Sword of Convallaria Review – A New Gacha With Classic Credentials

Introduction to Sword of Convallaria

I feel like every two months or so, a new mobile game starts to flood my YouTube ads and become completely unavoidable. Sometimes, it’s a new Hoyoverse title with new four-minute animated commercials; sometimes, it’s yet another extremely generic anime auto-battler or idle game, and every once in a while, it’s something actually worth talking about. Sword of Convallaria interested me enough to fall into the third category, as a game clearly trying to ape the look of Tactics Ogre…with music by the actual composer of Final Fantasy Tactics, Hitoshi Sakamoto.

Nostalgic Elements and Modern Twists

If what a developer is going for is the evocation of nostalgia, music is actually an excellent priority, as it’s going to be with the player for the entire experience and does a lot to enhance the feeling of a piece of media. Those YouTube ads are eager to show off these compositions, and lord knows I have plenty of fond memories involving this creator’s distinct and epic style.  So, when we got a chance to jump into the full game early, I took it, hoping that the game could live up to that promise.

Jumping into Sword of Convallaria, I was greeted with a rather esoteric prologue that felt like I was missing a bit too much context, though this might be because the opening cutscene has changed since the Steam Next Fest demo, and I did not immediately have access to it. Still, I’m not docking any points for this as I did manage to get the gist of what was happening – the hero was experiencing a recreation of an important event from the recent past, that being a riot in the kingdom’s capital city, and he and the game’s heroine needed to fight their way through the phantoms of the past to acquire a MacGuffin and escape the nightmare.

Gameplay Mechanics and Systems

This is an awfully high-octane start, but the strange thing is that the “main story” of the game severely falls off once you get through it. Sword of Convallaria effectively has two different story modes, the first being the standard stage-based, energy-using affair that you’d expect from a free-to-play title. Here, your gacha pulls matter and your characters can be enhanced easily through an honestly pretty easy-to-understand system. You have an overall player level, and this also serves as the level cap for your individual units, who gain experience slowly through battles but can be bulk-leveled with the extra points you get through things like daily challenges. Additionally, each character has a Rank, which is increased periodically with items based on the character’s class, a star rating, which will primarily be increased with shards you get from pulling duplicates, and gear, which can be freely swapped out and enhanced and also has its own enhancement and rarity system.

The game’s combat system, inspired by Tactics Ogre, is simplified but engaging, focusing on environmental hazards and strategy.

It’s refreshingly straightforward, but also easily the least interesting part of the game – what story I’ve seen has played out extremely slowly, if it’s moving at all, and energy is very slow to refill. While I’m certainly impressed with how much content Sword of Convallaria is launching with compared to other mobile titles I’ve reviewed on release, the vast majority of this side of the game is fights that can be easily auto-battled through if your characters are sufficiently levelled, and with little consequence for things like character deaths.

The game’s combat is definitely inspired by Tactics Ogre, but it’s dramatically simplified, with each character having up to three abilities and one of only five classes. The classes aren’t specifically defined, but they generally dictate a broad combat role, and they fall into a rock-paper-scissors power system. There’s a lot of focus placed on environmental hazards and things like exploding barrels that can dispatch all surrounding units, and the small-ish HP pools combine with these to create a decently executed risk-reward system.

Story and Character Development

The really interesting part is what lies in the other story mode, that being apparently a full, normal, almost gacha-independent tactical RPG. In this mode, you are able to bring along “companion” characters from the pool you’ve pulled from the gacha. Still, they start at the bottom, along with the more generic units at your disposal. You’ll have to play through a Tactics Advance-esque time and battle management system in order to enhance them, with each unit also periodically becoming unusable as they run out of energy. It’s a fairly basic system, but it certainly feels more player-involved than the main game.

This mode isn’t infinitely available, as it’s locked behind keys that you earn through playing the gacha side, but it is a rather interesting compromise that belies the game that lies underneath the monetization system. I almost wonder if this game was the original pitch, and the bog-standard, battle-pass-laden gacha on top was a compromise that had to happen for the game to be made.

Sword of Convallaria effectively blends nostalgia with modern gacha elements, making for a unique gaming experience.

The game’s localization is not the worst I’ve seen in a mobile title, for the most part it’s fairly serviceable, but I did notice quite a few typos and problematic line breaks that should have been fixed by an editing pass. At the time of writing, I haven’t been able to make it incredibly far into the story, but thus far, the cast is rather uninspired and doesn’t have a ton of personality – except for Rawiyah, the titular guild’s leader. I’ve rarely met a Lady With A Big Weapon that I wouldn’t follow to the ends of the earth.

The element that the game most knocks out of the park is its aesthetic, starting with the gorgeous music. Sakamoto’s rollicking, string-led orchestra is not only real but exciting, making combat feel much grander than it actually is. Visually, Sword of Convallaria is an absolute treat, with lots of gorgeous pixel art and HD-2D-esque presentation moments. The user interface is pretty clearly trying to ape Genshin Impact, which is somewhat unfortunate since the static character portraits look much less alive than a fully animated character, but this is somewhat forgivable given the medium.

Conclusion: A Blend of Old and New

Sword of Convallaria is a strange game, both in isolation and compared to its peers. It was clearly made by an ambitious team with a clear inspiration in mind, but it feels weirdly shackled to its gacha system that only really affects half of its gameplay. If you can tolerate free-to-play trappings and have been hankering for a new Final Fantasy Tactics, it’s a rather simplified version of that, but that also means you can quickly complete fights on the go, and if you’ve got headphones, there are plenty of great songs to listen to along the way. I just wish that I could have had the “real” game by itself, with a little more personality thrown into the mix.