Tower of Fantasy Review: Sacrifice Your Life To Your New Sci-Fi Gacha Waifu Overlords
It’s just as well I’m currently on holiday, broke, and at home with ample time to kill. Sure, I’ve got a house, and a garden, and children, so there’s plenty of useful things I could be doing, but that all fades into the shadow of pink-haired robot anime girls. Just over a week ago, a new MMORPG/gacha/malignant life-eating-force unleashed itself upon my unsuspecting body and mind — Chinese developer Hotta Studio’s (apparently) widely anticipated Tower of Fantasy.
Originally released to the Chinese videogaming market at the tail end of 2021, the game has now been localised for multiple international markets — it’s even been fully dubbed in English. Available on PC, iOS and Android, it’s fully cross-play-capable, and from launch day I’ve been surgically attached to the PC version, via my poor, suffering, overheated laptop. I’ve tried it on my iPad Air, but I hate the touchscreen controls so I guess my laptop must continue to melt.
The game requests a core i5 CPU, an NVIDIA GTX 1030 and 8gb RAM at minimum, but really wants a core i7 CPU, a GTX 1060 and 16gb RAM, plus 40gb HDD space. Quite how they managed to squeeze the mobile version down to 3.8gb I’ve no idea, the game on iOS looks more or less identical to its PC counterpart. My setup is an ageing core i5 ASUS Razer laptop with a mobile version of the GTX 1060 and only 8gb RAM, but a decent 500gb SSD and a standard 1080p display. On the whole, the game plays fairly smoothly but at times of heavy load I note that it stutters a bit, and my poor graphics core has been reaching temperatures of 91 degrees celsius. I’m pretty sure that’s not healthy, and soon I’ll be looking for a new gaming laptop.
I’d never heard of Tower of Fantasy until the day of its release. Both my daughter and son are avid Genshin Impact slaves, and told me that their social media had been overwhelmed by ads for this new game. I’ve never played Genshin — when it initially appeared I felt it looked too much like a cut-price gacha-saddled Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild clone for my liking. (This view may be outdated, prejudiced and unfair, don’t @ me.) I’m also not sure that I really need another gacha-based game in my life, considering I’ve been playing Fate/Grand Order for almost five years, plus Princess Connect Re:Dive for the past 18 months or so. One really should find time for work, or sleep, or socialising, or something.
Anyway, Tower of Fantasy looks like Genshin, but with a sci-fi setting. As much as I love the fantasy genre, sometimes I like something a bit more meaty and technologically-based. If it contains pretty anime girls carving up bad guys with their enormous glowing swords, all the better. My friends, Tower of Fantasy provides this in droves. Also, I dislike starting these kind of games years after initial release. I find the constant grind to play catch-up stressful and not remotely fun, hence the reason I’d rather not join my kids on Genshin. Last year I signed up for Final Fantasy XIV to play online with friends, and although it was fun, because they were all on different time zones, scheduling co-op sessions was nigh-on impossible. Additionally, the sheer number of things I had to do to catch up felt like an additional full-time job, or six, so I’ve stepped back from that for a while.
Tower of Fantasy, as a free-to-play open world RPG, looks to be a less onerous way to scratch my free-form RPG roaming itch. I was never that big into open world games until 2017 happened, and I played the incredible quadruple whammy of No Man’s Sky, Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, Horizon Zero Dawn and NieR Automata. Something in my brain broke, and now simple little platformers and puzzle games just don’t do it for me any more. I want huge breathtaking vistas, towering peaks, pretty sunsets, endless waves of eminently slaughterable enemies and hundreds of shiny things to collect. Tower of Fantasy so far has provided that, plus a lot of fun.
I’m not one of those ultra-technical gamers, so I’m not going to be able to dissect the combat mechanics in stultifyingly boring detail, as I’m sure you’re relieved to hear. What I will say is that the combat looks and feels great, especially when using higher rarity weapons that spew forth overpowered pyrotechnics as you pummel waves of tanky enemies. It does mean clicking the mouse so relentlessly that it risks causing carpal tunnel syndrome, but that’s an issue common to this genre of game.
