Behind: Serdic. Center: "Serdic". Left: Marie. Right: Igraine.
Rondo of Swords (偽りの輪舞曲 / Itsuwari no Rondo, lit. "Rondo of Deceit") is a 2008 Strategy RPG for the Nintendo DS, developed by Success and localized by Atlus. During an attack on Egvard, the capital city of Bretwalde, by an invading army from the Grand Meir Empire, Prince Serdic was mortally wounded, so he had his body double take his place and save the kingdom in his stead. The new "Serdic" leads the few remaining soldiers of Bretwalde in a campaign to recapture their homeland and to drive off the Grand Meir. Along the way, Serdic and his company manage to recruit a variety of different people to help him, including stars from other Success games such as Izuna and Cotton.
Aside from being a legitimately difficult tactics game, it also stands out for its combat system. Whereas most other tactical RPGs require you to move next to an enemy and then attack, Rondo of Sword's method of attacking requires you to move through your enemies, where they attack upon contact. Running through your own allies sometimes give stat boosts depending on what abilities they have, and enemies have a chance of countering your attacks, thus stopping your advance and usually leaving your character in decidedly unfortunate situations.
Tropes present in Rondo of Swords:
- Anti-Debuff: The active skill Cleanse can heal status ailments, with chances increasing with level. The skill Holy Prayer can perform a temporary one by nullifying them for a couple of turns.
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You can only have six active units in your party, and it doesn't help that Serdic is obligatory in almost all missions.
- Area of Effect: Spells like Ignite Lore/Rekka Slip, Megido Nova, Storm Rave/Jinrai Slip, and Mephreyu's Pandemonium deal indiscriminate damage to all units in an area around the caster. Conversely, Sedna Prison and Faerie Fire only damage enemy units.
- Armor-Piercing Attack: The skill Null ZOC allows a unit to ignore enemies' ZOC skills (if equipped) and damage them as long as they aren't mages or healers.
- Artificial Human: Mephreyu used many of these as his mooks.
- Artificial Stupidity: Otherwise this game would be more then just
Nintendo Hard, it would be downright impossible. A good example is how the computer's ranged units must move into position first before attacking like magic users, whereas ranged units under your control can move and attack at the same time.- Take note that their archers have longer range than yours, but still you can just walk in range and shoot them in the face anyway since they can't counterattack.
- Another fun A.I. Breaker is to put one character two squares inside the range of a melee foe, then put your other characters in every square said foe could end up in while attacking. If he's really slow, he'll attempt to retreat, but otherwise, he'll move one square away from your nearest character, allowing all your nearby characters to carve him into little bits.
- Back from the Dead: The real Serdic on either path. For a while, anyway.
- Back Stab: Attacking an enemy from behind deals more damage with a lessened risk of counter-attack than from the front. Furthermore, two skills also specialize in this: the aptly-named skill Back Stab increases the damage dealt while Rear Blow increases critical hit chances when attacking from that direction.
- Bait-and-Switch: When you first hear a mention of getting the pope as your ally, you'd expect that person to be an ugly old man like the real life one...guess again, the pope in this game is a cute little young girl who isn't all that serious about her duties...although there IS an ugly old man who looks vaguely like the real life pope, he isn't though.
- BFS: Horseback Elite Mooks carry gigantic swords, which is justified since the explanations state they're only used on horseback.
- Bittersweet Ending: In Path B, If you have Serdic run away in Stage 37, "The Successor", it will end in the Divine Empire of Bretwalde withdrawing and the Grand Meir Empire chasing them around, but by then Serdic's advances have severely weakened their once-notorious military strength. Eventually, Grand Meir collapsed under its own weight come Year 384 and Aegil took lead of both Verona and the Divine Empire. While there was peace in Bretwalde and Serdic was hailed as a legendary hero after his death, Aegil futilely waited for his return until she died of old age.
- Blinded by Rage: Both the skills Berserk and Blind Rage reduce the equipped unit's DEF in exchange for a higher crit rate and ATK, respectively.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: Any high-ranking enemy with ZOC. Many of the times, they are even stronger then your own warriors, so you must rely on magic to slowly kill them. Oh, and some levels have these guys spawn infinitely.
- Can't Drop the Hero: Serdic is obligatory in all missions save for "A Kidnapping" and the game won't allow you to switch him out for another character.
- Corrupt Church: The main reason for all the conflicts in this game can pretty much be blamed by the church led genocide before the start of the game. Also, the description written in the profiles in every single clergy member enemy you fight against implies this.
