The Tower of Fantasy seems to be ignited by hype and popularity overnight, right? Of course, those who invested in this particular brand of RPG may have been aware of its arrival for a while, but who would have thought it would get so much attention–to be the talk of the gaming world. Behind the hype, I was eager to see what happened among thousands of other like-minded people.
While initially great, the heat and hype that emanated from Tower of Fantasy quickly died down. It’s a blitz that gets your attention at first and then quickly reaches a disappointing conclusion that burns your time (and maybe your wallet) in that instant.
But what is the Tower of Fantasy? First, it’s not an entirely new game by any means. The action RPG that was released in China some time ago has now been released globally for mobile platforms and PC. It falls into the category of “expanding and ridiculously lucrative open-world Gacha ARPGs”, a genre currently dominated in the West by Genshin Impact and a growing number of games with a shared DNA.
Tower of Fantasy immediately grabs your interest with a dynamic and explosive combat system, where even your first sword feels heavy and powerful during the tutorial. The game assigns you three weapon slots in place of party members in traditional role-playing games, which can be freely swapped in battle, allowing you to pull out the right tool for the job at will.
If there’s one part of Tower that keeps me going, it’s the process of fighting common enemies all over the world. Take a quick look at each weapon’s combo page and you’ll see that this isn’t an endurance test of how fast and how fast you can push the button – there are unique strings that can lead to high-altitude attacks and sustained-intensity aerial acrobatics.
So the fight has a healthy amount of depth. Each weapon has an elemental attribute to which enemies will have resistance or weakness, forcing you to carefully pick your active loadout in challenging content. Weapons have additional abilities and superpowers that often force you to swap between them for efficiency. Dodging at the perfect time freezes enemies in place, giving you the freedom to heal or cash out for free damage. Oh, and don’t forget the relics! Obtainable items can be equipped and used on cooldown for powerful effects, and these add another part of the kit you need to monitor and squeeze for extra oomph.
All of these separate components combine to make killing random enemies in the world enjoyable, while more powerful enemies found in the world or in instance group content are very exciting. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t Devil May Cry 5, but it’s still fascinating.
But what about the world itself? After all you’re not just fighting in a white room, where the hell are you going? Well, the world in Tower of Fantasy is a shattered world divided into six regions; each one is a post-disaster cocktail of wilderness and technological ruin. While the entire game is filled with a clash of futuristic old worlds and natural new worlds, the dynamism of the game makes the landscape instantly interesting. You’ll be drawn to bright oranges and dark blues that catch the eye and keep them alive.
Enemies reflect the world around them in a way that really sets itself apart from the other giant Gacha-ARPGs out there. Borderlands gang members named Hyenas roam around with patchwork armor and weapons, while the mystical powers of the Arya Heirs – the game’s main antagonist – have a more refined look, outfitted with the latest tech and laser swords . There are some real winners out there, like the hunchbacks that exist on Raincaller Island, who walk around with half tires on their backs as more elite troops on their turf.
What about the story? This is a mixed bag. While I don’t usually talk too much about the narrative and its twists — nobody likes spoilers, after all — I don’t see the game starring the loading screen, server selection, official website and, as of press time, the current special event banner. Once you leave the tutorial, you’ll meet a girl named Shirli and her brother Zeke, who will help you out, only to get the feisty Shirli infected with anomalies (basically techno zombies) and doomed to death. Zeke doesn’t like the idea, and instead goes out and works with the big bad to save her, which begins your journey around the world.
This initial narrative was prosaic. It’s the core thread that ties your globe-trotting journey together, but the threads derived from it are even more engaging. After this time you spent in Benghis, there was a point in the story that started to delve into what really happened in the world that made this disaster all the more compelling — so much so that I was really in the mood to break through it. It was then, however, that one of the Tower of Fantasy’s most frustrating problems emerged with its ugly head… Time Gating!
I hate time gating. If I want to get work done at 5pm and Tower of Dreams at 2am, I want the freedom to do so – disrupt my sleep schedule and throw real life socializing out the window instead of Progress in video games. As far as I know, it’s only going to get harder when you’re 30, so I want to do it now. Attempting to do this in Tower of Fantasy will have you bumping into a concrete wall that says “This quest will be available in 8 hours” in bright red letters. As of now, the Tower of Fantasy story hasn’t been in the game – not complete. You need to come back tomorrow, or the day after, or next week, and see what happens next.
