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A must have

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 14 / 16
Date: April 18, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Before you play the game, I suggest everyone does a run through the tutorial available from the start menu. There are ten lessons in all, each that will teach you how to play the game, otherwise you might find yourself frustrated when the enemy owns you in two seconds flat.

I'm not far into the game yet, but the battle system is interesting. Instead of moving to the side, front, or behind the enemy you have to drag your character through the enemy otherwise no damage will be done. Unfortunately there are times where you cannot attack an enemy with this strategy because of the ZOC.

With the battle system aside, I'm really happy with this game. The story progresses pretty fast, and so far the only draw back is the lack of free roaming. I'm hoping that once I get a little further into the game I can go to different locations to level up, without furthering the story line.

The art is beautiful, and the background music is pleasing to the ears. I highly recommend this to any fan of RPGs and strategy games.

Rondo of Difficulty

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 12 / 15
Date: April 24, 2008
Author: Amazon User

As the title of my review suggests, this game is not easy. Those with experience playing strategy and tactics games will find this game playable. Those who have no experience should avoid this game, unless you are willing to learn and experience the difficultly that this game has to offer. Well unto the review!

The game is pretty much a tactics game where you move units and you gain exp points by either hitting your enemy or defeating them. Unlike most tactics games you do not move in front of them and choose an option to hit rather you go through them and that means you can hit multiple times all in one turn. Of course there are skills to prevent this as those with a special skill will prevent anyone from passing through them and only allowing one hit instead of multiple hits. Those who possess range attacks (bows, magic) you can attack from a distance, though you must be in range to attack and cannot attack after you move your unit (this does not apply to bow users as you can attack after you move, just remember to choose the bow option to attack). And like many tactics games the terrain affects your movement. Also, if your main character is defeated the game is over.

The game offers new additions to a traditional tactics game and those are all welcome but a few of those additions are not. Passing through enemies and hitting multiple times is a welcome to the series as most tactics games are pretty slow due to the one hit rule. In addition, there is a skill that you can build up called "OB" which is a special skill you can use that is very powerful depending on which character is using it. In addition once your character levels up you obtain skill points that you use to build up skills that will benefit your character. Another good feature is the ability to restart the stage (this cannot be done on the opponent's turn). This is useful since you get to keep all the exp points and levels you gained during the time you fought prior to choosing to restart the stage (this is probably your only option to gain levels for low level characters). Not everything found in the game is a welcome and here are the many gripes of the game.

Smart AI is a welcome for any game as it adds challenge to the game but not when the AI is too good or should I say cheesy. There are times when you will consider restarting a stage because you will need to outsmart your opponent otherwise be prepared for the enemy onslaught. When you restart a stage certain enemy units will gain new skills that they did not have when you first started the stage thereby giving the advantage to the AI. Also, unlike other tactics games where you can purchase items by going to a general store, in this game you send a group to buy items and they can either succeed, end up using all your money or fail. This is by the worst thing to ever happen in a tactics game where all your hard earned money can be blown by a single item purchase.

Even with all the short comings, I found the game to be enjoyable and playable (unlike Age of Empires where I am stuck forever on Jerusalem). As I stated before, I only recommend this game for those with experience playing strategy games (such as Age of Empires, Shining Force, Fire Emblem, Starcraft, Civilization, Ogre Battle, Final Fantasy Tactics just to name a few). Those with no experience will have a very difficult time playing through this game though if you can overcome the difficultly of this game then by all means buy this game. Recommended for fans of strategy/tactics games.

Rondo of Swords, Elegy of Good Game Play

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 10 / 15
Date: May 27, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Have you ever played a game that you could swear hated you personally? That's how I feel about Rondo of Swords, a game that seems to have been designed with the expressed purpose of being as unfair as possible.

I won't go into the story because there is nothing to talk about here. There is barely a storyline and what little there is serves merely to shoe string the tactical battles together. Between each mission there is a little bit of scrolling text that tells you where your army traveled to and what new disaster befell them. Then the action switches to the battlefield where the units will chew the fat for a bit, one of the bad guys will spring up and laugh maniacally, and then they get down to the business of tactical combat.

With a story line this thin, Rondo of Swords is left to live and die by its combat system. The basic idea of the combat system is unique. Basically, units have a set number of squares they can move through. You draw a route on the touch screen for the unit to follow and any enemy character you pass through will be attacked and any unused ally character you pass through can give you some kind of status boost like healing or increased chance of hitting the target. On paper it sounds like a pretty good idea, but RoS has designed it so the system works against you.

Let us count the ways RoS fudges its game play:
1) Worthless mages- In RoS, there are two types of long range fighters: archers and mages. Archers can move around the field and then attack. Mages can only move or attack. It's either one or the other. So the choice often comes down to if the mage will attack the enemy baring down on it or flee to safety. To add to their worthlessness, mages can't take a hit and will almost always die with one attack. If you are lucky enough to get the enemy positioned so the mage can fight, magic points are so stingy that you will be lucky if you can cast more than two spells in a battle. The kicker is that, by the time I gave up at the 15th battle or so, half of my units were mages.

2)Worthless Shopping- Like most RPGs, RoS lets you buy stuff to upgrade fighters and give you an edge on the battle field. Unlike most RPGs, RoS gives you no control over what you buy. During battles, you can send unused units to pick up some stuff for you. You have no control over what the unit purchases and there is a chance the unit will loose all your money and come back empty handed. Also, some units are better at shopping than others and it seemed that the more invaluable the unit was on the battlefield, the better it was at shopping and vice versa. As a result, I rarely used the feature because the unit would come back with junk.

