English
Gamereactor
reviews
Mercenary Kings

Mercenary Kings

Beautiful 2D action with lots of combat and crafting that allows for four players. A retro scented gamer's paradise?

Subscribe to our newsletter here!

* Required field
HQ

While the background story of Mercenary Kings may say something else, Mandragora Island is a wonderful place to spend your time. There's a chef that keeps the pots warm all day, a pilot with a talking helicopter, a weapons smith that learns new tricks all the time, and a general with a plan of how to defeat the evil Claw clan once and for all. They all seem to have a wonderful time while they dance to the catchy music, and we feel like joining in.

The aforementioned background story is a tad bleaker. As one quarter of the mercenary team called Mercenary Kings you witness how Claw tears your squad apart before and their only chance is an elixir. The components of this magical brew can only be found in one location, and as luck would have it it's the very island that the evil group has taken over.

If you grew up on Saturday morning cartoons of the more adventurous and action-packed kind, you'll feel right at home with the concept. It looks like, sounds like, and is told like a cartoon show, with more action than story, and it's a charming acquaintance from the very beginning.

Mercenary Kings
This is an ad:

It's a classic action platformer, where it's just as much about learning the patterns of the enemies as it is about jumping across hazardous ground and knowing when to fire back. Metal Slug naturally comes to mind, but Mercenary Kings is thankfully a deeper offering with much more content than the old arcade classic from SNK.

Instead of being forced down a certain set of levels, you're free to choose your next mission after each completion. The objectives range from rescue missions to sabotage, data collection and the hi-jacking of Claw's military installations.

These various objectives make it sound as if there is a lot of variation in the 100 or so missions, but this is actually the biggest issue we found with the game. These missions often play out in the same levels, and if you're not careful in choosing your next mission - you run the risk of having to play through the very same level twice in a row. This naturally feels a bit boring, and we can't quite figure out why there aren't more levels in the game.

Mercenary Kings
This is an ad:

The rewards you get for completing the missions are, however, often enough incentive to power through, as your given a combination of cash and gadgets so that you can swing by the smith and craft your own weapons. Through a simple crafting system you can choose the grip, the scope, and body of your weapon - further variables like weight, clip size and ammo type will dictate how they behave.

The crafting system, that's also used for modifications that offers extra perks, as well as healing and melee weapons, quickly becomes the chief motivation. It also increases our lust to hunt down various enemy types as they often drop materials you can collect and craft with. It's Mercenary Kings' brand of loot, and while it doesn't compare to Diablo - it's still a very nice and addictive system.

The developer of Mercenary Kings, Tribute Games, were responsible for the lovely Scott Pilgrim vs the World, and that's easy to tell. The team has once again joined up with pixel perfectionist and animator Paul Robertson, which gives the game its stunning visuals. Robertson has a style of his own, that mixes the best of Japanese animation, 80s pop culture, and tons of gaming references - all translated into gorgeous little pixels.

Mercenary Kings

With all its references to the arcade classics of yesteryear it's no surprise you can play Mercenary Kings with your friends. Up to four players can join together for both split-screen fun (you'll need a rather big screen for four players, but still) and/or online action to hunt down Claw. While it's often smoother to clear the missions on your own (not all of your friends are great at co-operating), multiplayer often serves as a good place to collect items for weapons upgrades.

It bugs us that there isn't more to Mercenary Kings. Don't get us wrong, we've spent 15 hours on it up to now and still haven't completed all of the missions, but we'd still like more variation in the levels, missions and soundtrack. The amount of reused assets is almost overwhelming, and when this is combined with enmeies that tend to respawn as soon as you've left their immediate proximity, you'll quickly feel like you need a pause.

The fact that Mercenary Kings still manages to captivate us in spite of its many flaws, is evident of how solid the fundamentals of the game are. We just can't help but feel disappointed that we feel like we need a break from the repetitive nature of the game as it offers much with its challenging 2D action and crafting system. It could have been a classic, but instead we're left with what's merely a solid experience.

HQ
07 Gamereactor UK
7 / 10
+
Lots of content, Crafting, Four players on the same screen, Solid 2D action, Gorgeous graphics, design and animations.
-
Too much is being recycled and repeated, Enemies respawn as soon as they're out of the screen, Lacks variation in the missions.
overall score
is our network score. What's yours? The network score is the average of every country's score

Related texts

0
Mercenary KingsScore

Mercenary Kings

REVIEW. Written by Thomas Blichfeldt

"It could have been a classic, but instead we're left with what's merely a solid experience."



Loading next content