- Counter-Attack: Units that are targeted by an enemy attacking head-on have chances to block the advance and attack in response. Moreover, skills like Retaliation and Karma Strike respectively increase the likeliness and damage output of counters if equipped and set. Other abilities, like Rook, on the other hand, decrease counter chances in exchange for boosting Defense. Moreover, these can be nullified if struck with the Timid status effect.
- Cute Witch: Cotton
- Damage-Increasing Debuff: The game has two.
- The Weak status effect turns all physical damage received into critical damage, thus making them more vulnerable to being killed in a few hits, even if they have high DEF. Owl's OB can inflict this ailment depending on the OB gauge level.
- The Glass status effect causes the affected unit to be killed in one hit regardless of HP. The passive skill Number 13 can inflict it.
- Damage Over Time: The Leak status effect causes the affected unit to lose HP each turn. While it won't kill them, it will leave them open for a killing blow if they lose enough HP. It is inflicted by the passive skill Stigma and Alhambra's OB.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: While characters don't die permanently when you lose them in battle, they do end up with the "Hurt" status in the next stage, which lowers their stats, halves their level, and renders them unable to do errands. However, characters with the passive skill Adamancy can work around it since it has chances of reducing penalties for Hurt characters.
- Unfortunately this could apply both ways, for instance, you need to 'kill' Ernest 3 times to make him stay down for good.
- Dispel Magic: The Light-elemental spell Testament heals all allies' status ailments within range.
- Double-Edged Buff: The game has several Skills, passive and active, and also some Equipment, that can increase a unit's stat at the expense of another.
- Lion Rage (Active), Daredevil (Passive), and the South Medal can increase Attack at the expense of Defense. The opposite can happen in the case of Empower (Active), Garrison (Passive), and the North Medal, which increase Defense at the expense of Attack.
- Last Stand increases ATK while reducing movement range and counter-attack chances.
- Blind Rage and Berserk respectively increase a unit's ATK and critical-hit chances, both at the expense of accuracy.
- Cyclone increases critical hit rate at the expense of Defense.
- Wisdom Lock increases Magic stat at the expense of Defense and Speed (agility).
- Stance Shift and Desperation respectively increase counter chances and grant ZOC at the expense of DEF.
- Downer Ending: In Path A, If someone other than Altrius kills the real Serdic in Stage 30, "The Crown Prince", the former will mysteriously fall asleep after defeating Gauss. Since the Holy Blade is still cursed and Mephreyu is still alive and kicking at this point, it also implies that the Darkness is covering the planet and destroying the world.
- Draw Aggro: Increasing the Momentum Counter, be it by attacking, passing through units with support skills, using Active Skills or Items (especially MC-focused ones like Knight Codex/Knight Maxim and the Gum items) will cause a variant of this. All enemies will go after your highest-momentum characters within their range, which if used wisely, allows you to protect the weakest of your units as long as their MC is lower than that of the protecting allies.
- Energy Ball: The animation for Magna Volt, a high-tier Thunder spell, consists of a ball of electricity engulfing the targeted enemy before exploding on them, dealing heavy damage.
- Faceless Goons: Most of the enemies either wear face-concealing helmets or somehow get their eyes completely covered by their hair or hat.
- Fire, Ice, Lightning: Elemental magic is composed of these three elements, but they have no advantage over the other. Even for story purposes, the story is mostly about a Light vs. Darkness conflict.
- Foe-Tossing Charge: The Route Maneuver System mechanic allows units to move through opponents in their way and attack them head-on as long as they aren't mages or healers. However, opponent units can prevent this via counter-attacking or the ZOC (Zone Of Control) Skill, the latter of which will be activated regardless of where their opponent attacks from. Moreover, the damage and counter-attack chances vary according to where the enemy is facing, resulting in attacks from behind or the sides dealing more damage than from the front with lessened risk of a counter.
- Freeze Ray: The animation of Yumil Magna, the most powerful Ice-elemental spell, depicts it as a beam shooting from the sky that advances on an enemy, freezing everything on its path before the ice explodes, causing heavy damage.
- Friend-or-Idol Decision: To kill or not to kill Marie? On one hand, purified Holy Sword. On the other, y'know, murder.
- Guest Fighter: Izuna, Shino, and Cotton, as mentioned above.
- Guide Dang It!: Players found how to recruit Cotton either by reading a guide or by accident as in trying to do a Self-Imposed Challenge on the 8th mission.
- Healing Potion: There are specific Items that restore a determined amount of HP depending on tier: Raka's Juice (low), Pulpy Juice (medium), Akasha Juice (moderate), Alchemiracle (high), and Amrita (full HP recovery)
- Hellgate: The Dark-elemental spell Abyss Gate summons, well, a gate, in front of the targeted unit, which opens to extend a giant dark hand to yank them to the other side before closing, dishing heavy damage on them, and spitting them out before disappearing.
