Info about Sword of Convallaria:

Official game description:
Join the Sword of Convallaria Discord Server!
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About the Game
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**PROFOUND STORY**  
Journey through to Iria, a mineral-rich country whose magical resources have drawn unwanted attention from dangerous external factions. As tensions rise and riots break out, it’s up to you as a mercenary leader to navigate complex situations whilst finding ways to save the fate of Iria.  
**STRATEGIC TURN-BASED COMBAT**  
Experience authentic grid-based tactical battles. Deploy unique allies against diverse enemy types and use every battlefield detail whether it's a cliff, boulder, obstacle, or even a bangalore to secure victory.  
**CHOICE-BASED NARRATIVE**  
Your decisions shape how your town evolves and influence the unfolding story. Be sure to Build relationships and skills to your advantage, and watch as the storyline changes depending on your choices and achievements.  
**“NeoPixel” ART**  
“NeoPixel” retains the popular pixel-style graphics, whilst adding modern 3D renderings (real-time shading, full-screen bloom, dynamic depth of field, HDR, etc.), contributing to premium HD picture quality and lighting effects.  
**STUNNING HERO COLLECTION & DEVELOPMENT**  
Recruit and train a roster of unique companions at the tavern, teach them amazing skills, build their equipment at the forge, improve their stats in the training field, and lead your self-built mercenary group into legendary quests with different factions  
**SCORE BY HITOSHI SAKIMOTO**  
Music producer Hitoshi Sakimoto - best known for scoring FF Tactics, FFXII, and Tactics Ogre - lends his passion to Sword of Convallaria with his finest musical pieces to date.  
**JAPANESE VOICE-OVER STARS**  
Enjoy performances from over 40 anime and game voice-acting stars like Inoue Kazuhiko, Yuki Aoi, and Eguchi Takuya who bring each character to life.

Release date: 31 Jul, 2024

Categories: Tactical RPG, Single-player Story, Choice-based Narrative, Character Customization, Gacha System, Roguelike, Competitive Multiplayer, Live Service Game


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Generous, fair free-to-play system (weight 0.87): The game is praised for its generous free-to-play model. Players can acquire characters, currency, and items without spending money. The gacha system is considered fair, with reasonable rates and pity mechanics, and the game provides ample resources through gameplay, events, and achievements.
- Evokes classic tactical RPGs (weight 0.79): The game's tactical gameplay, art style, and music evoke nostalgia for classic tactical RPGs, especially Final Fantasy Tactics. Reviewers praise the game's strategic depth, engaging battles, and well-crafted mechanics, making it a must-play for fans of the genre.
- Appealing graphics and art style (weight 0.57): The game features beautiful graphics, a well-designed art style (often pixel art), and smooth animations. Reviewers consistently praise the game's visual presentation, noting its high quality and appealing aesthetic.
- Deep, free 'Spiral of Destiny' mode (weight 0.49): The Spiral of Destiny mode is a free, substantial story mode with branching paths and multiple endings. It offers a gacha-free experience with character recruitment through gameplay, providing dozens of hours of content and high replayability.
- Gacha system is relatively generous (weight 0.37): The game's gacha system is considered more generous than others, with a higher base rate for legendary characters and a pity system that carries over between banners. The story mode is separate from the gacha, and character shards can be farmed, reducing reliance on gacha pulls.
- Engaging story and world-building (weight 0.32): The game features a well-written and engaging story set in the war-torn land of Iria. The narrative includes political intrigue, moral dilemmas, and complex characters, with player choices impacting the story's course and leading to multiple endings.
- Enjoyable and accessible gameplay (weight 0.17): The game is enjoyable and easy to pick up, with a fair difficulty curve and a good amount of content available. Reviewers appreciate the game's accessibility and the positive first impression it creates.
- Excellent and immersive soundtrack (weight 0.16): The game features a great soundtrack, often composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto, that complements the gameplay and adds to the immersive atmosphere. The music is praised for its quality, variety, and seamless integration with the game's setting.
- High replayability with branching storylines (weight 0.12): The game offers high replayability due to multiple decision paths and branching storylines. Each playthrough feels unique, with different outcomes and endings based on player choices.
- Lower-rarity characters are viable (weight 0.11): Many lower-rarity characters are viable and can clear major content, reducing reliance on rare gacha units. This makes the game more accessible and F2P-friendly.
- Unique blend of RPG elements (weight 0.1): The game uniquely blends live-service and non-gacha RPG elements, appealing to fans of both genres. It offers an engaging story campaign and settlement management system, making it one of the few gacha games where the reviewer enjoys reading the plot and dialogues.
- Well-integrated and fun events (weight 0.08): Events are well-integrated with the game's themes, characters, and stories, offering extra content and character interactions. The developers put love and care into designing the characters and storyline.
- Constantly updated with new content (weight 0.08): The game is constantly updated with new content, providing a constant stream of upgrade materials, currency, free items, free characters, and new game modes. The developers actively improve the game with new ideas.

