YMMV / Rondo of Swords

• Game-Breaker:
  • Izuna can kill the bosses in one hit if you position her correctly. She has loads of HP, can learn the skill Persistence that allows her to survive killing blows with 1 HP, and her attack is extremely high from the start that she kills most unarmored enemies in one hit, and leaving armored enemies on their last legs.
  • Cotton has loads of MP, devastating long-ranged spells even without 'Shard skills, the only mage capable of not dying in one hit to anything, a high movement range, high resistance to magic that she could take lots of fireballs in the face that otherwise kill anyone else in one hit and an OB gauge that fills up quickly and refills both her HP and her MP. Rondo of Swords sure love their crossovers.
  • The ZOC skill, once Margus (and potentially Serdic on either Path) learns it. Blocks enemy movement in a game where movement is key to victory, and usually ends with the enemy soldiers all bunched up in an area just begging for an AoE spell.
  • A non-crossover example is Ansom. One of the only ranged fighters you get in the game the others being guest fighter Shino and Route B exclusive Naji, fairly sturdy, can be recruited early, strong enough to OHKO other archers and mages, a strong Overbreak, and ridiculous range. Best part is that he along with Shino and Naji can move AND snipe, unlike your enemy archers. This makes it key to shooting select spellcasters with the equally long-ranged Abyss Gate spell.
• Nintendo Hard: You know how in most games, tutorial missions are supposed to be designed to be ridiculously easy while explaining the game's mechanics? Well, Rondo of Swords isn't like that. You may fail the tutorial stages multiple times if you are a beginner to tactics games. Other times it is because you need to get certain characters to talk to an enemy to recruit them Fire Emblem style, at times you need to do this with Squishy Wizard characters that are slow and most enemies can kill them in 1 hit.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Many, most notably, on the first stage...A challenge completed by killing several stages worth of enemies, including nearly every boss in the game (!), instead of merely running. It requires that Serdic kills enough knights to use his Overbreak.
• That One Boss:
  • Despite being a wizard, Mephreyu is a tough boss to defeat as he's at Level 50 with powerful spells such as Seven Menace and Pandemonium. For starters, he is equipped with the Satan and Wyrm Medals; the former greatly regenerates his MP each turn and the latter protects him from all damage by having all attacks target his MP instead. It doesn't help that his skill set includes Ars Magna and Arc Charge; the former increases all spells' damage while reducing their MP cost, and the latter fills up his OB gauge, both of which make him extremely dangerous not only because he can kill your men in one hit with his spells without worrying about his MP, but his OB can replenish all his lost MP.
  • The real, undead Serdic is one too. Not only does he have a higher movement range than Serdic, but his skillset includes Arc Charge to refill his OB gauge, which makes him dangerous as his OverBreak hits rows of enemies in four directions.
  • Ernest excels in this regard not only for having powerful late-game Thunder spells like Talan Raioh and Magna Volt, which become even more dangerous with the Thunder Shard skill. Moreover, his OB, Twisted Fury, unleashes a thunderstorm to damage all units in the entire battlefield, which on paper sounds like a self-defeating idea since most of his men are mages, in practice would be a life-or-death situation if your men are under-leveled or otherwise incapacitated.

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