The kingdom of Altenia was a peaceful place until monsters began to roam the land, terrorizing its inhabitants and striking fer into the hearts of bravest warriors. Only one of them stood up to the challenge: entrusted by the king with an important mission, the lone knight must find the reclusive mage Gladrif and figure out a way to get to the source of evil.

Kalin no Tsurugi is an action role-playing game. The player navigates the protagonist on a top-down overworld, entering towns and other locations represented by icons. Monsters are visibly moving on the field; a contact with an enemy leads to a separate battle screen, on which the player character and the enemy fight each other. There is no attack button in the game; damage is inflicted by bumping into the enemy, preferably from the side or rear. Weapons, armor and items can be bought in towns and villages. Since the game is a Disk System game, progress can be saved to disk, and loaded back again.

However, the game boasted a Quick-Save feature, which allowed players to save the state of their game into system RAM for much fast recall by the game. Quick-Saves were only good for the lifetime of the system's power, so although writing to disk is slower, it is the only true way to save the game between plays.