Common complaints:
- Aggressive, Unrewarding Gacha System (weight 0.78): The game's core monetization strategy revolves around a gacha system for character acquisition, which many reviewers find frustrating.  Low draw rates, a punishing pity system, and the need for character dupes make it difficult to acquire desired characters without significant spending or grinding. Some reviewers note that the gacha elements feel tacked on or poorly integrated with the rest of the game.
- Restrictive Energy System (weight 0.26): The game employs an energy system that severely limits playtime and restricts progression.  Reviewers find the energy cap too low, the recharge rate too slow, and the expiration of energy-replenishing items frustrating. This system is seen as a typical mobile game mechanic that detracts from the PC experience.
- Limited Language Support/Poor Localization (weight 0.2): The game lacks language options, particularly English voice acting and translations for various languages like Spanish, French, and Portuguese.  Reviewers note that this limits accessibility and hinders understanding of the story and gameplay for non-English speakers. Some reviewers also criticize the quality of the existing English localization.
- Slow, Confusing, Tedious Tutorial (weight 0.17): The game suffers from a slow, confusing, and tedious tutorial, often featuring an annoying talking cat character.  The tutorial slowly unlocks game modes and aggressively pushes in-app purchases, potentially turning off players before they reach the main gameplay. The game also does a poor job of explaining its jargon and complex systems.
- Manipulative Game Design (weight 0.13): The game's design feels intentionally manipulative, pushing players to spend money through various mechanics.  Reviewers criticize the game for prioritizing business practicality over gameplay cohesion and for employing predatory practices common in mobile games. The game also suffers from bad balance in many places.

Gameplay feedback:
- Tactical combat similar to FFT (weight 0.44): The game features turn-based tactical battles on a grid-based field, reminiscent of Final Fantasy Tactics and other classic SRPGs.  Combat includes elements like character positioning, terrain advantages, elemental affinities, and interactive objects, requiring strategic planning and team composition. However, some reviewers note the mechanics are simpler than other titles in the genre.
- Gacha and story-driven modes (weight 0.42): The game features two distinct modes: a gacha-based mode ('Fool's Journey') focused on character collection and resource grinding, and a story-driven tactical RPG mode ('Spiral of Destiny') where players manage mercenaries and make choices that impact the narrative and lead to multiple endings. The gacha mode uses stamina, while Spiral of Destiny uses keys, creating two separate but interconnected gameplay experiences.
- Roguelite story with choices (weight 0.19): The story mode ('Spiral of Destiny') incorporates roguelite elements, featuring branching storylines, multiple endings determined by player choices, and a week-based calendar system.  Upon completing a route, players can unlock permanent upgrades for subsequent playthroughs, adding replayability. The story focuses on faction conflicts and choices that impact the narrative.
- Standard gacha system present (weight 0.1): The game utilizes a gacha system for character acquisition, featuring banners, pity systems, and stamina-based progression.  While the gacha is present, the single-player campaign can be accessed with minimal interaction, and some reviewers find the currency relatively easy to obtain.  The weapon gacha is generally not recommended.
- Customizable character builds (weight 0.09): Characters are highly customizable with branching skill trees, allowing for diverse builds and playstyles.  Players can develop characters through leveling, upgrading talent trees, and improving equipment.  The game features different character types, each with unique uses and abilities.
- Mercenary management in story (weight 0.09): The 'Spiral of Destiny' mode features mercenary management elements, where players recruit, train, and manage a mercenary company.  Players must complete missions to gain reputation with factions, which affects the story and available heroes. The player leads a mercenary group and must gain support and rise in the war, with freedom to choose which side to join.
- Stamina system limits playtime (weight 0.07): The game features a stamina system that limits gameplay, encouraging players to log in multiple times a day.  The game has a lot of content and activities available, which can be time-consuming and potentially overwhelming.  The power increase slows down around account level 30, requiring players to focus on dailies and events to progress.
- Auto-battle and sweep options (weight 0.04): The game offers auto-battle and sweep options to accelerate grinding after the initial stage clear.  While convenient, the AI in auto-battle is not very smart, making it only suitable for overleveled situations. The game also features a tower mode and typical stage progression.
- PvP arena mode available (weight 0.03): The game includes a PvP arena mode where players can set up defensive teams to be attacked by others.  A real-time PvP mode is planned, which is expected to significantly change the game's direction towards more competition.  The game also features various events, roguelike modes, and guilds.
- Limited character facing control (weight 0.03): The game has directional mechanics, but players cannot choose the direction a character faces after taking an action. This limitation impacts strategic maneuvering and positioning, potentially leading to wasted turns. The inability to change facing increases tempo and makes positioning more strategic.
- Story mode requires keys (weight 0.03): The story mode does not consume stamina but requires keys, obtainable from events, daily logins, and the weekly shop. These keys are needed to access and progress through the story mode, acting as a separate stamina system for that content.
- Time-limited events occur (weight 0.03): The game features time-limited events that occur every few weeks, introducing new storylines, combat variants, and challenges. These events often add to the story and character depth, and may include in-game mechanics such as riddles or rule twists.
- Fool's Journey uses stamina (weight 0.03): Fool's Journey is a stamina-based gacha mode that contains tutorials and is used for grinding upgrade materials. Spiral of Destinies uses a completely different character progression system and resources than Fool's Journey. Keys for Spiral of Destinies are easily obtainable through achievements and logins.
- Attack and elemental types (weight 0.03): Characters have physical, magical, and piercing attack types combined with a rock-paper-scissors elemental system to determine advantages. Abilities have range, and side/back attacks deal extra damage. Weapons come in 5 types, including twin daggers and mage staffs.
- Independent character scaling (weight 0.03): Spiral of Destinies is a story mode where character scaling is mostly independent of their actual levels outside the mode. Strengthening units in Spiral of Destinies is done through town planning between battles. In 'Fate Vortex' mode, character skills are usable, but stats and equipment are not, requiring players to develop them separately.

