Is extra all the time higher? That’s the query I requested myself when fixing Tower of Fantasy’s overworld puzzles, leaping into ruins, analyzing the gacha pull system, studying the character improve items, wanting on the weapon improve chips, enjoying a whack-a-mole-esque agility coaching course, attempting to outlive a timed fight problem, opening the primary kind of treasure chest, the second kind, the third kind and–Oh my god, is that this a fourth kind? Fine, I’ll open it–much, rather more.I can sum up my 30 or so hours with Tower of Fantasy with one succinct thought: There’s lots occurring. Tower of Fantasy is a sci-fi gacha MMORPG with Honkai Impact Third-inspired fight, Genshin Impact-inspired design–and thus, by default, Breath of the Wild-inspired every thing: from puzzles to dungeons to overworld instruments.I do know some gamers will say that as a result of Tower of Fantasy is an MMORPG, all these totally different options aren’t meant to be skilled in a compressed span of time, which is truthful. But even for those who unfold out fixing ruins, opening chests, and embarking on myriad aspect quests, there’s nonetheless an issue: I’m undecided if the sport is larger than the sum of its components.FightPhantasia, a time freeze that enables gamers to deal further harm to enemiesTower of Fantasy is ambitious–clearly quite a lot of work went into it–and it is a sheer feat of human effort to drag all the weather current into one recreation. Many kudos ought to go to the builders for creating Tower of Fantasy, however let’s take the fight as a case examine. The fight is similar to Honkai Impact Third’s design. Every weapon has a primary assault, a particular assault (that may solely be used after a cooldown), after which an final assault with particular launch situations. There’s additionally a counter system between totally different components, and every weapon has a Frost, Flame, Volt, or Physical attribute.If you evade on the proper time, the enemy is frozen for a couple of seconds in a state known as Phantasia, and you may take that chance to deal further harm. This is similar to Honkai Impact Third’s Time Fracture ability. When switching between weapons on the proper time (full weapon cost or triggered Phantasia), a particular capability will likely be triggered–something alongside the identical veins as Honkai Impact Third’s tag-in and QTE method the place swapping between characters will provoke a singular capability, relying on situations.Taking inspiration from one other recreation is not an issue. Honkai Impact Third’s fight itself takes quite a lot of inspiration from Bayonetta–one of Honkai Impact Third’s first Valkyrie encounters, White Comet Kiana, has an final neko-charm assault that feels similar to Bayonetta’s bullet arts strikes like heel stomp.But whereas Honkai Impact Third was in a position to mildew the Bayonetta method into one thing unique–a simplified model that also provides the oomph of a trendy console hack-and-slash game–I’m undecided Tower of Fantasy does the identical factor. The fight is strong, and I can see quite a lot of potential for attention-grabbing weapon combos among the many three totally different defender, DPS, and supporter lessons, however one thing feels lacking. There’s nothing memorable–at least within the few SSR and SR weapons I pulled from the banners (King, Echo, Tsubasa, Bai Ling, and Hilda)–like Honkai Kiana’s cute kitty stomps of demise, or QTEs that provide totally different methods relying on in case your enemies are airborne or shocked. Tower of Fantasy’s fight lacks a particular recognizable identification that makes it stand out from opponents.I can say the identical factor for different components of the sport: The Ruins are impressed by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, full with puzzle-solving and unlocking rune talents, er, I imply, relics. Are the ruins and relics higher than those in Breath of the Wild? Frankly, no. There are extra relics in Tower of Fantasy than the rune talents out there in Breath of the Wild, however like I stated, extra is not essentially higher. I had much more enjoyable with Magnesis in Breath of the Wild than with the seven relics in ToF.Tower of Fantasy’s open-worldIf I had been to guage each single mechanism and have, I’d be Scheherazade and this might be the Tower of Fantasy rendition of One Thousand and One Nights. So I’ll speak about two extra options: technical high quality and naturally, the principle storyline that drives every thing ahead.Technical high quality Tower of Fantasy has had a troubled launch, however enjoying the sport pre-release, I used to be impressed with the general lack of egregious glitches. However, there are a few issues I need to point out. I had