The next Mercenaries tactical RPG is changing the way turns work. RideonJapan has announced Mercenaries Grace: Black Feather and the Golden Right Arm, the eighth entry in the series, with a digital release planned for November 2026 in Japan on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam. Its story is standalone, so there’s no need to catch up on the previous games first.
The biggest change is an alternating-unit turn system. After one allied character acts, an enemy character takes a turn, following a structure the developer compares to chess and shogi.
You won’t be moving your entire company before the opposition responds. On paper, that should make coordinated advances more demanding: sending a fighter forward gives the enemy an opportunity to react before you can bring another ally into position.
Battles retain the series’ isometric maps and elevation differences. Attacking from the front, side, or rear affects combat results, while support effects depend on where allied characters are standing. Skill points earned through combat are used to learn abilities, strengthen existing skills, and change classes.
Character progression is getting a substantial revision through the Ladder Class system, which features eight class lines.
As characters advance through successive tiers, they can continue along their current line or shift into neighboring ones. That gives you more directions to take a character’s development than the series’ previous individual class trees, with decisions to make at each promotion.
There are also Soul Exceed special moves. A gauge builds during combat, and its stored power can be spent on abilities that differ by Ladder Class. Examples include heavy-damage attacks and party-wide recovery that restores health and clears status ailments, giving these moves both offensive and defensive uses.
The story follows Swan, a young mercenary whose company rescues the general Berta from a forbidden tower.
She is the sister of the kingdom’s recently deceased regent, whose supporters install her as queen to protect their own privileges, disrupting the expected succession. Swan lost his home under her brother’s oppressive rule, but sees hope in Berta’s vision for the country, a difficult alliance to navigate as competing interests gather around the throne.
English version is also in preparation, but its release timing has not yet been announced.
