When Genshin Impact launched in 2020, it became one of the most successful free-to-play titles of its kind. Tower of Fantasy, created by Hotta Studio, has its sights set on challenging Genshin Impact for the gacha throne; however, this sci-fi MMO is a little too derivative for its own good, and the few new ideas it introduces fail to make a compelling argument for why fans should spend the time and money on such an unpolished game.
Tower of Fantasy isn’t a new game; in fact, this title first launched in China late last year before finding its footing in the West just a few weeks ago. With games like Genshin Impact already approaching the two-year mark and players likely searching for a new shared world gacha game to sink their teeth into, Tower of Fantasy could not have come at a better time. On paper, Hotta Studio's debut title looks like it should be everything miHoYo’s hit F2P game is and more–adding in mounts and featuring a distinct focus on MMO elements like PvP. However, in practice, none of its core components ever amount to anything exciting or worthwhile.
Starting with the story, players take on the role of The Wanderer: an adventurer who finds themselves separated from their twin at the start of the game before ending up at a small colony on the planet Aida. Already the Genshin parallels start to creep up. Aida is in the stage of a post-apocalypse where humans were almost eradicated after their exploitation of the resource Omnium nearly devastated the planet. The surviving humans and factions on Aida fight over the use of Omnium, with some believing it is evil, while others find it a necessity for survival. The main character finds themselves in a friendship with siblings Zeke and Shirili before disaster strikes, and the player dives into the politics of Aida’s warring factions firsthand.
Tower of Fantasy’s premise is interesting and unique enough to turn some heads, but it starts coming apart at the seams almost immediately. From the moment players meet Zeke and Shirili, the game starts throwing exposition and new characters at the player at break-neck speed. Players will regularly meet new characters who try very hard to be quirky and memorable yet pass by so quickly that players will likely see no reason to invest in these characters at all. Pivotal story moments often fall flat due to poor writing and are only book ended by more exposition dumps. Furthermore, Tower of Fantasy’s presentation does very little to come to the story’s aid.
Spotty voice acting and awkward animations are what make up the bulk of Tower of Fantasy’s cutscenes. Half of the game’s characters sound like the voice actor was really giving it their all, while the other half are half-hearted and mixed rather poorly to boot. Additionally, Tower of Fantasy sometimes likes to give one character voice lines throughout a cutscene while the character other has none. It is uncomfortable to experience and feels worse, as characters very stiffly move their arms and nod their heads at each other. Players will have to trudge through these sequences to get the next story quest, which usually involves doing some resource collecting or MacGuffin finding typical of MMOs but without any driving force behind why players should keep doing these chores.
Combat is where Tower of Fantasy makes up some ground and proves that the game has some teeth, but it only feels slightly less shallow than its story and quest counterparts. Tower of Fantasy allows players to have three weapon types available at all times, each containing one of four elements that are effective against enemies who are weak to that corresponding element. When a weapon has built up a sufficient charge in combat, players can swap weapons to activate a special move. When paired with the game’s slow-mo mechanic - which occurs upon a perfect dodge - Tower of Fantasy can look pretty slick in action. However, the game's main combat loop winds up feeling quite mindless in practice.
Combat-wise, Tower of Fantasy's main detriment is having weak enemies with very boring attack patterns. Almost every low-ranked enemy in the overworld stays staggered on hit and is quickly taken down by simply spamming the attack button. Occasionally enemies break out of that stagger state and fight back, but then players can utilize the game's generous dodge window and continue to spam the mob until it dies. Tower of Fantasy does offer some thrills with boss fights, but those fights play out like a more extended version of the same dodge-and-poke routine but with a spongier enemy. As a whole, the combat system Hotta crafted fails to create dynamic combat situations where players have to consider anything but attacking and then occasionally dodging. Any player that is keeping up to date with their upgrades - when the game is not trying to slow their progress - can easily breeze through a good chunk of PvE content with little effort.
Perhaps the most egregious issue in Tower of Fantasy is its insistence on time-gating a lot of its content. This is not the type of game that players can barrel through in a matter of a week. From time-gated story missions to time-gated chests to time-gated level caps, the game is constantly putting hurdles in the player’s path to stop them from progressing. Finding a chest out in the wild only to be told to come back in 2 days is one of the most deflating parts of Tower of Fantasy and takes all the fun out of exploring the game’s rather lovely-looking post-apocalyptic world. As of this writing, the main storyline still cannot be completed, and it will be a matter of weeks to months until it can be finished. What’s more, Tower of Fantasy’s mount system, one of the game’s key differentiators from Genshin Impact, never feels fun to use and constantly gets stuck on the smallest bits of geometry. Also detracting from the fun of world exploration.
The big question with Tower of Fantasy is its gacha monetization scheme. Some of these gacha games do a great job of letting free-to-play players have a wonderful time without spending a single cent, while others take a pay-to-progress approach. Tower of Fantasy falls somewhere in the middle. Playing the main storyline won’t grant players any incredible weapons, and drop rates for high-quality items are quite low, but players can complete all the PvE content with almost any weapon as long as they upgrade accordingly. However, it is in the PvP content where the gacha comes into play. Some fans could very easily spend tons of money trying to pull duplicate weapons and buff their gear to undoubtedly have an advantage on the battlefield. On the whole, Tower of Fantasy's PvP seems to favor those who pay more than the free-to-play crowd, and that takes some fun out of the MMO portion of the game, which also mostly amounts to dungeon crawling with a group of people when not engaging in PvP.
Ultimately, Tower of Fantasy feels like a haphazardly put together imitation of Genshin Impact that can't find its footing in either gameplay or story. The best parts of the game are its extensive character creator and lovely open world, which evokes the same Breath of the Wild art style that surprisingly few games have yet to nail. But then it punishes players that want to see every corner of it with time-gated chests and missions. A sense of stiffness also permeates multiple aspects of the game, making it difficult to play for long periods of time on top of the game's systems regularly pushing against players who want to do more. Tower of Fantasy will be a challenging game to stick with in the long term and gives little reason for why players should jump ship to planet Aida over much more expansive and polished free-to-play gachas currently on the market.
Tower of Fantasy is available now for PC, Android, and iOS. Game ZXC was provided a PC code for this review.
Tower of Fantasy
Hotta Studios’ and Level Infinite’s Tower of Fantasy is a rich open-world MMORPG that is free-to-play and full of adventure. Featuring the magical world of Aida, players have access to a cast of detailed anime characters, each with a unique arsenal of weapons and abilities. Players can combat PVE enemies, as well as duel one another.