Yesterday was the launch of a new game that has been referred to as the “Genshin Killer”, Tower of Fantasy. After spending an evening playing it, I sincerely doubt it will do anything to the diehard Genshin Impact fanbase, but I do think it will flake some folks off who might not have been playing lately. My initial thoughts are that the game as a whole reminds me if you took Phantasy Star Online 2 and blended it with Genshin Impact to create a weird hybrid experience. This is honestly the game that I think I wished PSO2: New Genesis would have been. I think after spending so much time playing Genshin… New Genesis felt instantly dated to me.
The first key difference from Genshin, is that you actually get to control the look of your character. While you have to choose from either a collection of waifu or husband appearances… and there is not a beard to be seen among them… I managed to cobble together something that I was fine with. One of the nice things about the way that this game launched is that you could preload the client and mess around with your character appearance so that was all set and saved before the game launched properly. What feels super freaking weird though… is even though you have saved an appearance you still start the game as a generic white-haired anime girl or guy until you reach the first town and can transform into your chosen appearance.
The second key difference from Genshin is that instead of collecting a stable of characters that you swap between, you instead create a build-out of three weapons. You can swap freely between them at any time, or you can build up a gauge on the weapons and swap to them when this has filled to create a combo attack. The starter weapons so far are my favorite with it being a Longsword, Dual Daggers, and a Bow. New weapons can be pulled through the gacha system either through collecting items in the world or by paying for additional pulls.
Purple or Legendary weapons come attached to a Simulacrum, which leads us to the third major difference from Genshin. Going into this game I think we all knew it would be a chase for new Waifus from the gacha system, and instead of collecting them in your party… you transform yourself into one of them and gain their abilities. Everyone gets Echo first who comes equipped with the Thunderous Halberd. This weapon is effectively a lightning damage spear, which comes into play almost immediately in the game as you encounter a lightning elemental damage barrier. Like Genshin you can combo specific elemental attacks in the world in order to clear specific puzzle requirements. Hitting the lightning barrier with your halberd causes it to dissipate and allows you to move forward.
The Gacha pulls work effectively like any other Gacha game, where they are seemingly best spent 10 at a time, and doing so guarantees you a purple or higher quality item in that pull. There is a pitty system that moves as you increase pulling, with your first pitty happening at 50 pulls on a specific banner. Essentially you have three currencies for pulling, golden orbs, red orbs, and purple orbs and I am not going to bother learning the proper name of any of them. The Golden and Red orbs are premium currency and the Purple orbs are pretty easy to get while clearing the map and opening chests. As a result, the purple orb “banner” seems to mostly reward blue-quality weapons and upgrade materials. With a purple simulacrum/weapon coming from them EXTREMELY rarely.
In the confusion of launch, yesterday and various servers overflowing and getting locked… I ended up going for a second choice of Observer where some friends were rolling, and missed that a different batch of friends ended up on “The World Between”. Yet another batch of friends managed to roll late enough that they were able to get back on Solaris the originally intended destination. So essentially we are sorta fucked. With no cross-server play, and no availability of server transfers yet… I could reroll but that would mean a completely different set of pulls. Seeing that I lucked into a very early SSR/Legendary I am really hesitant to move from where I am currently. That means I am ultimately hoping that transfers open up so we can sort out a final destination at some point. Once again I am struck by how awful the server mechanic is and how games need to move away from having them.
Similar to Genshin and honestly EVERY one of these KMMO/CMMO gacha games… you have a small companion. This time it is a robot named Mi-a… who still talks funny but is significantly less annoying than Paimon. I am not entirely certain what its purpose is… other than it follows you around in the open world. I am sure there will be a story reason behind having Mi-a but I am not sure yet if there is a mechanical reason. Again every single one of these games seems to have a random fairy or another companion that follows you around and serves as comic relief, so I am guessing it wouldn’t be the same without them.
All told combat feels really fluid and I had fun running around. However, I have to say it does not feel anywhere near as magical as exploring the world of Genshin did. There is definitely a been there done that feeling to finding random chests or killing random bosses. The mechanics of the world and how you open things up… feels exactly the same as playing Genshin Impact. It is a more science fiction version of the world, but if you collected a bajillion chests in Genshin… it is going to feel the same collecting them here. It is at this point that I question how engaged I am ultimately going to get with this game. Genshin was new and fresh and something that felt like I was constantly breaking new ground… and Tower of Fantasy feels very much like the clone that it ultimately is.
Since I have World of Warcraft Dragonflight Alpha, Guild Wars 2, New World, and soon the opening of the next league in Path of Exile… Tower of Fantasy is very much going to likely be the third rung “if I happen to be in the mood” sort of game. If it was launching at a time when I was burnt out on all of the above, things might have been different. I played Genshin Impact hard and heavy for about three months and then have never really returned to it. I think this is partially why I am not overly concerned about being on the same server that the maximum number of friends because I am not sure just how active I am going to be in the long run. I don’t really love the anime stylings… so the gameplay really has to shine to capture my attention. Genshin did because it was so new and unique at the time, but this very much feels like I am traveling down a path I have already seen before. The addition of PVP is new to the genre, but also not something I am the least bit interested in.
So I will definitely be throwing Tower of Fantasy in that wait-and-see bucket. I think it is a great game, especially if this is your first time doing the Genshin Impact style of gameplay. It has full cross-play and cross-save between platforms and I managed to play a little bit on Android as well as my default PC client. Though I do wonder if this is too active of a game to really be super enjoyable for bedtime gaming. Anyways, if you make it over to Observer at any point you can find me at UID 1201110645. If you are also playing the game, I would be curious about your impressions. Right now you have to download the launcher directly from the Tower of Fantasy website, but apparently, at some point, it will be coming to Steam.
I didn’t get into Genshin Impact and looks like I won’t get into Tower of Fantasy here — the thought of collecting overdeveloped anime girls really misses the mark for me. But I guess I was never the target audience. I do want to try Noah’s Heart.
So I will say that this time around there is no benefit to PLAYING as those characters. You can be your custom made avatar and effectively do everything.
I’m mystified as to why Tower of Fantasy is getting such huge attention while Noah’s Heart seems to have flown completely under the radar. I get that ToF is much more obviously a GI clone but they’re all in the same ballpark and from what I can see so far, NH has a lot more to offer the traditional mmorpg player than either of the others. I’d like to try ToF but not right now. I’ll just have to settle for reading about it.