Performance notes:
- Generally good performance and optimization (weight 0.06): Many players report stable performance, smooth gameplay, and good optimization on PC, even on older hardware and the Steam Deck. Some mention fast loading times and rare bugs, indicating a polished experience for many users.
- Poor PC port quality (weight 0.05): The PC version appears to be a direct port from mobile, leading to stretched graphics, pixelated visuals, and UI scaling issues. Some players also report a lack of keyboard support, suggesting the PC version may not be as polished as the mobile version.
- Various technical issues reported (weight 0.03): Some players have encountered technical issues such as game freezes, graphical bugs, stuttering, and incompatibility with Steam Deck. One user reported the game caused their computer to crash when left open in the background.
- Game causes PC to overheat (weight 0.01): One user reported their PC got too hot while playing, causing the game to stutter. This could be due to the game's high system requirements or other factors.
- Controller support and no lag (weight 0.01): The game supports controllers and real time pvp has no lag.
- Subjective visual preferences (weight 0.01): Some players dislike the checker pattern background in certain stages, while others find the pixel video graphics acceptable. These points are subjective and may not be relevant to all players.
- Uncapped FPS in startup menu (weight 0.01): The game's startup menu has uncapped FPS that can reach extremely high values, potentially putting unnecessary strain on the GPU. This could lead to overheating or other hardware issues for some players.
- UI optimization needs improvement (weight 0.01): Several reviews mention that the UI optimization could be improved. This suggests that the user interface may be clunky, unintuitive, or otherwise difficult to use.
- Limited unit deployment numbers (weight 0.01): The number of units that can be deployed on a map is relatively small, typically limited to 5 or 6 on higher difficulty stages. This may impact strategic options and gameplay depth.
- Rewind feature without tracking (weight 0.01): The game allows players to rewind up to 3 moves per stage without tracking the number of rewinds used. This feature provides a safety net for players who make mistakes, but the lack of tracking may diminish the sense of accomplishment.

