A few weeks after its release, the new title of the Chinese studio Hotta Studio, Tower of Fantasy, has a lot to tell. Already christened “the other Genshin Impact”, it offers an open world with numerous biomes to explore, an anime-style visual part with impressive animations, and a fight in which we can choose from a variety of weapons to use . It allows you to switch roles depending on which playstyle suits you best. Despite the fact that it’s only just been released and there are still many things to improve, this title seems to bring us many hours of entertainment.
The story takes place in Aida, a futuristic world where people migrate due to lack of resources on earth. Our character wakes up with no memory and in the first hours of the game we will follow Shirli and Zeke to carry out specific missions to help them improve and protect their refuge. These first missions serve as a tutorial, and while they help to better understand the combat system and some important concepts, the area is very small at first and the tutorial is a little long. One of the reasons for this is undoubtedly the dialogues with the NPCs. During the story quest thread, every time we talk to a character we are shown an RPG-like interaction with the NPC. However, there are too many interactions and some of them are very slow. Also, many of the conversations can’t be skipped from the start, which can get a little tiring for those uninterested in the narration.
One of the most important aspects of any MMORPG worth its salt is the combat system. After all, we spend most of our time fighting, whether against enemies that we encounter around the world or to challenge bigger bosses with the help of other players. In this sense, it can be said that the battles in Tower of Fantasy are dynamic, explosive and visually impressive. It’s true that the camera sometimes goes a little crazy (don’t worry, it doesn’t reach the level of Kingdom Hearts), but the effects and combos that we can achieve thanks to the combination of up to three different weapons open up a multitude of Possibilities. As for the roles that we can choose, there are the three typical of any game of this style: tank, DPS (damage) and healer. Depending on the weapons we choose, we can opt for one role or another, with the possibility of changing it at any time.
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And it is that the combination of weapons is one of the most outstanding features of this game. While in other MMORPGs (New World for example) we can switch between two weapons in the middle of a fight, in Tower of Fantasy we have the possibility to choose between up to a maximum of three. From one-handed swords to bows, guns, shields, and even spears or staves, each of them has a primary ability and an ultimate ability that charges when you perform a basic attack. In addition, depending on whether we jump or dodge, the sequence of the basic attacks of each of them varies, which allows a multitude of possible combinations and the movement control of our character is of great importance. In short: lots of movement, jumps and combos that make combat dynamic and fun. In addition, we can improve weapons through materials that we can farm along the way or buy from the game store.
The world is an open world with many different landscapes. From the greenest places to big cities and futuristic buildings, through rivers and mountains full of vegetation, ToF offers a great visual space based on an anime style, with a wide range of colors and full of places to explore. It is true that if we do not have a sufficient level you will not be able to enter some areas since the high radiation will kill us, but this is only at the beginning since later we will have greater freedom of movement. In our adventure we will find puzzles that we must solve and that will bring us rewards, chests and bosses that we must defeat to get achievements and loot, and we will also be able to find plants, minerals and even fish to collect that can be used to produce food and life to heal ourselves.
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Another notable aspect are the vehicles and objects with which we can move and interact with the elements of the world. And it is that Tower of Fantasy offers a vehicle section that allows us to choose between motorcycles, unicorn-shaped robots and even a kind of futuristic Rubik’s Cube that will delight those who love to collect mounts. In addition, we have objects such as propellers that rise and slide in the air, a board to move through the water and even a rocket launcher to detonate certain elements in the environment that will allow us to find hidden treasures to discover.
At the character customization level, the variety is quite wide. In fact, there are already people who have managed to mimic the look of iconic anime characters like Naruto, Hinata, or even characters from Genshin Impact themselves. Within the character creation screen itself we have the possibility to choose the favorite designs of other players, which will surely delight lovers of role-playing and aesthetic elements.
As for the progression system, we level up as we fight enemies and complete missions. In addition, the game has an achievement system in which we will receive rewards after completing certain goals. These can range from killing a boss that we meet around the world, to completing certain missions, to farming certain materials. The rewards that we get from these achievements can give us cores to improve our weapons, gold or other materials that will be of great use to us. In this sense, it must be said that in order to achieve significant improvements we will have to farm for a few hours, which is already the case in other games of this type.
This progression, especially when it comes to weapons, can be accelerated through in-game microtransactions. And it is that the weapons are obtained through an ordering system in which we exchange cores for a reel (as if it were a “loot box”) that has the possibility of dropping a simulacrum and its weapon. The simulacrum is a character or champion that we can assign within its own in-game menu and that has two types of quality: SR and SSR. The first is more likely to fall than the second, but it also gives us worse stats and weapons. Once we get one of these characters we also get his weapon that we can use. Although it is true that it is possible to get all this for free, microtransactions give us more opportunities to get better quality weapons faster. Although there are people who classify this system as “Pay to Fast”, the truth is that the game is still in a very early stage, so it’s not that noticeable. Perhaps this will be more noticeable in the future, especially considering it’s a free-to-play game.
In short, Tower of Fantasy is a game worth trying. Not only for its colorful and well done visual part, its dynamic combat system and its vast open world, but also because it offers us a lot of content and hours of entertainment for free. We’ll have to see how the microtransaction system evolves and it’s true that the story is a bit slow and gets boring at times, especially in the beginning. Although the game does not contain any innovative features per se, it has the potential to evolve and proof of this is the announcement of Vera, the new expansion announced during Gamescom to celebrate the more than 10 million downloads that the title of the game already has Chinese study.
