Full FeedGamertell Review: Rondo of Swords
Title: Rondo of Swords
Price: $29.99
System(s): Nintendo DS
Release Date: April, 15, 2008
Publisher (Developer): Atlus (Success)
ESRB Rating: “Everyone 10+” for animated blood, fantasy violence, language and mild suggestive themes
Pros: Good graphics, extremely challenging and great touch screen controls
Cons: Incredibly difficult, cliched plot elements and characters and too few healing opportunities
Overall Score: Two thumbs sideways; 70/100; C-; * * out of 5.
Rondo of Swords left me feeling sad and disappointed. I love Atlus games, and religiously purchase most of the company’s titles. I was excited for Rondo when I stumbled on announcements online. However the finished product doesn’t live up to the imagined glory. I thought it was going to be a fresh approach to strategic rpgs, with new battle systems and elements. Instead I embarked on a quest like countless others, with characters I had seen before in Fire Emblem and Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones.
Rondo of Swords stars fake-Serdic, the body double and guard for Prince Serdic of Bretwalde. The Grand Meir Empire invades Bretwalde during the king’s funeral, kills Prince Serdic and curses the kingdom’s holy sword. Prince Serdic tells his body double Serdic to become him, take the blade, protect Princess Marie and save the day.
The Good
The graphics are great. Everything is clear and crisp. I especially loved the sprites for the characters. Its a very stylish affair, and you can tell the creators spent a lot of time making these sprites look good.
The touch screen controls are also spot on. You can play with the standard face buttons, but I’ve found the touch screen is the simplest and best. You simply touch a character and drag along the grid to move them around, then tap once more to make the character move. Its incredibly smooth and responsive. Canceling a choice is easy as well, you just tap on a spot which isn’t the character.
Also if a character dies in battle, they don’t die for good. Since your characters tend to die a lot early on, this is cause for celebration.
The Bad
This game has to be the most difficult strategic RPG I have ever played. I died once on the first mission, three times on the fourth. There are far too many enemies early on, and far too few healing items.
Plus you can’t heal and move on the same turn! That’s the whole reason I died the first time - I decided I wanted to heal Serdic, then have him move. But no, you can’t do that in Rondo. You have to leave the person exposed. While you’re waiting, enemies just run right through the characters and wipe them out. The first healer doesn’t join your party until the fourth battle. Even then, she joins halfway through, you have to send someone to free her and you don’t get to control her until the next battle.
Frankly, I kept thinking it was Fire Emblem-lite. I even refer to Kay and Margus as Kent and Sain (Fire Emblem GBA). Other people see this, don’t they? Not only are the personalities and roles the same, but they even have the same color schemes! Also Ansom and Sasha are dead ringers personality-wise/story-wise and for Innes and Vanessa in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones. I just couldn’t shake this feeling that the creators of Rondo just decided to mesh a bunch of Fire Emblem characters and themes into one game.
The Meh
The storyline didn’t impress me. I didn’t expect a masterpiece, but I did expect something more to draw me in. Between battles, brief storyline overviews will scroll up over the world map, Star Wars style. It isn’t anything crucial to the storyline, and you can easily skip over them without missing out on anything.
Also the battle animations tend to get old quick. Its fun for the first few missions to watch the characters run through enemies, but soon I found myself tapping through to speed things up.
Bottomline
If you’re a die-hard Atlus fan, slightly masochistic or manage to find a copy cheap, then by all means get Rondo of Swords. If not, then go get Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones instead. I will say this, Rondo takes a while to warm up, but after a few hours it grows on you. You’ll find yourself sincerely enjoying the game if you make the commitment to play.
Product Page [GameStop] Site [Rondo of Swords]
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Really, very good review, except its too short, too short, too short.
Tell me more about the game, don’t sit there and tell me the likes and dislikes. Your personal tastes are fine, I’m going to assume, but in the long run, why is this review so short?
Also you tend to contradict yourself in this. In the beggining you said you loved it. In the end you said you hated it. How hard is it to say “Its okay but not my type?”
The game won’t be a yes or a no now for me - Im gonna go find something else to read that tells me something I NEED to know: Like just what the game is.
on April 18, 2008 at 04:11 PM - LINKHere’s a review by a hardcore dude who didn’t find it difficult:
http://insomnia.ac/reviews/ds/itsuwarinorondo/
on April 20, 2008 at 07:07 AM - LINKHi Anthony -
I’ve finished and beaten Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Final Fantasy Tactics A2, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi, Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu, Yggdra Union, all the NIS games released in the US and every Advance Wars game. Out of all those, I’d say Rondo of Swords is hands down the most challenging.
Of course everyone’s different. :D All I know is if someone doesn’t take the time to quit battles repeatedly to grind, then they’re going to be in for a world of hurt.
on April 20, 2008 at 01:33 PM - LINKI believe this review is to biased. True the game is difficult, but a SRPG is supposed to be challenging. She also didn’t mention that the storyline changes depending on the decisions you make in the game, or all the unlockable characters that have great abilities. Please don’t use this persons review as an acurate depiction of the game.
on February 11, 2009 at 12:25 PM - LINK@ Keegan: Yes, the storyline changes depending on the choice Serdic makes in one battle, but that’s actually advertised on the box, official website and such, so I didn’t feel it was necessary to tackle it. Especially since I was taking a different, non-standard approach to this review.
And unlockable characters appear in practically all strategic RPGs. Chances are in any strategic RPG, if a character has a unique sprite and an actual portrait, then that’s an unlockable character you can recruit during battle. So again, I didn’t feel the need to highlight a feature that practically all games in this genre (NIS games being the exception) have.
If I were so set against this game, I wouldn’t have gone out and bought it. Also, I wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of writing a second story on Rondo of Swords that teaches people how to level grind characters if they’re having trouble with the difficulty of some maps.
You can see that story here:
http://www.gamertell.com/gaming/comment/the-rondo-of-swords-guide-to-grinding/
Rondo of Swords isn’t a bad game, just it isn’t one of the absolute best strategic RPGs out there.
on February 11, 2009 at 12:38 PM - LINK