The 2011 Wishlist Marathon #8: Rondo of Swords

In 2011 when I made the wishlist this series of writeups is covering, Rondo of Swords caught my attention because it struck me as a game similar to Fire Emblem. Even then, I’d been a fan of Fire Emblem for something like 8 years, so I was hungry for games that scratched a similar itch. Like every other game on this list, I never ended up playing it at the time, hoping perhaps that I would get around to it 15 years later or so. 

Fire Emblem is a useful point of comparison, but Rondo of Swords is ultimately a very different game. Both games are SRPGs that take place from a top-down perspective and feature a large cast of unique playable characters that share a pool of common class archetypes that can be promoted to new classes. This is mostly where the similarities end. I could summarize how Fire Emblem works in a few paragraphs, but if you look ahead a bit, you might find it takes a few more to explain this one. I think what really resonated with me about Rondo of Swords is that it’s a complex bundle of mechanics that took some level of investment on my part to truly understand. Because this is what stuck out about the game to me and not necessarily the game’s plot or characters, it’s what I’m going to be focusing on here. This is a fairly difficult game that demands you interact with its mechanics to succeed, but it withholds information about those mechanics at every turn.

Attacking through movement

The big feature that really defines Rondo of Swords is the Route Maneuver system, which really just means that attacking is done by moving through enemies as opposed to moving adjacent to them and selecting commands from a menu. This means a few things, but the most notable aspect of this system is how much emphasis this puts on positioning, both for offense and defense. If you can deny enemies from moving through you, then you can ensure you’re safe—at least against melee opponents. This can be done by surrounding yourself with allies in a corner, or simply by placing your units at the end of their movement range. If they can move to the tile you’re on, but not further, then melee units cannot attack you. 

This Route Maneuver system also interacts with moving through allied units. Various skills can impart bonuses when units move through their allies, provided the unit you’re moving through has not yet moved that turn. This might be a temporary bonus to attack or defense, or even the restoration of HP or MP. With a unit with enough movement, you can organize a turn in which you move through several allies to get bonuses and then end the turn by moving through several enemies in your powered up state.  

Momentum Counter and OverBreak 

Another defining feature of the game that’s easy to ignore at first is Momentum Counter (MC). MC is built up through attacking enemies, seemingly with additional bonuses if you dispatch these foes. The higher your MC, the more likely it is for opponents to attack you, but in exchange, you get various bonuses, like increased OverBreak gain, increased experience, and at 99 MC, complete immunity to status ailments and 50% increased support effects from allies. This means that if your ally has a skill that adds +10% attack when you move through them, you’re now getting 15%. This is advertised as a risk/reward mechanic in that sturdier characters often have skills that can raise MC while more roguish types can lower it. Despite this, it ends up feeling like any effective character really just wants to raise their MC as much as possible for the bonuses—and if not, it ends up happening anyway if you’re doing well.

OverBreaks, incidentally, are basically limit breaks. While you’re building MC, you’re also building your OB gauge, which allows you to unleash a special ability that scales in effectiveness from level 1 to 3. These abilities cannot be used after moving, so careful positioning is required to make use of them. These skills range in effectiveness from borderline useless to character-defining. I can’t say I ever used some of the support-oriented OverBreak skills at all, because simply attacking always seemed like the better play. Characters with OverBreak skills that simply do a powerful attack seemed to fare the best for me. I’ll give a special shout-out to Cotton for her utility in the early- to mid-game since her OB functionally gives her infinite MP to hurl absurdly powerful spells for as long as she can survive. 

Magic

Speaking of spellcasters, they’re an important element not only for your own army but for your enemies as well. Spells have wildly different ranges and areas of effect, but generally, these ranges and areas will increase as you level them up. The highest range I ever reached on any spell is 8 tiles, unless you count strictly diagonal range which can technically reach a bit farther if you’re positioned appropriately. Enemy mages get the privilege of having consistently longer range than your own spellcasters for the entire game—and this is something that you always just have to guess. While you can always check movement ranges of enemies, you can never check attack ranges. Enemy mages and archers generally have better range than your own.

The most important thing to note about spells is that you cannot use them after moving. If you’re not already in range, you’ll need to move in range, end your turn, and then hope your opponent is still in range when it’s your turn again. It should go without saying that spellcasters are very frail, so it’s not difficult to imagine why directly opening them up to being attacked might not seem like such a good idea. Enemy mages tend to lie in wait for you to approach, using their superior range to pick off your units, but this is not always a luxury afforded to the player. Granted, spellcasters tend to have high magic and therefore high magic resistance, so they can theoretically go toe-to-toe with other mages, but their extremely low health pools mean they are at risk of a one-shot against stronger spells anyway.

Mages generally seem to function better when sniping melee enemies from maximum range, inching forward turn by turn. Alternatively, you can bait enemies closer with a tankier unit and have your mages lying in wait to take them down. This kind of strategy is absolutely required in many of the game’s missions. It’s seldom a viable strategy to simply go in with guns blazing unless you’re comfortable sustaining heavy casualties. It’s worth noting that you have access to healing magic as well, which has a range similar to a Fire Emblem Physic staff. It’s often necessary to bring at least one healer to your missions, but they’re often even harder to keep alive than offensive spellcasters.

Speaking of casualties, you might be wondering how Rondo of Swords handles characters falling in battle, especially in comparison with Fire Emblem’s permadeath. Although there is no permadeath in Rondo, your characters do get injured when defeated, which means their stats will be dramatically reduced for the following mission but also be ineligible to be sent on errands in between missions. Despite ostensibly not being as punishing as permadeath, these injuries can have long-term implications on your characters’ development for reasons I’ll discuss a little later.

