Convergence: A League of Legends Story (Nintendo Switch) – The test

A little over a month ago, we were already talking about League of Legends on our site, with the release of The Mageseeker around the hero Sylas. Today we are talking about League of Legends again, but with the hero Ekko, this little guy you quickly discovered in the Arcane series, you know the one who knows how to play with time. So prepare your best clepsydra, let’s go for Convergence: A League of Legends Story.

Welcome to Zaun

If you’ve seen the Arcane series, you already know Zaun. This area is ultimately just the slums of Piltover, an immensely wealthier city. Zaun is therefore a city under the city, a place where the poorest must survive rather than live. The game begins on the fall of an arrow, we do not know why there is this collapse and explosion, but we must flee to survive. Shortly after, we learn of the existence of Syntixi, an unstable derivative of Hextech, created by the Poingdestre family. Hextech is a crystal that produces energy used in Piltover, the latter is particularly expensive and rare in Zaun. The Hextech monopoly is held by Clan Ferros in Piltover.

We learn all this from the mouth of Ekko… from the future! You will then listen to him and follow his advice to try to prevent the use of Syntixi in Zaun. We will meet during our history characters known from the League of Legends universe like Warwick or the famous Jinx. But the rest, we leave it to you to discover.

The story is pretty basic overall, two families from Piltover who end up stepping on each other and it ends up falling on the people of Zaun. But Ekko isn’t going to let it all happen that easily.

A not very rewarding metroidvania

Convergence is a metroidvania, the purest in the text. From the first minutes we feel that we are missing a second jump to reach an area, or else we say to ourselves “why these walls have bright yellow graffiti” or even “this rope is far too visible in this setting”. It is obviously that you are missing abilities that you will unlock as you progress. You will then be able to go back and revisit areas to generally only get bonuses. Because yes, we don’t really have this feeling that a new power unlocks a whole part of the map for us, in general when a power unlocks an exit for us, it’s precisely to continue the story, all well indicated on Your card.

In title we speak of not very rewarding, the game is quite complete, our Ekko can equip himself with artifacts that he makes himself to improve abilities. But we feel from the start that this possibility has been added haphazardly. Quite quickly we defeat our first “big” enemy, we unlock an additional slot to equip an artifact… and during the explanation we are clearly told “well then uh, well, you’ll see later when you can have artifacts” so before you even have one, you unlock an additional slot, it’s still stupid…

To craft these artifacts, you need components that are available precisely in all these new small areas available after unlocking a new ability. Otherwise you will also find new colors for your character or your water clock trail, but also items to collect. In short, a lot of content in the end, but we never have the impression of really discovering new areas.

On the other hand, it is very pleasant to move in the game, the more abilities you will unlock, the more possibilities of movement there will be. If initially Ekko will move rather quickly, he will only be able to jump, then later you will be able to freeze time and thus prevent platforms from disappearing at the slightest movement you make on them, but also to be able to double jump and I let you discover the rest. And the more you will have, the more you will have to chain them, which makes the whole thing super pleasant and pleasant. It should be noted however that the main power is just excellent, it is of course the possibility of going back a few seconds, just to survive a lot of stupid deaths, whether from an enemy blow or a missed jump .

Too bad, slowdowns

This is clearly what is the most infuriating in Convergence, on Switch at least, the game suffers from slowdowns. For a game based on speed and very fluid and fast sequences, it’s really a shame. And the worst is that the biggest slowdowns are felt when there is nothing on the screen, just we move without even jumping. Damage.

Outside the game is quite nice. The Mageseeker offered us quality pixel art, here we are more in a very well done comics aspect. So we’ll get tired a bit quickly of biomes which ultimately aren’t very generous, but especially in terms of assets, there’s only one type of grid, one type of pipe, one type of firefly, in short, you’ll have understood it c is very sparse and redundant.

On the audio side we will appreciate the complete dubbing of the game in French as well as of course its translation. The sound effects and music are also very appropriate to the style of the game.

We will also appreciate all the game options available. There is not really only one possible difficulty, you will be able to add life points to last a little longer, or even add some possible backtracking in addition to those you have basic. You will also be able to choose the difficulty of the fights: the enemies will not be weaker, but fewer in number during the multiple waves. You can also reduce the aggressiveness of enemies or even facilitate movement tests (this point is a little more difficult to judge for once).

On the other hand, we must talk about the lifespan of the title, if you seek 100% you can reach 15 hours. By playing in a little curious ways like us, you go around in a little less than 10 hours. And with a ladle, if we only trace the story, we should easily be around 5 hours. It’s too short, when you really learn to master the gameplay and all the techniques, it’s already the end.

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