- Herd-Hitting Attack: Talan Raioh and Cotton's Thunder at max level are Thunder-elemental spells that damage three lines of enemies in a direction the caster is pointing at. Ice Spears and Oratoriorae, on the other hand, damages enemies in a single line.
- Holy Hand Grenade: Oratoriorae is the only offensive Light spell, often used by enemy healers. However, Marie can learn it at Level 45, while Aegil, Yumiluna, and Galahad can learn it via a class change.
- I Owe You My Life: If you release Alberich in the hidden stage, titled "Underground Prison" (which is accessible if you save Simon and Yumiluna from their execution in the previous stage, "Free Verona"), and have Serdic talk to him, he'll join your party out of gratitude and obligation after finding out Gauss' true intentions.
- It's Personal: While it seems like Owl's decision to join up at first looks like due to having no better choice, his true motive was because he really have something personal (which we don't know) with the Red Lions, especially Clotho.
- Jerkass: Elmer and Ernest have it by reputation.
- Killed Off for Real: Any recruitable character that dies in battle without being recruited by you first. And also, Marie if you choose the 'bad' path.
- Large Ham: most of the named characters (mooks don't have any voice).
- Leeroy Jenkins: In Stage 16, titled "Young Lions", Ernest eventually decides to spite Alberich and attack your troops despite the former being supposed to wait for the latter to prepare for a pincer attack strategy.
- Level Grinding: Can be done easily, since restarting a battle keeps your characters' levels as long as you don't get a Game Over.And you can even save, take different characters and grind them as well.
- Level-Up Fill-Up: Equipping units with the skill Eternal Rage will allow them to restore some HP and MP after leveling up.
- Limit Break: The game has this in the form of the OverBreak, which is a unique move with special powers that can change the course of battle, be it by inflicting heavy damage to multiple foes, damaging a single foe via special means, healing/boosting all allies, etc. Furthermore, while it can be filled up by attacking/killing enemies or dodging enemy attacks, a special set of Items (Fighter, Hero, and Champion Gems) or the active skill Arc Charge can do the same in a pinch.
- Lohengrin and Mendelssohn: The credits theme for Path B's Good Ending is based around the Lohengrin wedding march as a symbol of the marriage between Prince Serdic and Pope Aegil.
- Love Makes You Evil: After Mephreyu lost his best friend along with a good deal of his own kind during the genocide against Dark Magic users led by the Corrupt Church, he worked with the Grand Meir to attack Bretwalde, killed Prince Serdic, revived him as a slave, and tried to initiate The End of the World as We Know It.
- Mana Potion: The game has specific Items that replenish a determined amount of MP depending on tier: Moon Weed (low), Moon Dew (medium), Peach Nectar (moderate), Hamao Water (high), and Soma Droplet (full MP recovery).
- Mana Burn: Equipping and setting the skill Mana Break will allow the user to deplete an enemy's MP gauge in addition to physical damage. This ability becomes useful later on, especially against Mephreyu.
- Mana Shield: The Wyrm Medal protects from all damage by causing incoming attacks to deplete the MP gauge instead. It is used by Mephreyu but it will become yours once you slay him. There is also a skill named Mana Shield, but it reduces damage from all spells for one turn.
- Meteor-Summoning Attack: Meteor Gate is a Fire-elemental spell that summons a meteorite that deals heavy damage on a single enemy.
- My Master, Right or Wrong: Alberich questioned Gauss' intentions which made him try to release Yumiluna and Simon, only to get interrupted and put behind bars by Ernest. Also, Matthias, though he asked Alberich about his view and to make his decision, he chose to make a last stand anyway.
- Named Weapons: Everything. Even the Elite Mooks get them.
- New Game Plus: After completing the game on either ending of either path, you will start a new game from Chapter 1 upon selecting the finished game's save file. But this time around, all equipment, money, Items, and Skills your men have learned throughout the old game will be carried over to the new game. Moreover, Serdic, Margus and Kay will have all the Skills you set them with from the last mission, and they, along with the allies you have recruited will start with 99 Skill Points.
- Ninja: Shino and Izuna are both ninjas from another Atlus-published Success game, Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja. Moreover, while both can use three talismans that act exactly like the game's spells note , the former can throw her kunai after moving like the archers in your party and her OB only works if the latter is in the same party as her.
- No Man of Woman Born: Only the royal blood of Altrius's line can purify the cursed Holy Sword... But the resurrected Prince Serdic counts.
- One-Hit Polykill: While not lethal, some spells and certain characters' OverBreaks act like this by damaging lines of enemies in one hit. Examples are Ice Spear, Yumil Magna, Oratoriorae, and Cotton's "Thunder" at level 1-4 for spells, and Serdic, Ansom, and Alberich's OBs.
