First Impressions of Sword of Convallaria, a Strategy RPG Gacha with a Moving Story
I haven’t played a lot of gacha, with most of my time in the genre being spent in Final Fantasy Record Keeper a while back. There wasn’t much story in that one. It was essentially a JRPG combat machine (specifically in the classic ATB style) with collectible characters. I had a good time with it, but I didn’t find it friendly enough to play in big chunks.
On the other hand, Sword of Convallaria, an upcoming tactical RPG gacha by Chinese developer XD, has a story to tell and fleshed-out characters to tell it. An early stand-out is Rawiyah, a boisterous “strong-looking woman” who positively shines as the heart of her mercenary order. The game certainly has something to say, being gripping from the opening scene: dark, bloody, and not pulling any punches. If you’re into pixel art, it looks fantastic, on par with similar grid-based battlers like Triangle Strategy. There’s also a top-notch soundtrack, with Hitoshi Sakimoto at the helm.
The problem is, the story is broken up into separate play modes, there to fuel the player’s currencies (I counted at least a half dozen). There’s a cute home base at the center of this, a launching point for The Fool’s Journey, a linear path of short battles through a shifting void. We’ve seen this setup before in free-to-play games. Calling the mode generic may be too strong of a word, as it does try to tell its own narrative. It still wasn’t where I wanted to be.
The main story requires currency per chapter, so I left off my run with the demo after paying for a run through an additional story segment, about four hours in. I don’t want to get invested in this story and these characters any more than I already am if the currency model isn’t generous, and I don’t have a good indication either way of that at this point. Sword of Convallaria would be a slam-dunk purchase for me if it had a traditional setup, but I’m going to wait and see how it shakes out after the full launch.
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