Good Morning Friends! I have to admit that yesterday I might have been a little early to judge this game as being an uninspired Genshin clone. The more I play this game the more I enjoy it and see how it in many ways has learned lessons from the success of Genshin. Admittedly at this point, I have had an extreme string of luck and have what the “kids” would call a very “cracked” account. Currently, I am running three legendary weapons and have lucked my way into two of the weapons that I had been chasing… namely the frost greatsword and the lightning dual pistols. While I never would have gone after it… I’ve also fallen in love with the fire cube thingy… which essentially turns me into a fire mage.
I realize that I am probably experiencing what my friends call “Bel Luck” but at this point, I have done somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 pulls and have managed to get four of the legendary SSR weapons/simulacra. The game is exceedingly generous with currency so just by playing the game and knocking out objectives, you are going to be earning a large number of the purple and orange orbs. Red orbs from what I can tell seem to be the exclusive cash shop currency, or at least can only be gained by spending money or converting free currency into them rather than getting them as rewards. Red orbs seem to be used exclusively for the 50/50 banner where you have a 50% chance of getting a specific champion each time you manage to pull an SSR weapon.
There are a few things at work here. Firstly Tower of Fortune is just slightly more generous in the odds than Genshin Impact. The odds of pulling an SSR Weapon is 0.75% and the equivalent odds of pulling a 5 Star Champion in Genshin is roughly 0.6%. Then there is a significant difference in the way that the pity system works. In Genshin you got a 5-star every 90 pulls, and if you lucked into an early 5-star it reset your pity counter back to 90. This pity timer was not clearly tracked in the UI but instead something you sort of had to figure out on your own or go through the results log to calculate. In Tower of Fortune, you get a guaranteed SSR every 80 pulls, with the key difference being that if you get an early SSR it does not reset your pity. So in my case, I lucked into 3 SSRs and then still hit my pity at 80 and got another SSR. Then there is the quality of life change in that each banner clearly shows where you are in the pity progression, so for example on the matrix banner I am 12 draws in of my initial 40 pity.
On top of those improvements, there is another system working in my favor that will ultimately let me choose whatever SSR Weapon I want. As you complete various micro-objectives in the game you are earning a point total. Currently, I am sitting at 460, and ticking these off might be running a certain number of ruins or opening a certain number of chests. Every 100 points you gain some sort of perk, and at 700 points you get a box that will essentially allow you to choose any SSR Weapon/Simulacra that you want out of everything currently available in the game. So all of those folks who have been chasing Diluc in Genshin Impact since day one… in this game, you can just choose this game’s equivalent of Diluc the Fire Scythe dude. Granted I am sure at some point I will start needing duplicates of these weapons, but I did notice there is a shop in-game with some currency that I am slowly collecting… that allows me to buy duplicate weapons when I unlock each SSR.
Another huge change from the Genshin model is that you could end up in a situation where you had nothing left that you could do in a day. The World Bosses in that game allowed you to spend “Original Resin” only if you wanted to get rewards but that did not trickle down to every activity. Even then it wasn’t super enjoyable to run things without much benefit. In Tower of Fantasy, it appears that there are a lot of activities like ruins that are not gated by spending some currency to go into them. Instead, this resource gating comes into play when you run the group content in the game. I ran through a Joint Operation last night and there were 3 chests that dropped, each of them costing 30 of the resource to open. However they all seemed to have their own drop table, so if you wanted a specific item you could in theory target opening only one chest, and then that same 90 resource cost could be applied to three individual runs.
Now that we have talked about just a few of the ways that Tower of Fantasy is more generous than Genshin Impact, let’s dive into a few other differences. One of the biggest ones is that ToF has mounts that you can use to zip around the map. This does mean that there are fewer fast travel waypoints that you can teleport to, with it largely limited to specific teleporters. For me, it honestly feels more enjoyable to traverse the map on the mount as opposed to “bamphing” all over the place. You unlock your first mount through the main story quest, which is this slick-looking motorcycle. I am not sure where I got it, but I also have this wholly irrational looking rubiks cube sort of mount as well, so I am guessing there will be a large number of options for you to ride around on over time.