Unlike many other gacha games, you’re not summoning other characters in Tower of Fantasy, but their weapons. You are always playing as your starting character, who is plot-conveniently amnesiac, but you can apply a “simulacra” of any character whose weapon you have summoned to change your in-game appearance. At the beginning of the game you’re given a chance to personalise your character’s base appearance, and already online I’ve seen lots of fairly accurate recreations of famous anime characters using just the basic options. I don’t really care about this part of the game, set my character as female, gave her long pink pigtails, and was essentially done with it.
Moving around the world is very smooth and responsive, with the usual dash and double-jump mechanics that mean navigating even awkward terrain is generally a breeze, as long as you use keyboard and mouse. Touchscreen controls are a disaster, but that’s not limited to this game alone. I’ve not tried a gamepad on PC, it’s apparently a bit hit-and-miss. Story progression provides the use of a couple of really fun “relics” — technology that you can equip two at at time. There’s a hoverboard thing for quickly traversing water and there’s my personal favourite — a jetpack that rockets you straight up into the air, then allows you to gently glide across chasms — until your stamina runs out, that is. The jetpack does have an irritating cooldown mechanism that means you might have to stand around waiting for it to refresh, however.
Much like other gachas, weapons are classed as “R” for “rare” = common as muck, SR for “super rare” = expect to pull these often, and SSR for “super super rare” = sell your kidneys for these. Rare weapons are basically pointless items to bulk up the gacha, they’re converted immediately to consumables once you receive duplicates. SR weapons are decently strong, especially if you manage to pull multiple copies. Each weapon has a “star rating”, so each additional copy you pull from the gacha adds an extra star, up to a maximum of six stars for your seventh copy. Already, within a week, I have two SR weapons that are maxed out at 6-stars and their attack power outclasses any zero or one-star SSR weapon. However, basic attack stats are not the only thing that sets weapons apart.
SSR weapons are just so much cooler. Their associated characters look fantastic, their fighting animations are incredibly flashy, with endless combos, explosions and overpowered madness that transcends mere stats. Adding extra stars provides extra passive skills that makes each weapon successively more broken as you progress, of course adding extra incentive to start spending real money on the gacha.
Now, I’m mostly free-to-play when it comes to gacha games. (Especially as that lovely tax man emptied my bank account at the end of July, as he tends to do.) I don’t intend to spend a penny on Tower of Fantasy yet, as I’m still not sure if I’ll stick with it, and I’m unsure of what tangible benefit that will give to me yet. I pay for Fate/Grand Order’s guaranteed SSR gacha twice yearly, and I do also indulge in Princess Connect’s monthly pass, that’s about as much as I’m willing to spend on gacha. So far my Tower of Fantasy luck has been kind of broken — I’ve aquired all four of the top-tier non-limited starting SSR units — edgy black-clad King’s fire-element Scythe of the Crow, bonker’s upside-down-spinning Samir’s electricity-element Dual EM Stars guns, cool elegant ice princess Meryl’s ice-element sword Rosy edge and archer Tsubasa’s ice-element Icewind Arrow. Oh, and I also pulled the limited unit Nemesis and her electric-element Venus blasters. It’s ok, you can hate me. I don’t mind.
At least at the beginning, Tower of Fantasy’s gacha system feels fairly generous. There are five different gachas to pull, all with their own currency, and it’s honestly pretty overwhelming. In fact a lot of the game is overwhelming and underexplained — we’ll get to that later. Of the three weapon gachas, the most commonly available resource is the “black nucleus” which you’ll find littered liberally around the world map, sometimes floating in plain view, sometimes hidden in rocks, in flowers, or as prizes for simple puzzles. Typically you need to use a specific weapon or item to prise them from their hiding places.
