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.