive ones like healing an ally, will cause your enemies to “hate” and be more likely to target you. Which means you need to consider who you send out and make sure there are more well-built warriors who can take a hit and be more annoying to keep other units under the radar.
Image via KEMCO and Rideon
There’s also an incentive to return and replay Cross Tails if you find yourself enjoying it. In chapter 16 you can make a choice, but the second option only comes up after beating it once. That offers an entirely new storyline, which also leads to new maps and challenges. Since the battles are the best part, it’s quite a bonus. I didn’t get a chance to finish my second run, as I only went back and into Felix’s story.
Cross Tails is a strategy game that’s all about making the battles and class system enjoyable. Some of the maps can offer some great points to take advantage of and places to defend. The classes are pretty fun to explore, and I loved going through additional optional battles to earn CP so I could get extra skills to better round characters out. It’s a case where if you enjoy Rideon’s work, this KEMCO strategy game is worth picking up.
Cross Tails is available on the PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC. While there’s no Switch demo, the PC version’s demo lets you play through Shaimaa’s storyline until chapter 6.