main points with cooking. It labored tremendous for a few days, however after a while, urgent the little cooking robotic simply did nothing–which is a matter, since cooking is important within the recreation. Health is recovered by consuming.I needed to give up the sport to be able to repair glitches a couple of instances too. After failing a mission, my WASD buttons would not transfer the character, and in one other case, coming into the world chat someway glitched the sport in order that I could not get a wall of textual content off the highest left of my display. But two or so such glitches in round 30 hours of playtime actually is not too unhealthy for a newly launched recreation of this scale.Teleportation animations and among the cutscene animations are a bit awkward too. Every teleport takes a couple of seconds, which is smart, however the ready animation simply exhibits your character standing there, so you are not all the time positive if the teleportation labored or not.The important storylineShirli, one of many residents of Astra Shelter and an essential characterI’m somebody who survived A Realm Reborn, so I’m a veteran of not-so-great MMO storylines. Tower of Fantasy’s important storyline has the alternative downside, though–it’s too quick, not too gradual.Cutscenes transfer at a breakneck tempo, and I felt like a sheep being chased by a herding canine between storyline targets. Your character would not get an opportunity to develop a relationship with any NPCs, which ends up in the unlucky results of probably not caring about their fates. Shirli and Zeke are two of the very first characters you meet and are each robust driving forces for pushing the story alongside. Mostly, you are monitoring Zeke for a superb chunk of time, however Zeke’s hanging out together with his new buddies–the Heirs of Aida, a mysterious entity with mysterious targets.I get that, maybe, the Heirs of Aida story and characters concerned within the group are being saved for later updates, however even Zeke’s characterization is fairly minimal. I do not know something about him besides that he is gruff and loves his sister. Shirli’s state of affairs is barely higher, in that we do know extra about her needs and character, but it surely’s merely not sufficient to hold your entire story from Astra to Banges and past.I performed as much as stage 30, and the principle story was uneven and did not have interaction me at an emotional stage. You might argue that Tower of Fantasy is extra targeted on introducing the huge world of Astra, Banges, and different places to us at first story chapters, relatively than being a character-driven narrative, however round stage 30, a serious facet of Tower of Fantasy’s world is revealed in a five-minute information dump. It’s very anticlimactic.While the principle storyline’s writing simply did not do it for me, I’ll reward the quantity of peculiar number of gameplay sprinkled in. From an arcade-shooter state of affairs in a single scene, to a stealth-like mission (I’m utilizing this time period very liberally right here) in one other, I discovered that blend actually labored in including partaking components to an in any other case lackluster story.The English voice appearing for some characters felt very jarring, and a few traces weren’t voiced in any respect in cutscenes. The male important character’s voice is aggressive on a regular basis. I get it–fetch quests and being ordered round by Hykros is annoying, however I needed him to calm down. Archon Elric, considered one of Hykros’s head honchos, resides on the alternative spectrum of the principle character: He speaks in a totally impartial tone with no have an effect on, which ends up in unintentional hilarity since he talks about critical and generally tragic subjects with minimal emotion.Shirli reaching out to Shirli. Tower of Fantasy will not be a poorly made recreation, neither is it devoid of any constructive qualities. I even assume that the majority gamers can in all probability discover one thing they love to do in it–be that PvP, cooking, or constructing weapons. But holistically, Tower of Fantasy simply appears like quite a lot of totally different video games, mechanics, and options duct-taped collectively in a bundle that is not higher than its inspirations. From Shirli’s post-op Evangelion-inspired design to a minor villain’s surprisingly One Piece-esque look later within the story, the sport’s references come from quite a lot of locations. But none of it serves a singular core identification that’s recognizable as Tower of Fantasy. Just like how the principle character units out to seek out out who they’re, Tower of Fantasy wants an identical journey.

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