- Palette Swap: The Dark-elemental spell Pandemonium, available to Mephreyu, is basically Megido Nova but the blast is colored black and the subsequent flames are purple.
- The Paralyzer: Units struck with the Stuck status effect cannot move, which renders them vulnerable for a coordinated enemy attack. The passive skill Evil Eye allows units to inflict it by attacking.
- Person of Mass Destruction: Any of the mages, but Arios in particular: after his final class change into "Rune Master", he learns a spell called "Megido Nova", the strongest Fire spell in the game. It is basically a nuke with him as ground zero. Moreover, he also learns the skill Ars Magna, which increases the damage output of all elements while reducing their MP cost added to his Flame Shard and Arcane Fire skills.
- Cotton and Faerie Fire count too, as well as Mephreyu and his spell Pandemonium, a Dark-elemental version of Megido Nova.
- Psycho for Hire: The Red Lions are bloodthirsty maniacs. How Clotho keep them in line is anybody's guess.
- Random Effect Spell: The Dark-elemental spell Soul Rend can inflict random status ailments on a single target.
- Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Although it skips on the "rape" and "burn" parts, Stage 8, titled "Harbor and Pirates" centers on pirates invading Zandi, a harbor town in Shalem. Your mission there is to fend off the pirates as the villagers escape to safety. If you finish the mission with no casualties among the villagers, a hidden stage titled "Pirate Island" will be unlocked and your party will venture to Darkness Island, where the pirates' base is located. Moreover, this secret stage is the only one where you can find and recruit Cotton.
- Reduced Mana Cost: The Arcane series of skills reduces the MP cost of spells belonging to the specific Skill's element.
- Regenerating Health: The skill Vital Power allows the user to replenish HP each turn. Serdic/Altrius gains this ability without needing the skill after you take Path B by killing Marie in Stage 19, "The Fated Hour". Otherwise, he'll still gain it by taking Path A and killing the real Serdic instead.
- Regenerating Mana: The skill Torus Spell allows the user to replenish MP each turn. However, Marie has this ability by default without needing the skill.
- Save Scumming: you will need it, at least to level grind.
- Scary Shiny Glasses: Arios, one of his Idle Animation.
- Also Galahad, for other reasons...
- Sheathe Your Sword:
- One of the two solutions for Stage 20, leading into Path A.
- An alternative ending for Path B has Serdic walk away from Bretwalde when Grand Meir is crushed. Bretwalde is at peace and Igraine survives, but Aegil spends the rest of her life waiting for Serdic to return.
- Single-Stroke Battle: The animation for the Dark-elemental spell, Hell Warrior, shows the eponymous entity rising from a pool of darkness and sprinting past the targeted unit, which afterward receives a flurry of slashes until the warrior rests its sword and sinks back into the abyss.
- Sprint Shoes: Equipping and setting the passive skill Sprint on a unit increases their MOV, which means a higher movement range. Other items, like Alberich's Black Ring, can also increase movement range by 1 space.
- Timed Mission: Stage 18, titled "Free Verona". You won't get a Game Over if you pass the 'Time Limit', but you will lose Yumiluna and Simon if you don't rescue them in time, and lose the chance of recruiting another 2 characters (Izuna and Alberich).
- Unholy Holy Sword
- Useless Useful Stealth: Dropping a unit's Momentum Counter to zero or near zero via an Odd/Dark Fruit or the skill Hide will inflict the Green status ailment on the unit, which allows them to be undetected by enemies but any damage they cause will be reduced by half.
- Wave-Motion Gun: Serdic's first OB, Brave Ray, consists of him charging his sword with light before shooting a devastating beam at enemies in a queue within his range. Also, Ansom's OB, Cotton's first spell, and Alberich's OB.
- We Cannot Go On Without You: In all levels save for "A Kidnapping," you will get a Game Over if Serdic dies in combat, regardless of surviving party members. This is justified in that he's the one carrying the Holy Blade and has to find a way to lift the curse, but the conditions will stay the same even after killing Marie or the real Serdic, since the Holy Blade is the only thing that can stop Grand Meir's and the Darkness' advances for good.
- What the Hell, Hero?: If you choose B path, your army members will say so immediately. If you choose A, they will after finding out the main hero is not the real Serdic.
- Wizarding School: Almeria has one named "the Ark", which is also the desert-set city's ruling institution.
- Younger Than They Look: In a shared conversation, Owl finds out that Ansom is 23 years of age, making him older than him. Ansom is equally surprised to learn the Gentleman Thief is only 21.