You might be thinking “Go and explore the world! Loot some prizes and unlock some fancy stuff”. great idea! There are lots of chests and supply orbs around, and if you find something really good, they drop resources and even in-game currency. The game is even pretty good in this regard, giving you the exact location of really valuable things on the minimap at great distances, meaning you don’t spend as much time scrapping the corners of the map as you might expect. During your scavenger hunt and loot adventures, you might even come across a Dream Orb—basically a random drop mini-game that helps mix the tediousness of running around and opening boxes. Interesting, right?
Unless this is time limited. Typically, especially at launch, half the boxes you come across are locked for 24 hours, 48 hours, or even longer! I completed a puzzle in the Crown Mine, opened a warehouse with a golden supply pod, and ended up running into a 48 hour timer until I could claim my reward for my hard work. If you keep up with the game, log in every day and explore the highest level areas at your disposal, you will be punished for it. terrible.
The reasons for this are clear, and while I initially tried to come up with more optimistic reasons, I was naively wasting my time. It’s the gacha that powers not just this game, but all games in the genre. If you could sit down and finish the story in a weekend, you might leave content. Instead, sit back and collect login rewards for over a week, come across treasures that can’t be accessed without data chips you can buy, need loot from joint quests, but find yourself lackluster in-game and won’t do so until tomorrow. All of this drives you to buy, and the longer you find yourself playing, the more eager you are to drop £4, £10, £20, etc.
Supply pods are locked, and story missions are time-gated to ensure a drip-feed of rewards—quick at first as the game rewards you the way the first few days, then slowly turn off the tap. Are you 100 dark crystals away from buying 10 red orbs that you need to use on a limited banner that disappears in a week? Well, you can’t get them out, so I guess you’ll have to wait. Or… buy them.
If this aspect of the game is in an enclosed space, separate from the rest of the game, many people can live with it in the background. But tendrils lock down every major and minor issue of the game in a way that can’t be ignored. I guess the purple super rare characters look fine, but those gold super rare characters will explode off your screen and pack the coolest look.
This also makes the difficulty of the game difficult to parse. I was lucky enough to pull King and Samir (two of the most powerful characters in the game as of writing) out of the banners using the currency I got by searching around. This makes the early hours of the game and all of the story content easy. Of course it is, because if you expect players to dump real-world money, they should have an easier time, regardless of how dominoes cause wider problems for other players.
Add in the slowly rising difficulty of group content — something you obviously want to see in a game like this, to keep dedicated players occupied — and the temptation to spend a few cents is obvious.
I believe the biggest casualty of this is PvP, which at the time of writing only includes a 1v1 Arena mode. While stats are neutralized between players and gear upgrades, each weapon has its own movement settings and attacks. Bad luck, worse drawn, less ideal weapons if I can make massive AOE firestrikes, chakra killboxes, and nonstop ranged greatsword strikes with my scythe, ice greatsword, and chakra What opportunities do people have? The problem isn’t the quantity, it’s the attack you get from getting the best and rarest weapons.
It also makes me worry about the future of gaming PvP. If power is tied to a weapon and its movement settings, and new weapons are released to the top banner, should dedicated players be praying they get new meta gear? Of course not, they meant to take out their card and pay the roll until they got it. There will be a battle royale mode that seems to fix this, but at the time of writing this doesn’t exist in the game, so I can’t comment on its strengths or weaknesses. As it stands, PvP makes me want – a mode with standardized weapons makes sense.
It’s hard to ignore things like this when it permeates so many aspects of the game. It’s hard to forgive the smaller bugs and issues that usually get the spotlight when the game feels like a whale factory rather than a game that can be played on its own merits. My favorite little bug in Tower of Fantasy can be found on the secure keyboard, where the number 9 is replaced by “10% off,” which I can only interpret as a reminder of the title’s most valuable thing.
At the end of the day, you can have a fair amount of fun in Tower of Dreams, but it’s hard to see a big future for this title. Just next week, Genshin Impact releases version 3.0, which will appeal to most of the content-hungry gacha crowd, and Zenless Zone Zero appears to be a looming giant that will present a high-quality post-apocalyptic sci-fi setting. It’s not appropriate to invest a lot of time and money when the advantages of the title cannot outweigh the overwhelming negatives.
The hype around the Tower of Fantasy won’t make it through the winter, and it may already be dying.