Sword of Convallaria

This was a first. I had never been thrown into a game that felt like it began two hours ago. Sure, I’ve played games where you play a little bit before you actually begin at the start, as a bit of a hors d oeuvre to wet my appetite. This time though, I start in a room, no idea who I am, who the person with the dots above their head is, nothing. But I am already collecting cache-style rewards, just for logging in. A wave of dread sets over me. I may have made a mistake in taking this game for review.

No idea what to do, I click on the bottom right corner where it says voyage. I’m taken to a new screen with three other choices, I can only click the center choice, the other two are locked right now. It shows me a prologue quest, ok, I feel like I’m in the right spot at least. The first of three missions pop up, I’ve already cleared the first one somehow, but I chose it anyway. I’m taken to a unit deployment screen. I’ve got a handful of choices. A Crimson Falcon, some type of rogue-style dude, Pikeman, Fire Conjurer, healer, Archer, all the normal suspects are here. I can only make one choice, the other two characters are already chosen for me. I begin, and there is dialogue. Again, I feel like it’s the middle of a conversation I just walked in on, and one of the participants is a talking cat. The worst part, the cat is using some big words that make zero sense, Dimension Fragments, Sea of Chaos. I’m told I have to find the Wheel of Fortune in this space-time.

Once my unit is placed and the dialogue concludes, the fight begins. It feels and looks a lot like a strategy game. You can move, attack, heal, all the typical choices you expect. I notice my characters are overpowered compared to the enemy units, this fight took two rounds to finish. In the next fight I kill my healer immediately by hitting a fire barrel I shouldn’t have. I have to keep everyone alive to win the match, so I’m forced to start over. I lose some energy, and have to spend more energy to replay the fight. This feels so gacha it's not funny.

That was my first half hour with Sword of Convallaria. The story was hard to follow. Turns out the Wheel will allow you to rewrite time. I also learned I’m in Elysium, for whatever that really means. Slowly I begin to add more spots for characters during fights. I begin to learn the leveling system. All in all, it is very straightforward, and the learning curve is small and manageable, if you’ve played a tactics-style game you can latch onto this one with ease.

The main story of waking up with amnesia is, well, weak. You also have no name. I put together that my character was broken out of jail, no idea why I was there, perhaps a civil rights issue? You realize the kingdom is under martial law, and the law is doing whatever it feels like. You decide to stand up for the right thing and stop this.

Art is great, both the pixel animation of the gameplay and the stationary detailed images of your characters when you have dialogue. The look and style are hard to not recognize as a staple in the genre. That’s ok, they are staples for a reason. While I get a lot of cell phone, pay-to-win vibes coming from Sword of Convallaria, I don’t feel like I am looking at a game made on the cheap.

One of the big reasons that makes this feel like a gacha game is the amount of different currency. How many is too many? More than one if you ask me. Just by logging back into the game I can see four from the first screen. In order to get to that screen I have to go through two or three different menus that automatically pop up when I log in. Those menus give me some reward for logging in every day during the opening of the game, giving me any number of random currencies, or items for crafting, trading, or wearing on one of my units. It is so many currencies that I have a hard time keeping track of what does what.

I took this review because I enjoy this genre, tactical RPGs. Besides farm sims, this is the genre I’ve played and reviewed the most. I can safely say I am not planning on coming back to this title. Because of that, I have no problem blowing through my currencies. I began with most of them filled all the way up, and could not deplete them by the time I was ready to take a break from playing. I waited several days to come back to Sword of Convallaria and found most of the bars replenished to the top. Again, I could not deplete them by the time I was done playing again. So I may not like the idea of having to use a currency to play the game, but I didn’t find it affecting how I played much at all. Did I just not get far enough into the title for that to matter? Possibly. I will say I did try to deplete my resources, but had a hard time doing so. I have little doubt that there will eventually be a way to charge real-world money to refill the energy gauge needed to play missions. But at the time it was not present.

I want you to know I didn’t feel the need to mention how long of a title "Sword of Convallaria: For this World of Peace" is. Damn, I just did, and with only one paragraph left to go. Like the name, the game itself is a lot. It looks great. This is exactly how I want the art to look when the inevitable remake of that beloved SquareEnix title finally becomes reality. The soundtrack slaps pretty hard too. Sword of Convallaria looks like how I want a TRPG to look, sound, and most of the time play. But it feels like the greediness of mobile games has seeped into this one, even if it didn't directly impact my gameplay. I think there is plenty to enjoy with Sword of Convallaria, but you should be cautious of the predatory behavior that feels as though it is breathing down your neck at almost every turn.