Sword of Convallaria | Non-Sponsored First Impressions Review

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Sword of Convallaria is one of the more notable gacha releases this year. After playing it for about 10 hours, I have some things to say about it. This turn-based RPG with pixel-art definitely looks a cloth above the rest, but how good is it? In this non-sponsored first impressions review, I'm going to go over my thoughts about the gameplay, monetization, and progression.

I apologize if the sound quality was a bit inconsistent for this one, I will adjust it correctly next time.

Timestamps:
0:00 – Intro
1:15 – Story Overview
4:56 – Gameplay
8:34 – Gacha
11:58 – Monetization
12:52 – Final thoughts
14:40 – Affiliation announcement

Music used:

Outro music:

Reference materials:

Convallaria Tier List quick reference:

Convallaria Tier List quick reference 2:

#gacha #gachareview #swordofconvallaria

v1.0

[Boopy]

sponsored first impressions are such a waste of time to watch most the time so I'm glad for this

[asabiexplains]

I don´t play most of the games you review but just your overall voice and presence are enough to make a video interesting to watch, thank you

[spacelarge]

Few things to point out, there is NO NEED to spend any currency on the weapon gacha because eventually, you will unlock stages that let you grind the weapons for free. The sweep function does not need its own currency but you can use it. Usually, to sweep, you'll need x amount of characters at x level which is easy enough to achieve. The currency just lets you bypass the needed characters for the sweep.

[williameyers]

The sweep function doesn’t necessarily need a currency to do it. You can use your characters to sweep, and the characters get put on a 3 hour cooldown. They’ll need to match the requirements to sweep, but they’ll automatically beat the level and enter a cooldown state. The currency lets you bypass that and immediately gain the rewards without using characters. Hope that makes sense

[ApexLegend-yy]

Actually, some low rarity units are crucial to clearing higher level content and actually prefered over five stars. This includes even common characters I think this game is better than others in incorporating non five star units.

[joaomarcoscosta]

Nice review! A couple of observations though:

1) Yes, there is a weapon gacha, but every weapon on it is farmable as f2p. And they are not hard to acquire. There is no reason to EVER pull on the weapon gacha unless you are a MASSIVE whale and you want an early account boost.

2) There is no need need to summon dupes either, since they are farmable. (It takes 3 months to max 3 characters.)

3) Rerolling for 1 or 2 fetured characters of your choice is pretty easy. (It takes about 10 minutes per reroll, and you can delete guest accounts.)

4) This review is seriously underestimating lower rarity units... It's true that Legendary characters are able to power through content more easily, as long as they are level apropropriate. But a lot of the lower rarity characters have unique kits that enable players to clear content several levels above their own, such as debuffs and crowd control abilities, or self buffs that allow them to evade single target attacks (completely negating skills that would otherwise one-shot you) or gain a massive defense boost. Also, a lot of the stages are filled with enviromental hazards and incentivise you to make full use of their surroundings when fighting stronger enemies, rather than just pulling a high rarity character.

Lower rarity units aren't just useful in the early to mid game - when you are fighting at a high level deficit, some of them are more effective than Legendary characters if you use them right, and they are able to clear all PvE content.

Btw, personally, I don't really mind having generic classes available as playable characters, since this is a staple of TRPGs. (Final Fantasy Tactics, Disgaea, and Unicorn Overlord all do that.) But I agree that the lack of voice acting for lower rarity units feels a bit jarring.

5) Regarding the sweep mechanic... It isn't actually limited by a specific currency, and you can easily burn all your stamina on sweaps after you reach a certain point. But the way it works is a bit weird.

You can choose between using a "sweap ticket", or sending a certain number of characters on a 3 hours "dispatch mission". (You can still use these characters for all other content in the game normally) This means that, technically, you can't use this function infinitely, but... The game gives you so much exp and character ascencion materials that you will rarely have a shortage of characters available for stage sweaps.

[Eurosdown]

I'd just like to point out that when you max the bond out for an SR or below character, you can actually give them a name. And in Spiral of Destinies, all units have names and you can even recruit Legendary rarity units at the tavern! Also, the weapon banner is a total skip for now because you can farm for legendary weapons once you progress enough.

[brutalnobody]

Correction on sweeping. You have the option to send Cahracter on "Expeditions" in order to sweep so having a lot of characters built is valuable in this game

[imajokeforaliving]

psychie doing a review on a gacha game that i don't even know about but i still watch because i enjoyed his content

[suntzu]

You know what I like about this game? EVERY CHARACTER, even the common ones, ARE USABLE AND CAN CARRY YOU THROUGHOUT THE GAME. I'm looking at you Papal Ice Priest and Recruited Assassin. So you don't have to worry about pulling Legendary characters to progress.

[olive_n]

I always appreciate the One Step From Eden BGM. Nice touch.