On top of mounts, you have a series of relics that also provide travel benefits. For example, the first relic that you get is your glider and for the most part, it will permanently take up your first relic slot. Then over time, you unlock a series of other relics that you can swap between based on your current situation. The jet board for example essentially lets you surf across the water and serves as your way of unlocking the second island in the game. Then there are relics that solve specific problems that you might encounter in the world. For example, Missile Barrage can be used to break down cracked walls in dungeons and in the open world and Omnium Handcannon fires out a beam that serves as a temporary platform. The Handcannon specifically reminds me of the ice ability from Breath of the Wild and you can use it to block laser beams for example or give yourself something that you can actually climb in areas without climbable walls.
You unlock the first few relics through the main story quest as you explore various ruins. The thing that I have noticed upon multiple trips back to these areas… is that there are many ways to solve each of the puzzles that you are presented with. So while the Missile Barrage is the most obvious way of breaking down these walls, that same ruin also had exploding barrels which serve the same purpose. Most of the areas that might require you to climb, can also be carefully accessed through gliding. One of the things that were really missing from Genshin Impact in the whole “Breath of the Wild” comparison, is that you were lacking all of the curious inventions that link gained over time to help him traverse the world. The addition of Relics really opens up the door to new kinds of gameplay and makes it extremely easy for them to add more devious puzzles down the road that require something more than just casting the right elemental spell at the right time.
The other thing that I am noticing the further I go into the game is how much more Western-influenced Tower of Fantasy is. There are absolutely parts of the game that feel like they have been pulled straight from the Borderlands series. There are other aspects that give me an almost Wildstar vibe, especially when it comes to the way that Exile faction areas felt. So while I referred to this as the lovechild of Genshin Impact and Phantasy Star Online, and that is still largely correct… the world is so much more nuanced than that. Granted I have only seen two areas of the game and I have no clue what sorts of things I might encounter the further that I go in. Genshin also has expanded significantly since I last played it, but nothing that I did encounter really felt like it was borrowing heavily from Western game genres.
Yesterday I managed to fire up a Crew, which is this game’s version of a Guild. There is so much nonsense going on with this screen that I do not understand in the least. It seems like there are four quests a week that guild members can do, and there is a unique currency that you earn from doing them that can be spent for various things on the storefront. Additionally, there is a process of upgrading your guild base, but I don’t yet understand how to gain any of the currencies that seem to be involved with that. At the moment there are only three of us and none of us are terribly advanced yet. I only mentioned this system to show that there is some sort of guild construct and that it appears to be sufficiently detailed.
All said, the longer I spend with this game the more I enjoy it more than Genshin. I realize that come August 19th I am going to be pouring my heart and soul into the launch of the Lake of Kalandra league starting in Path of Exile, but for now, I am having some fun. There is a concept called Anchoring Bias that mobile/gacha games rely on heavily to get you to spend money. This ultimately is what led players to feel like Genshin was a reasonable game experience and by reference why Diablo Immortal felt so extremely predatory in comparison. Tower of Fantasy so far feels like it has taken lessons from Genshin in so many ways, including pricing strategy. Everything about the cash shop is just ever so slightly a better deal than the same item would be in Genshin and it feels very intentional.
While it is unlikely that this brings in near the amount of cash… it will probably also prompt players who spent nothing on Genshin to spend on this game. I know I have spent a few bucks on the daily month-long rewards track since those tend to be a phenomenal deal. I’m also contemplating buying into the Battle Pass because I have already gotten $20 of enjoyment out of the game. This game feels like it was very much designed for the spending habits of Western and Japanese gamers, whereas Genshin was absolutely designed to cater to the Chinese mobile spending habits. If this really is the case and this stays true… I am honestly happy to support this notion.