Range, movement, and Zone of Control

I mentioned that spells can’t be cast after moving, but there are a scant few ranged attacks that can be used after moving—although these attacks are much more commonly wielded by enemies than by your own army. For a good chunk of the game, Ansom the archer is your only way to attack from range after moving, and he proves to be absolutely invaluable. Ansom has an attack range of 5 and with skill investment, eventually can move up to 10 spaces in a turn, giving him an unparalleled threat range. In exchange, he can only attack one enemy per turn under normal circumstances, but given his sky-high damage with the right investment, this is far from a dealbreaker. For comparison, your average melee fighter (like our protagonist) has a movement range of 6 and must move through an enemy to attack them, meaning enemies must be at most 5 spaces away in order to be within threat range since you have to account for moving to the tile behind or beside them.

Suffice it to say that Ansom is monstrously effective at taking out enemy mages, meaning mage-on-mage combat never really seems like the optimal play. Another effective strategy is to use your more roguish characters who also have high movement—enough to assassinate a spellcaster or two and get out cleanly. A character like Alhambra is especially effective here given that not only does she have the highest movement potential in the game, but extremely high attack as well. Even so, maps with more difficult terrain still favor Ansom, since he can attack over gaps.

Another situation in which Ansom is favored is against enemy armored units. In the latter half of the game, most heavily armored enemies will have the Zone of Control (ZOC) skill, which stops you in your tracks as soon as you attempt to move past them. This means that melee attackers can end up in a pretty rough spot if they get walled by these tanks while doing a hit-and-run attack. While these enemies have high defense, Ansom can still hit them hard safely. This is also one situation where spellcasters are pretty effective, since these armored units don't have the movement to punish a mage investing a turn to get in range for one of their spells. You can also take advantage of ZOC for yourself with Margus, but I often found it was stronger on paper than reality, since even a high defense character can only tank so many attacks before going down.

Character Building

Part of the reason characters like Ansom and Alhambra are so effective is due to the game’s progression systems. Unlike Fire Emblem, characters don’t gain a lot of stats on level up. Stat gains are extremely gradual across the board. In exchange, characters receive skill points every level to allocate as you choose on a series of active and passive skills. More of these become available as you level up and as you promote to new classes. Although I never found a ton of use for most of the active skills, many of the passive skills are quite useful. You have your standard stat increase skills, but also interesting passives like Lateral Blow, which makes you deal extra damage when attacking from the side. Crucially, there’s Sprint, which is a must-have on any character that gets access to it, since an extra +3 movement is a huge boon in Rondo of Swords.

The other character-building options are much more arcane. In between missions, you have the option to send your characters on errands, including a series of side quests. How you assign your characters to these quests is totally left up to the player, but they’re extremely important and easy to miss if you’re playing the game blind. I ended up completely restarting the game because I didn’t understand how important they were at the time. For instance, if you send Ansom and Alhambra on six “Card Quests” apiece, they do double damage. Each character gets different bonuses and special traits from going on these Card Quests and similarly, each character gets a specific set of stat bonuses from going on Smith Quests. In order to build characters appropriately, it’s a good idea to plan ahead to determine when you send these characters on these quests, because any character sent on an errand cannot be deployed for that mission.

These aren’t the only types of errands available, though. Rondo of Swords encourages you to make use of your entire army by deploying the units you need for any particular mission and assigning anyone else available to quests, trials, and even shopping. I briefly mentioned class promotion earlier—that requires an errand as well. Any time you want to promote a unit, they’ll have to take a break from the current mission. Not only that, but you’ll need a series of items to get to that next level. It’s not as simple as just having a Master Seal. You’ll need 2x Hawk Proof and 1x Hunter Seal, for example. Many characters have the ability to be promoted twice. I only wish I’d been able to see some of the third-tier class promotions, but the items required are rare enough that I barely managed to get there on anyone.

A miserable pile of mechanics (complimentary)

So, this game has a lot of really cool ideas that are executed pretty haphazardly. Spells being universally unusable after movement just feels bad, though, and the game could explain itself far better than it does. Balance on recruitable characters is wildly off, too, with quite a few of them being borderline unusable considering the game’s challenge. It feels like the game really wants you to lean on the extremely powerful characters and ignore the weak ones, but the roster would certainly feel better if the power curve was flattened a bit. Without outside resources, determining which of these characters is worth using is just trial and error, since you can’t preview future skills or get an idea of stat growths or even what they get from quests in advance. This is the kind of game where you could easily softlock yourself because of suboptimal character builds (without the ability to ever respec)  or even because your stronger characters are injured at a bad time. You could theoretically grind your way out of the problem if you can even manage to land kills with injured characters in the first place, but stat growths from levels are miniscule, and it’s hard to say if allocating new skills will make the difference you’re looking for.

I could imagine a version of this game that is stellar. I love the idea of character progression mostly being driven by player choice in how you allot your skill points as well as offering supplemental progression paths through class promotions and sidequests. I’m even okay with having your characters be ineligible for deployment while going on these quests because it encourages you to field a large and varied roster and the game gives you tools to keep them evenly leveled. I also enjoy that no character in the sizable roster feels like a carbon copy of another. There are archetypes, sure, but each character has a unique skillset. Not only can you take into account what their OverBreak skill is, but what skills they get access to as they level up, what bonuses they get from doing Card and Smithing quests, what stat growths they get over time, as well as what class promotion options they have.

Despite being a profoundly uneven and challenging game, I admire Rondo of Swords for being very different. I was looking for something similar to Fire Emblem but got a unique strategy RPG all its own. That’s something to be commended, even if it doesn’t always hold together.