Sword of Convallaria gains a flood of negative reviews just hours after its release

Sword of Convallaria is a free-to-play RPG that was released on August 1, 2024. Within hours of its release, this pixel art game has gained a small flood of negative reviews, nearly overwhelming the positive ones - at the time of writing, the reviews stand at 45% negative to 55% positive.

With nearly half of its players reviewing to complain about the quality of the game, I dived a little deeper to find out what the issues were.

The closed Beta Test for Sword of Convallaria ran back in June with over 10,000 applications. One player who took part in the Beta even played for approximately 170 hours. Considering that Sword of Convallaria's narrative runs over 120 hours of gameplay, it's strange that such a wide Beta Test has yielded a game with so many unhappy players on Steam.

At present, players consider Sword of Convallaria to be a poorly optimized gacha game that shouldn't be available on PC. Fans who have attempted it on Android or iOS have better opinions of it, stating that it gets better around an hour into gameplay, but the gacha system is lackluster and requires a multitude of microtransactions.

One reviewer commented, "...the overall pricing is a bit too steep. If you're a F2P player and want banners then I don't think this one is for you." They did enjoy the game at first, but just two hours in, they've been put off playing it any further.

Players are also having issues with controller compatibility, despite Sword of Convallaria being advertised as compatible. Having played some of the best roguelikes that have come out in 2024, I'm a touch disappointed that such a common feature has been messed up.

However, it's not all bad. The visuals of the game are stunning, and it certainly plays better as a mobile game than a PC game. The combat is played through, instead of automated, which is great for players who enjoy more tactical combat scenarios.

What a lot of players seem to be missing is that there are two modes to Sword of Convallaria: a F2P mode with the 120-hour narrative that doesn't use the gacha system, and the gacha mode that you see when you start the game.

If you can get past the first hour or two of gameplay, you'll unlock the single-player story mode "Spiral of Destinies," which is a rougelike game that has relationship and resource management, combat, and 10 different endings to find as you play.

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