Is it worth playing Tower of Fantasy?

Since The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild The greatness of open world gaming is back in the 2017, many companies have wanted to recreate its success by making their own adaptation. And this is because people want to spend hours and hours exploring large terrains and completing missions of almost all kinds.

The clearest example of wanting to exploit this type of gameplay is Genshin Impact, only taking the experience along a somewhat different path (that of a free to play with micro payments), since the story was unlocked over time. Under this scheme it also arrived in China, Tower of Fantasya launch that was committed to going much further.

And now that we have recently tested it, we want to give our impressions after a few hours under control.

How did we get to this land full of mystery?

The story of Tower of Fantasy puts us at the feet of a character who doesn’t have a name as such, since we can choose his name as well as his gender. Well, at the beginning they ask us if we want the avatar to be male or female, and based on the decision these two boys will go their separate ways.

What we are faced with at the beginning is that the chosen character is chased by a kind of infected dogs, which apparently want to kill the protagonist at any cost. Thus we come to a battle with one of those dogs that triples the size of its companions, seriously injuring whoever we have chosen.

This leads to an obvious fainting, because a purple substance has been impregnated, shortly after becoming unconscious, we discover two characters: Shirli and Zeke. Brothers who have saved the life of the avatar, have even sheltered him in the fortress of the Astra region, one of the lands within the world of Aida.

A huge map to explore

As already mentioned above, Tower of Fantasy is an action JRPG video game with an open world, in which we will have to complete different types of missions. These can include assignments that aim to increase the experience of our character or simply continue with the main story that the developers prepared.

Within the map, we will manage our respective avatar, which we can customize after a few minutes of advancing in the plot, we can modify its hair, face, body and more attributes. To this we can add that you can equip clothing, which is obtained by completing missions or making your respective purchase.

The main character’s set of skills is quite complete, since he has a double jump, he can run, move in all directions, climb like Breath of the Wild, and of course, use some jets to stay floating in the air for a moment; these are staple moves of every contemporary open world.

Nevertheless, Tower of Fantasy it adds a few more things so that it can feel its own identity, so the character can use more extra artifacts like a power that can move cubes like puzzles.

Something that distinguished Genshin Impact of other games is the use of different characters, and Tower of Fantasy was not going to be left out with this, since we can use an option called simulation. This will allow us to change the appearance of our avatar to a totally different one, with their respective skills, weapons, and others.

I quite liked that the mechanics of changing characters are present here as well, but the way to do the change is quite long, since you have to access a menu and then activate the avatar. Hopefully this long process for these days will be changed in some way, this could be done with an update where we can use a shortcut.

Dungeons can lead to greatness

Now that we’ve covered the basics of how Tower of Fantasy’s open world is made up, it’s time to move on to something a modern open world title shouldn’t be missing. This is the exploration of sanctuaries or dungeons in the purest style of Zelda: Breath of The Wild, but with challenges that are especially reminiscent of Genshin Impact.

In these places we must walk in a linear way to free it and obtain rewards along the way, but not everything is going to be easy, since we are going to find different enemies that are going to obstruct our entrance. There are also simple puzzles that we must decipher to continue advancing, they include everything from operating levers to moving blocks in different directions.

In addition, the use of jumps must be made in a somewhat more practical way, with cliffs that require fair movements such as jumps towards somewhat distant platforms. It is worth commenting that here we cannot climb or use the propeller to fall slowly, so using basic skills is necessary to survive.

Finishing the dungeons will give us good rewards, with hidden chests that carry special materials to continue forging our weapons, as well as some others to create equipment and clothing. To that are added special crystals that can be exchanged for orbs that entitle us to a shot in the gachapon.

The difficulty of the game seemed very simple to me in this encounter with the dungeon bosses, so I totally recommend entering these ruins to have a much greater challenge. There are also bosses in certain parts of the map, and just like with dungeon bosses, they will be a huge hindrance unless you bring a group of friends in online multiplayer to finish them off within a few minutes.

In general, the character controls and menus are quite comfortable, but there is a problem for those of us who use a control to play, because since the experience is very focused on PC and mobile, it will be necessary to use the mouse and keyboard from time to time. to access certain options. Something that Genshin Impact has already perfected in its mapping.

Similarly, you can only use an Xbox controller that is immediately detected by the operating system, so if you want to use PlayStation or Nintendo Switch, you must use a program that emulates the Microsoft controller.

Just like playing an anime

The graphic part of Tower of Fantasy is one of the most striking aspects of the video game, because like Genshin Impact, the character designs are 100% focused on the anime style. Some feel a bit generic, others with more personality, in the end it will be a matter of taste for the players.

I must emphasize that here I detected a very punctual failure, because in the cinematics the main or secondary avatars do not present any type of expressions on their faces. So it shows that the developers did not give so much importance to these details, that is not new in the world of gacha and as a suggestion, they should work on it more.

As for the world, it is very well detailed, with a lot of vegetation, interesting enemy designs where I can highlight the bosses that look like giant machines. Of course, some mountain textures are not entirely convincing, but there are not so many failures if you do not carefully search each section of the terrain.

Sure, there are bugs like the occasional popping out of nowhere in terms of items and enemies. Although this could be a bit more about technical issues. Well, if you have a fairly good PC, it could run at decent graphics and at least 60 frames per second, but these can be lowered or increased depending on your budget.

He can be the worthy rival that Genshin Impact needs

In conclusion, Tower of Fantasy tries to do everything that other titles in the genre do but putting its own style, even adding mechanics that are not found in these to differentiate itself even more. This does not mean that it will be the fifth wonder as soon as it becomes available, but it is possible that it will win over users little by little.

It has a solid gameplay that many will like for its degree of simplicity, in addition, it carries with it many story and side missions so that the public gets lost in the great map of Aida for a considerable number of hours. Of course, for those not used to the genre, they could end up tired in a few minutes.

In general, Tower of Fantasy is betting on becoming the definitive open world game, something that it has not achieved so far, but it shows that effort is behind it. Let’s just not forget that at some point it will be necessary to make micropayments yes or yes to avoid hours of grinding when trying to unlock rewards.

Remember that the next one is released August 10 on PC and mobile.