Review: Convergence: A League of Legends Story (Nintendo Switch)
I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the biggest League of Legends fan. I’ve made many attempts over the years to get into the franchise, but just couldn’t. To my surprise, I watched, and quickly loved, the League of Legends anime in 2021. Suddenly, I was interested in the series, just not that one particular game. Fortunately, the League of Legends franchise has branched out into new games over the last 2 years. Convergence: A League of Legends Story is one of the newest games, and I was honestly surprised how much I liked it. If you’re a fan of Metroidvania style games, you may want to put Convergence on your radar.
In Convergence: A League of Legends, you play as the young, genius inventor, Ekko. Ekko is from Zaun, a rough city full of warring gangs and drug lords. Ekko manages to make Zaun into his own playground with various gadgets and abilities to manipulate time. Things take a strange turn when he’s suddenly confronted by a much older version of himself. Future Ekko tells of some dark events that happened in his timeline that resulted in great tragedy, prompting him to try running to the past to stop the calamity before it happens.
Convergence is a Metroidvania game, which for those unfamiliar means players will slowly unlock all of Ekko’s various abilities throughout the adventure. It’s about smart platforming, exploration, and very tough enemies. To help him defeat enemies, Ekko has a number of abilities that unlock throughout the game. His main ability, rewind, is easily the best ability in the game. Ekko can rewind time to correct a missed jump or avoid an incoming attack from an enemy. While rewind has no cooldown, the catch is that it can only be used for as many time circuits as Ekko has on hand. This makes resource management a thing players have to focus on. At times you will have more than a dozen charges to rewind time, but you will also have very low health. Ekko isn’t a tank; players will have to pay attention to enemies, as Ekko can’t just beat away at them until they fall. This aspect of the gameplay is super fun because it’s much more about timing attacks then the actual attacks themselves.
The visuals in Convergence are another standout for the game. Convergence goes with a hyper-stylized, comic book-like art style that feels super unique and eye-catching at all times. This is the case not only for the main character, Ekko, but also the entire city of Zaun. Zaun feels like a uniquely designed city full of life, from the small details like clothes hanging on a line to random NPCs just hanging out in doorways and alleys.
My main issue with Convergence is how it plays on Nintendo Switch. It plays OK, but does have quite a few performance problems that hold back this version of the game. It was pretty normal to get into a fight with various enemies and take damage not because I failed to properly attack or dodge, but because the game stuttered for a second or two and threw off my timing. It’s not a game breaking issue, as I was able to complete the game despite the issue. The problem is that it happened so frequently it was hard to ignore and even harder to prepare for. It made tough sections of the game even tougher, for better or worse.
My other issue with Convergence is that, while it’s definitely a Metroidvania style game, it lacks the backtracking appeal of those types of games. In typical Metroidvanias, part of the adventure involves unlocking new abilities and being able to go back to a previous area to reach something new or locked away. In Convergence, you never get to do this. You usually are able to complete absolutely everything in an area of the game on your initial run through. There’s nothing to go back and find. Thus, when you get newer abilities later in the game, there’s absolutely no point in going backwards because, well, you already found everything before. This is kind of a let down for me, although I’m sure there are some players who will appreciate it.
Convergence: A League of Legends story is a fun Metroidvania-style game fans of the genre should keep on their radar. Its smart platforming, tough enemies, and unique eye-catching visuals make for a really fun experience that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Its lack of backtracking will definitely divide fans of the genre, who either will love the simple “you see everything in your first go” or become upset that there isn’t a reason to go back. Convergence does also suffer from performance problems on Nintendo Switch, which, while not game breaking, will make your experience even harder. That said, Convergence: A League of Legends story is quite a fun time and a great way to get into the larger League of Legends universe.