Just wandering aimlessly around the world for a few minutes can provide you with enough black nuclei for a 10-pull. It helps that the mini-map in the upper left of your screen flags up nearby nuclei. This part of the game reminds me a lot of wandering around planets in No Man’s Sky looking for resources. I find it kind of relaxing. The black nucleus gacha mostly gives consumable items, “R” weapons, and the occasional “SR” weapons. It’s where I had most of my absurd luck in starring up my SR weapons. There is no “pity” mechanic for this gacha, which is fine, as it’s so easy to farm.
The next-tier weapon gacha requires “yellow nucleus” currency, which is an order of magnitude rarer than black, yet can still be found dotted around the world in chests, and sometimes in places one might normally expect a black nucleus. They’re also given as progression rewards for levelling up, meeting other random criteria, or completing story chapters. Over the past week of fairly heavy playing, I’ve collected at least 100 of these, more than enough to reach a “pity” of 80 pulls, and therefore a guaranteed non-limited “SSR” weapon. What the game doesn’t tell you is that there’s a secret SSR pity mechanic for the first time you get to 30 pulls. This is in addition to the SSR weapon box you get for completing a limited-time starter mission. It took me a few days of play to achieve this. It lets you pick the SSR weapon of your choice.
The final, highest tier weapon gacha requires “red nucleus”, and these are never found in the world, and are not associated with mission rewards. These must be purchased with Dark Crystals, these can be obtained from item chests, mission rewards, story progression, and with real money. This gacha also gives a “pity” SSR on the 80th pull, with a 50% chance of it being the limited unit, Nemesis. Nemesis is very cool, and she’s an integral part of the ongoing story. (You don’t miss out on the story by not having her.) So far I’ve managed to collect enough Dark Crystals to reach 60 pulls, and I got Nemesis around my 40th or 50th.
The final two gacha are for computer chips/matrices that you can affix to your weapons to add extra stats, one is limited and associated with Nemesis, the other is not. As a free-to-play player, it seems to be much harder to aquire the currency for these, and I haven’t quite worked out exactly how to do so without spending real money. The chips work similarly to Craft Essences in Fate/Grand Order. Each weapon has four slots available, and different chips can be attached and removed as you like, though each needs to be levelled up to be of any use.
Just acquiring weapons isn’t enough, of course. This is a gacha game. They must be relentlessly levelled up using gold coins and a huge variety of consumable items, some easier to get than others. This will likely be the rate-limiting step for free-to-play players. It’s possible to sign up for a variety of passes that grant daily gifts of these items, so of course the game makes them scarce — to encourage the player to part with cash. I’ve currently reached the player level cap of 40, while the weapons are capped at 80. I’ve only enough resources to max level one weapon, and its attached chips are nowhere near maxed either. So far this has caused no problems with my ability to smash bad guys — gacha games are a marathon rather than a sprint, after all. It does also mean that some of my SSR weapons and most of my SR weapons remain untouched and unused because I lack the resources to do anything with them.
That’s enough about the gacha for now, although it’s an important part of the game, there’s so much else to talk about. There’s the main story, for one. It’s… fine, I guess. Amnesiac main character, taken in by friendly folks under attack from techno-zombie monsters, you fight the monsters, are immediately asked to do about a million tasks by people who barely know you, gradually the world opens up and a bigger plot begins to take shape. You can choose to ignore the main quest I suppose, but much of the game’s content appears to be gated behind story progression, so I don’t recommend it, at least at the beginning. A few chapters in, the story becomes more interesting, though I have to say the “science fiction” is very very soft, it’s really just fantasy with a superficial technological sheen. There are a few potentially intriguing temporal shenanigans that may pay off in big ways later though.
Most of the story characters are fairly basic, tropey creations — a grumpy scientist, a snivelling criminal, a weird mining boss who constantly strokes a cat, plus there’s a pint-sized robot sidekick with a speech impediment who thankfully is present only during cutscenes and doesn’t follow you around. Tower of Fantasy isn’t about to win any awards for writing, but the world it evokes is nonetheless rich and interesting to traverse. The graphics are simple but colourful, it really is like a sci-fi Zelda, right down to the shrine-like Ruins that contain environmental puzzles, treasure chests and (sometimes nightmarishly) challenging bosses.