[lei]

There's a lot of videos of people clearing the hardest content (tower) with just the low rarity units. You actually NEED them since some of their kits are so good compared to any 5 star counterpart.

[xZeke]

Right now the people climbing the endgame are doing it using lower rarity units, this game really rewards investing in lower rarities to abuse their unique kits, this can be kind of gimmicky but it does encourage hard to invest in these units.

From what I readthis changes later on when your stats starts to properly outclass the enemies but at least for now we depend on creative thinking and lower rarity units to climb the endgame tower. What is true is that there is a major lack of information for global players, its been so hard to gather info on what people consider good lol

And yea the 180 pity is awful, Im really liking the game but Im scared for its schedule

[imgonnapassoutt]

Im gonna rant about some things and give my review at the end as a person who played this for about 10 days

7:57 to add to this this stamina cap increases as you progress through the story and the stamina potions you get are plentiful, they also give 120 energy for free to login in the morning and evening

8:10 to correct this the special sweep currency isn't special as all you need are prerequisites like have 3 level 30 characters and if you use those three characters they will be on cooldown for ONLY sweeping for around 3 hours the currency is used as a substitute for those prerequisites

8:19 there are still equipment stages that are unlocked and locked as the week goes by but its not a real issue as the time goes by very quickly in this game

11:17 That faction is called The Hanged Men they work as a special unit for Dantalian who is a vicious ruler they are made to look the same but i can see why you would call it lazy but its better to just say its for the story and move on

11:30 in the spiral of destinies the characters below legendary have randomized names and you can get multiple of the same LOOKING character with different names but that does not mean they will play the same as they have randomised skills for their class unlike the rank system in the main game i even have 5 legendary characters in the spiral of destinies that are more powerful than maitha and faycal (who can also get any skills in their class at random)

13:32 In my opinion its better to not have characters jump out of your screen and appear in front of you irl

13:36 this game has a very complex combat system and it shines in the spiral of destinies where you can chose to up the difficulty each time your mercenary group is upgraded and then that unlocks some character dialogue (nothing important) and special missions and it shines in battles like the gear raids since you have to think about every little detail to gain an advantage to beat the boss

13:37 You haven't reached an ending in the spiral of destinies the music there is 10/10 fits the vibe very well and they make the endings extremely well but other than that the music is very repetitive for normal stages

Overall Sword Of Convallaria has a very complex but easy to understand and get into battle system with a story even better than some games people glaze just because of their stories its obvious the game devs are trying to make a good game but the higher ups don't care and want it to milk the cash cow as much as they can but overall i would rate this game

F2P: 6.8/10
Combat: 8.5/10
Story: 9.5/10

Final Rating: 8.1/10

[chibixleon]

This game is amazing becuase the lower rarity chars can be some of the strongest in the game once you understand the game mechanics. BTW all the non SSR chars can be named by players once you max your bond with them. A really neat thing.

[zexino]

To clarify, you can pretty easily get legendary weapons from story/pvp/free battle pass, and the character selector can also be obtained for free, thought it will take a really long time. You also didn't mention pvp and guilds altogether.
Otherwise a great video that details everything there is major to say about the game. Great work!

[sniffluv]

The lower rarities are sick and more fun to play with for some stages.

[RockanoYT]

This game seemingly came out of nowhere and is more polished than most game releases in the recent years

[fahikan]

honestly I went in without any expectation and I'm enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would.
especially after the shitshow that is WOTV...

unfortunately, the accelerated banner irked me, especially since dev promise that we'll get more to compensate the faster release but so far I haven't seen a lot of it

EDIT:
1. you made several mistakes there, skill that's not being picked can be unlocked using Castalia, a limited resources than you can get from clearing chapters or events
2. weapon and trinkets can be farmed, there's a stage for it, but yes the weapon banner is a whale bait. I've heard that OG server almost implement a character specific weapons for it's gacha but I can't find any info about it.
3. you can sweep using characters, but they're required to be leveled up to the stages levels and then they're put into cooldown for at least 3 hours which means the amount of sweep without using the canned octopus is time limited (it's kinda dumb TBH)
4. The Legendary or SSR's pity which is 100 pulls works on all banner, but the guaranteed one (180 pulls) between debut (new character) and destiny (2 SSR rate up) are not since they're technically different banner.
5. you can name your lower rarity characters, but they're locked behind bond lv5
6. there's a SSR selector that is accesible for F2p, but it's locked behind gacha dupes currency

[Dan-The-First]

Coming from me who play it since it came out and on the discord for the game

So far it's a good game for an gacha, it's one of the only gacha I play excluded Limbus company, and I really love it

Do hope it gets popular because it different kind of gacha compared to the mainstream gacha that we usually see like Zzz and others

I'm happy for your review and congratulations on your first sponsor dude 🤝