Recommendations:
- Good SRPG, worth trying (free) (weight 0.94): Many reviewers recommend the game, especially to fans of tactical RPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre. A key reason for recommending it is that it is free-to-play, making it easily accessible. Some suggest trying it to form your own opinion, while others highlight its potential as a hidden gem in the genre.
- Engaging story mode is highlight (weight 0.84): Reviewers frequently praise the game's story mode, often called "Spiral of Destiny", as a highlight. Many suggest focusing on the story and treating the gacha elements as secondary. Some even recommend the game solely for its engaging narrative, comparing it favorably to other titles in the genre.
- Gacha system is a concern (weight 0.34): Many reviewers express concerns about the gacha system and its potential to detract from the overall experience. Some suggest that the game is only recommendable to those already invested in gacha games. Others feel the gacha elements are not too intrusive, but acknowledge they exist. Some reviewers feel that the game would be better without the gacha elements.
- Playable and fun without spending (weight 0.34): A common sentiment is that the game is enjoyable without spending money, though some acknowledge that spending can speed up progress. Many reviewers advise against spending, citing poor gacha rates or questionable value. This suggests the game is accessible to free-to-play players, but spending may not be the most efficient way to progress.
- High overall ratings (weight 0.05): Some reviewers give the game high ratings, such as 8/10 or 10/10, indicating a positive experience. Some reviewers consider the game a masterpiece or better than expected. This suggests that some players are highly satisfied with the game's overall quality.
- Crossplay between PC and mobile (weight 0.04): The ability to play on both PC and mobile with cross-save functionality is seen as a significant advantage. This allows players to enjoy the game on different devices and switch between them seamlessly. Some reviewers recommend starting on mobile and then linking to the PC client.
- Suggestions for improvements (weight 0.03): Some reviewers suggest improvements to the game, such as allowing players to create their own path when moving characters, prioritizing improvements over aesthetics, and increasing the maximum stamina. This suggests that there are areas where the game could be improved to enhance the player experience.
- Good for killing time (weight 0.02): Some reviewers find the game to be a good way to pass time or kill time, while others find it highly addicting. However, some reviewers find the game's pace to be slow, potentially making it a cure for insomnia. This suggests that the game's appeal may depend on individual preferences and playstyles.
- Rerolling can ease early game (weight 0.02): Some reviewers recommend re-rolling to get specific characters for an easier start, especially for late game content. This suggests that certain characters may have a significant impact on the game's difficulty. However, it is also noted that re-rolling is not required for early to mid game progress.
- Stamina limits playtime (weight 0.02): Some reviewers find the game enjoyable for a limited time due to stamina restrictions. The shortage of endurance restricts the ability to play for extended periods. This suggests that the stamina system may be a limiting factor for some players.
- Hopes for developer responsiveness (weight 0.02): Some reviewers hope the developers will listen to community feedback and implement necessary changes. There are concerns about banner rates and the value of the standard banner. This suggests that the community is actively providing feedback and hoping for improvements to the game's systems.
- Game deserves more recognition (weight 0.02): Some reviewers believe the game deserves more recognition and players, and that it has a lot of potential for growth and improvement over time. This suggests that the game may be underappreciated and has the potential to become even better in the future.
- Varying opinions on game modes (weight 0.02): Some reviewers would purchase the key game mode as a standalone game, while others would not buy the roguelike part as a separate product. This suggests that the game's different modes have varying levels of appeal to different players.
- Mixed opinions on replayability (weight 0.02): Some reviewers give the game a 6/10, while others are looking forward to replaying the story to see the different endings. Some reviewers consider this game to be their favorite game of the year, while others will uninstall the game after finishing the main story. This suggests that the game's appeal may vary depending on individual preferences and playstyles.

Other player notes:
- Gacha tactical RPG, mobile port (weight 0.2): The game is a gacha-based tactical RPG, initially designed for mobile but also available on PC. It features standard gacha mechanics for character and weapon acquisition, with monetization typical of mobile games. Some reviewers noted similarities to other gacha games like Langrisser Mobile and Genshin Impact.
- Two story modes, branching paths (weight 0.06): The game features two main story modes: 'Spiral of Destiny' and 'Fool's Journey', with the former having multiple routes and endings based on player decisions. The story is character-centric and allows for replayability, though some find experiencing all content tedious.
- Review bombed due to gacha (weight 0.06): The game received review bombing, likely due to its gacha elements. This should be taken into account when evaluating the negative reviews.
- Detailed NeoPixel art style (weight 0.03): The game employs a NeoPixel art style, combining pixel art characters with polygonal scenarios and modern graphic effects. Reviewers appreciate the detailed sprites and animation, noting the visuals evoke a sense of nostalgia.
- Actively updated, improving game (weight 0.03): The game is actively being updated and improved by the developers, who are addressing bugs, translation errors, and quality of life issues. The game is on an accelerated pace to catch up with CN/TW versions.
- Music by Hitoshi Sakimoto (weight 0.02): The game's music is composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto, known for his work on Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Final Fantasy XII. This is a significant draw for fans of those games.
- Chinese origin, version behind (weight 0.02): The game originates from China, which raises data privacy concerns for some players. The global version is also behind the Taiwanese version, providing a preview of future content.
- Farmable character shards available (weight 0.01): Character shards, used to rank up characters and improve their stats, can be farmed daily. This reduces the reliance on obtaining duplicate characters through the gacha system.

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