Sword of Convallaria ١٢+

I’ve been playing mobile games for about 10 years now and have been attracted to many of these turn based, pixel, tactics-like RPGs. I’d say that this game sets the bar in terms of the best in class as of writing this. The mechanics are deep and interesting. Plenty of ways to power up units from skill tree decisions to weapons/armor. This game is also basically 2 in one. One part of it is more similar to typical gatcha games with a lot of energy based game modes to gain upgrade material. The second part is somewhat independent, is a single player story driven rogue-like(?) where you are trying to unlock different potential endings to the story. This part of the game could be its own game in and of itself and would have been worth purchasing on steam. Even better is that the story is actually GOOD! It’s not super cliche and you have to make hard decisions.

My one wish right now is that the devs would make some of the weaker legendary rarity units a bit better. Doesn’t feel great to roll a super cool looking unit to realize it’s actually kind of weak compared to the others (Guzman!).

I think it has potential but here’s where I get annoyed you have events spread out everywhere like a open world game would with free activities so when you do that and add tiny but meaningful buttons towards claiming said event rewards I miss out especially when you make the events require conditions to participate so I’m thinking when I can’t find the reward claim screen because it’s tiny and not as big as other buttons on that screen that oh I’m just not able to participate because I haven’t played that far yet. When you have events in about 7 to 9 menus each calling for your attention in someway or another it’s easy to tune out a tiny button or 2 that matters. My solution you put every single event log in or otherwise in the same location and make all push able buttons same size or at the least in the same window not 2 separate reward menus on the same screen. Yes I was estimating the menu with events but I was making a point about how spread out it is I bet most people don’t know there is more than 2 to 3 event menus it took me days to discover some of the others and unlocking pvp defense matches showed me another I didn’t know about today.

This game has the potential to be the Genshin of tactical pixel gaming or simply the new FFT. Unfortunately, the lack of freedom due to stamina being required even for story content and ridiculous double banners (like Genshin’s weapon banners but for their featured characters) ruins it for me. Stamina should only be for mat/gear farming and double banners are a scam that I will never invest in. I play a ton of gacha and this is certainly on the greedier side, but at least it’s not P2W.

The other reviews can tell you the good. FFT is one of my favorite games of all time. M I even bought the full WoTL version for mobile. Being newer, this does many things better in terms of story and design. The voice acting is also great although I wish English were an option. The music isn’t quite up to par but the modern combat and animations make up for it.

They did a great job with design and story, but again, I’d like more freedom to play and like to know exactly what I’m getting when I consider spending money. It’s sad that they put all of this time into such an award-worthy game that will always stay under the radar due to a few poor decisions. I have a fairly large budget for Genshin and a few other gacha games but it won’t be going here.