3) The Zone of Control- As if to make up for having units that are easy to kill and throwing tons of enemies at you, you have the route system that allows you to attack multiple enemies. But then RoS goes and turns it against you with a lovely skill called the ZoC or Zone of Control. Basically, this skill will stop a unit's charge dead in its tracks and prevent it from attacking or moving any more. You tend to face big clusters of enemies with this skill while you only have one unit that can do this, and the enemy ZoC seems to activate almost all the time while yours doesn't. This creates a situation where the enemy is free to hammer at your entire army while you struggle to wear down one of their units.

4) Unbalanced game play- I should think that most games should shoot for a kind of natural progression of difficulty. RoS has a feature were you can restart the current battle and keep all the experience earned during the aborted battle and regain all defeated units and used items. I imagine this is so you can level up units that have been inactive for a while and perfect your battlefield strategy, but what makes it so cheap is that you are practically forced to use it. On some maps, the only conceivable way to win is to basically restart the battle over and over until you have beefed up your very best fighters to have way more levels than the enemy.
And you must do this for hours sometimes. To give you an example, it took me nine hours to reach the 14th or so battle. I bought this game used and the previous owner had a game save that indicated it took him seven hours to reach the fifth battle.

This isn't to say that RoS is completely impossible. For every battle designed for maximum forehead vein popping, there is one that is actually quite nicely balanced. Challenging but a workable challenge. It's during these that you can see what a great game RoS could have been. But still, RoS is like a plate with half fillet mignon and half regurgitated cheeseburger and I wouldn't call that edible.

A Unique take on SRPG

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: May 27, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Rondo of Swords has a unique take on SRPGs where the emphasis is on the path that you take along with the direction when attacking an opponent. After a lot of cookie cutter SRPGs this is refreshing. It is however not as easy as some other titles (even the tutorials take a long time).

A Challenging New Take on the Genre

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: May 21, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Yes, Rondo of Swords is not an easy game. It forces players to unlearn what they have learned about SRPGS. Your 200 hours of Disgaea or your total domination of FFT will not help you here. The mechanic is drastically different, and it requires a new kind of strategy to conquer.

Here's where I had the most fun; learning the new wrinkles in the gameplay system, using the environment and positioning to my advantage and actually playing a game where a character mobility is as important as their relative strength. RoS is an odd bird in the RPG world, but the innovation is worth the frustration.

Now even with all the challenging fun, this game is nowhere near perfect. The documentation is terrible, along with the in-game tutorial. The larger metagame is never really explored (errands) and mistakes can be made without any chance to go back and fix them. For this part of the game gamefaqs.com is your friend. Along with lack luster unit/environmental art, uninteresting/sometimes repetitive music, and other strange design choices this game loses a star from me.

All that being said, for fans of SRPGS Rondo is a real gem. Playing it is like nothing you have ever tried before. Winning battles, even after a few tries, carries an extra sense of accomplishment because of the actual tactical thinking needed to overcome the foes. Unfortunately, non genre-stalwarts should probably find another game.

Very Difficult

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: May 19, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game with high hopes thinking it would be like Jeanne D'Arc and FF War of the Lions I couldn't have been more wrong. This game is very challenging. Most of the battles you probably have to repeat 2-4 times just to get through them. The story line is next to extinct it's just going from one battle to the next. In most games you can go to a general store to pick up healing items not so in this game you have to have a member of your party pick up the items while your fighting, unfortunatly about 80% of the time they end up losing all your money and don't bring back any items which leaves you with no way to heal yourself in battle. If your looking for a good stratagy RPG I suggest getting FF tactics War of the Lions or Jeanne D'Arc both are challenging and have very good story lines. The only thing Rondo of Swords leaves you with is the overwhelming desire to scream your head off.

Way too hardcore

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 6
Date: May 14, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Unless you want to play with the game in one hand and a strategy guide or walkthough in the other, don't bother with this game. Yes, it has a nifty new gameplay mechanic, the pass-through attack instead of the "move then attack" system standard to tactical rpgs. That's fine and good, it's the other stuff that really kills the fun. Like Fire Emblem, there are limited new characters that you have to unlock. Unlike Fire Emblem, there are often special things you have to do to even get those characters to appear in the first place, something I didn't find out about until I'd already missed the chance to recruit two of the better characters in the game. If you're a sucker for punishment, or just looking for something way more challenging than the average TRPG, this might be your game. Everyone else, stay away.

Highly recommend!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 27, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is quite a unique little strategy game for the DS. I'm not fond of Japanese RPGs in general, so I was glad to find ROS isn't too "Japanese". There is some lengthy dialogue and meandering stories, but it's not overdone or too obtuse. If you've played a lot of strategy games, it will probably take a few hours for you to forget everything you've learned and figure out what you're doing and how to play. There's a steep initial learning curve. I think a lot of people picked it up, couldn't figure it out in less than and hour and gave up. That's why all you hear is how difficult it is. You *will* probably have to start over a couple times as you realize you didn't know what you were doing at first. But after that, the game is challenging, but not hardcore. It's also surprisingly deep. It's a long game with many things to discover and characters to unlock. Character balance is an issue, but with so many character to choose from (once you unlock them) it's easily forgivable and after beating the game, it is enormously fun to replay and build up the weaker characters for new challenges. If you like strategy games and have an open mind, you'll probably really appreciate Rondo of Swords.

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