Tower of Fantasy: Game Review

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When it comes to Anime RPGs, the pandemic got many gamers hooked on the fantasy worlds. Tower of Fantasy is a brand new RPG developed by Hotta Studio, a small-time developer based in China.

Tower Of Fantasy is an open-world free-to-play MMO gacha game, the kind that implores you to spend in-game currency on loot boxes in the hope you’ll build a particularly powerful collection of anime people. Genshin Impact wrapped this business model up in a surprisingly excellent open-world RPG. 

Tower Of Fantasy builds on a similar gacha concept, except that it’s a mixture of MMO, real-time combat, and loot boxing. One of the game’s key differences from Genshin Impact is that Tower Of Fantasy is a “shared open world RPG”, which sees you select a server from a series of regions and create a character.

Over 4 million players pre-registered before the game’s release after a few gameplay clips went viral. The game itself is free, but it does try to encourage you to pay microtransactions so you can pull for resources, weapons, and characters in their gacha banners.

Story, Character and controls

Tower of Fantasy is set in Aida, a world where humans have been forced to relocate due to a lack of energy and resources on Earth. It instantly throws players into the fray of things, as soon as you wake up in the opening cutscene.

Tower of Fantasy’s storyline can be vague and will leave you hanging and wanting to know more. It does have its intense moments when you reach the 2nd and 3rd arcs of the game. It introduces players to the time-travelling plot and the various villainous twists, as well as the Omnium, a vital resource that you will need from time to time to access various game features.

The main character has their memory wiped away amidst the vague opening. The survivors of the Astra Shelter will recruit you. A group of friendly NPCs who will aid the player throughout their adventures in the game, along with your little AI companion, “Mi-a,” alongside you as your trusty sidekick. 

The main character has recorded voice lines, and we don’t necessarily have to suffer from “silent protagonist syndrome.” When it comes to the controls, they work well enough on PC, and the same can be said for mobile. The game has time-gated features. 

Usually, in a gacha game, time gates are normal, especially for limited-run events, as it encourages players to log in daily. However, the Tower of Fantasy has time-gate standard features such as supply pods, missions, and experience levels. 

GamePlay

The Tower of Fantasy allows the protagonist to transform into several heroes, which can be obtained through the gacha system. It supports a wide variety of weapons for you to try with various rarities and stats. All the characters have their own unique abilities, combos, and playstyles. Character creation is remarkably robust, with plentiful sliders and options to help create your perfect anime persona. You can even choose from upvoted player creations if you’d like to rock someone else’s look. 

A “Perfect Dodge” system has been implemented that manages to reward players for quick reflexes and situational awareness. There is a fair depth to the combat when it comes to the boss fights, as each one keeps you on your toes as they dish out merciless combos. They all have their own weaknesses and gimmicks, which you need to pinpoint and use to your advantage. 

Overall, the combat and overarching gameplay can keep you hooked. Each weapon has a different feel to it, along with its aerial combos and the like. According to the stats, each weapon can be categorised into Assault, Tank, or Support/Healing. 

These are not official types for this arsenal, but more so, the game hints at their viability and usage in their descriptions. Tower of Fantasy has the potential to be one of the best free-to-play games solely due to the fighting mechanics being full of action and fun.

The Tower of Fantasy provides challenges, especially if you’re trying to explore the whole map and collect as many things as you can. Additional features are unlocked as you progress through the story, rewarding you for sticking around and growing your character. While enemies also scale up as per your current power level, you’ll run into a few boss fights that will require some out-of-the-box thinking and, in some cases, teamwork.

Multiplayer Feature

Multiplayer is quite interesting, but a bit buggy. First of all, there is no server hopping, meaning if you made good progress on one server but your friend is playing on another, you’re going to have to start over from the very beginning just so you can play together. 

It’s not the most straightforward and robust multiplayer offering, but it’s certainly functional. However, it is unfortunate that you can’t team up with friends to tackle the story mode together — you’re on your own in that one.

Open World Progression

The map of ToF is massive, spanning a few regions, each of which has its own set of distractions and activities that players will likely stumble into throughout the game. In terms of exploration incentives for Open World RPGs, Tower of Fantasy does not hold anything back in that regard.

The lush landscapes across all parts of the world have their own selection of puzzles and activities to keep you engaged in the grind. There are a wide variety of enemies, from cultists to mutated creatures, robotic androids, and even cybernetic Samurai, whom you will constantly encounter and fight out in the world. It is also worth noting that the game provides you with awesome traversal options, such as a motorbike and a jetpack.

The game is slightly built on the aspect of a shared world, akin to an MMORPG, where you will compete with other players for resources. Aside from the Gacha system, you will play around with RNG, and upgrade your arsenal, getting the best weapons and armour in the game. It is one of the aspects that can be improved upon in future patches or major fixes to the game in order to allow more creative freedom of choice.

When it comes to the gacha system, it feels a bit predatory. You will have to pull not only characters but also weapons and chips that enhance your weapons. Characters and weapons are ranked, ranging from ‘R’ (common pulls) to ‘SSR’ — the rarest pulls of them all. You could choose to constantly keep grinding and gathering resources. However, if you want to dole out big damage or get the best character and weapons, you will probably have to spend a bit of cash to get the best rolls.

Visuals And Performance

The art style and visuals in Tower Of Fantasy are certainly a treat. Players who enjoyed the vibrant visuals in other open-world games like The Witcher 3 or Elden Ring will enjoy roaming the world to their heart’s content. You will discover a fascinating list of lore markers and interactions as you unearth the secrets and treasures buried on this mystical planet. From ancient technological ruins to massive architectural towers and even settlements spanning other regions, all these visuals are profound.

The game runs smoothly at 60FPS on most high-end smartphones, but the only aspect that might be worth looking at is your overall RAM. PC users should not worry too much about performance issues either. If you have about 4GB of VRAM as well as a decent CPU and about 8 gigabytes of RAM, then it should run efficiently on your system.

Tower of Fantasy may look like a ‘low-tier’ Genshin Impact to some, but it has enough content to stand on its own. There’s plenty of incentive to progress through the game’s content and unlock new features, doubly so if you can find a friend to play alongside. While the time-gated content in the overworld is a massive problem, there’s a smattering of other activities, so you won’t be bored while you wait. It might not reach the heights of Genshin Impact, but Tower of Fantasy is still a fun experience worth checking out.

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