The sheer number of things to do is frankly overwhelming, and I haven’t even tried every mode yet. Minigames and distractions abound, there’s a constant desire to see what’s just over that ridge… What’s that shiny thing over there? Ooh, look there’s a chest down that way! There’s another stargate thing — if I go into it, I can fight bad guys in an arena for rewards. What’s that dinosaur-like thing guarding? A locked treasure chest! If I kill it, then it’ll release the goodies inside… Yeah, it’s not unusual to set off on a specific task and then realise three hours later you’ve not accomplished that task because you’ve spent your time climbing cliffsides to hack apart enormous dandelions that grant precious nuclei.
The game’s menus are opaque, complex and confusing. I’m sure the UI could be heavily streamlined. It’s hard to tell which characters you have, which weapons, what items you have for what, there’s a constant barrage of little red dot notifications, and there seems to be about six different ways to do one thing. Someone really needs to sit down with the developers and say “this is ridiculous, get a grip, you shouldn’t need a PhD in astronavigation to work your menu system.” Sometimes little red notifications appear and you follow them to find some random new mode has been unlocked. Click on it, and it might take you straight there, no matter what you were doing, other times it will just place a marker somewhere on your map… probably miles away. At least there’s a standard fast-travel system that’s a godsend in this type of game. Many of these modes and activities are poorly explained, some of them are co-op only, and that’s something I’m only just barely managing to try now.
There are many many servers, split geographically between Asia, Europe, North America and elsewhere. I randomly picked whichever European server wasn’t too busy — Omnium Prime — and found it filled with all manner of folks speaking all manner of languages. I joined the first random crew I was invited to, but so far haven’t managed to co-ordinate any co-op activities with them yet, which is a shame as many of the rarer treasure chests with essential items need up to 4 players to simultaneously unlock them. It also doesn’t help that each server runs multiple “channels”, presumably as a way to manage load, so your currently online crewmates may not even be in the same instance of the world. It’s relatively easy to change your channel, but this isn’t something the game readily explains to you. My first attempt at co-op was so frustrating as we were standing in the same spot but couldn’t see one another. And then the Amazon EU servers crashed for several hours.
Anyway, it might be best to join a crew with a discord server or something, so that activities can be properly co-ordinated. That sounds too much like a job, though. Not every co-op event needs such management — there are “world bosses” that appear frequently at specific places on the map, that require multiple players to kill them. The “world chat” option lets anyone in the server communicate with others, often to share which channel the boss has appeared on, so that you can join them. I like this. This is fun.
One of the biggest complaints about Tower of Fantasy amongst players is the time-gating of multiple things. The main story is being drip-fed apparently (I’m not even remotely caught up so it doesn’t bother me), and the level cap is only increasing two or three levels per day. I’m currently at max level cap for the first time, and it does discourage me from playing until tomorrow. (Hence the reason I’m writing this now.) What’s even more bizarre is that some of the treasure chests you find on the world map are also time-gated, meaning you have to return a few hours, or even days later to open them. That’s just obnoxious.
Sometimes it feels that us early players are acting like beta testers — the game is pretty buggy at times. Some of the movement mechanics are really wonky, like ladders not letting you climb to the top, etc. Sometimes the sky or textures glitch (though that may be my suffering graphics card). Occasionally, cutscenes seem to skip important info (why do I suddenly have to defuse bombs? Where did they come from? ), or the dubbed voices don’t match the text, or the dub audio seems to become completely unstuck from the story, leaving characters soundlessly flapping their lips. Most of these bugs are just humorous, but on a couple of occasions the game has just outright crashed, or has stuck during a cutscene that refuses to progress. I suppose these things will all get ironed out eventually.
For the moment, I’m having a lot of fun with Tower of Fantasy, I feel I’ve only barely begun to scratch the surface of what is an absolutely massive game. I’ve already got more enjoyment out of it than many full-price games in my collection. Whether I can remain invested when I return to my full-time job next week remains to be seen, however… Damn, the real world sucks sometimes.
