The game might seem to be a little formulaic to veterans of CRPGs but it is not without innovations of its own. For developer Event Horizon, Tower of Time is an astounding entry that gives fans of the CRPG genre something different to sink their teeth into.
Thrilling story and interesting genre mix: Tower of Time does not reinvent the wheel, but comes up with some nice innovations and ideas. Especially the combination of real-time strategy and role-playing elements provides a breath of fresh air.
Sublime experience with great polish – it was perhaps the best 50 hours of gaming I experienced in a long time.
I play RPGs for many years now. In most of the recent ones, the world is usually cluttered with things like useless NPC's and items that had no significance – here it was all cut out, leaving only pure game-play fun.
Combat is something fresh - it takes place as encounters and you're face with the waves of enemies listed at the start of the encounter, you have a choice to fight or withdraw.
Level design is great - everything seems so pretty and immersive.
Despite only seven classes – they do differ and offer something unique. This game is less about individual character builds but rather how to combine selected champions into a party that supports each other and with skills that offer great synergy.
Story is actually quite engaging once you delve deeper. I usually get bored quickly mid game once the flair of the new fades away – here it got me hooked until the end since it twists and changes in unexpected ways. The ending made me very sad though :(
I especially like combat challenges – I don’t think I have seen a better method ever implemented. Each is designed separately and is almost like a puzzle to solve.
Two problems with the game I have are the following:
There is no character creation. I am one of those persons that like to spend hours designing characters and their looks. But as soon as I played the game for one hour I really didn’t miss it, since your heroes are fun and diverse.
Second – overall it was smooth performance apart from some areas where I had to lower the graphic settings to low (which was a shame since lightning and shadows are done expertly here). However, I have a pretty old gaming rig so I guess I am happy that it was only few places like that.
All in all – highly recommended. I am very surprised that it doesn’t get more attention and it definitely deserves that.
Pros-
40-70 hours for a full play through
Complex but intuitive gear system
Dynamic well-thought unique heroes, that can be built a multitude of ways
Flexible Tactical combat that rewards approaching combat in creative ways
Many unique items that add flavor and control
A fresh take on tactical real time with pause/slow-mo
A non-grid/hex tactics game
A story that’s both not so involved it gets in the way but is creative enough to stay interesting
Polish and completeness of a AAA game from a new indie company at an indie price
The developers care
Despite being relatively linear, playthroughs can be very different
Has a set of optional challenge scenarios that can push a player beyond the scope of the normal play through
East to learn, hard to master
Cons-
Not overly difficult on normal or easier settings
Some trope “gamey” concepts, but then again you can’t change everything on your first try
The RPG is more like reading a novel and this might not be what some people wanted; even if it was a nice change
Between the pitched battles and the beautiful level layouts, I was always itching to get just a little further. If you’re a fan of CRPGs or just RPGs in general, you can’t go wrong with Tower of Time.
Tower of Time isn’t a massively ground-breaking game, but is a solid addition to the RPG genre, consistent with itself and impressive for a first time development. So if you’re looking for a new RPG, don’t mind reading or point and click dungeon crawling, then Artara might just be for you.
Tower of Time isn’t going to break any new ground and some aspects of it are relatively streamlined, but overall is an enjoyable Dungeon Crawler. Its story is quite engaging, the environments brim with detail, there are lots of stuff to find and combat is well designed, though a tad repetitive in the long run.
The complex combat and character system in Tower of Time is fun for hardcore enthusiasts fun, but for others may lead quickly to frustration and feeling overwhelmed.
Both in terms of storytelling, as well as gameplay, Tower of Time sits right there in the middle of the quality scale. A handful of interesting ideas do exist, and, as a whole, this isn't bad or broken, but, from the first to the fortieth hour, nothing in this dungeon crawling RPG will turn out to be exciting, either.
What a pleasant surprise. I was not sure I would enjoy the game, but with no other new alternatives on the market right now, I decided to buy it on a whim. I am so glad I did.
The story might start typical - post-apocalyptic world (though we do not know what has happened in the beginning) in a fantasy setting. As you play along you discover the bits and pieces of the past told via animated videos and various pieces of history contained in the books and notes scattered around. There are a lot of surprising twists and the story changes over time into something that I think no one would expect. I usually got bored very quickly with recent RPGs, here, I remained hooked until the end.
Combat is a very fresh. The best comparison would be to Dragon Age Origins I think. It is played in real-time with slow motion or pause and has a surprising tactical depth. Your skills and equipment are equally important here to how you play your champions - where you position them and how you move them around. I started on normal difficulty and it was fine so I decided to change to hard - which was brutal. There is one other setting in the game called Epic - but it was too difficult for me.
Having said that, this game is not for everyone - it is smart and requires some thinking about your choices and party builds. If you want to try something refreshing for a change, grab it - and you will be as surprised at the value it offers, as I was.
Not a bad game. It's been a long time since I played it but the only negative thing I remember is that it repeats itself a lot after a point but it's a cheap game, give it a chance.
All in all: its overall a decent enjoyable game, that gets a bit boring and repetative towards the end but I would recommend it if you like the combat style.
- I played my playthrough on the highest difficulty, and I would strongly recommend this for everyone who plays XCOM on legends, or Darkest Dungeon on stygian and the like. At the start it was really truly challenging, there were some fights that even felt kinda impossable and you had to play around a while with positioning, skills, stats, and team setup. The game was a '9' for me for the first half while I was keep getting new skills and new chars to toy with. The mob fights got repetative after like 30% of the game, and often felt like simple reskinning the prevoiously encountered enemys with low variety. Howewer there are a lots of boss fights on every level and those always had some uniqe(ish) mechanichs and challenge, that could keep me interested for a decent time. The exploration vibe also works well for a long time. But sadly after around 50% of the game things slowly gets worse. Nothing horrible of any kind, buts fights get progressively more easy (if you are good at min-maxing, balancing skills, and roles and staff like that). Still there are some difficulty spikes at some bosses, but far less challenging then the first fights. Also fewer and fewer new things both in terms of enemys and abilities. Eventually the last few hours were really uninteresting and I just wanted to go through with it. All in all as I stated before a decent, though not perfet, and I would recommend it.
Special mentions:
- music: it was just realy interesting to have relaxing and chill music during the whole game, even in battles, an unusual choice for sure but I liked it.
- decision making: this aspect was a f*ckin joke for sure. Meaningless situationes, with forced, unreal choices, while on the other hand, when it could matter, you can only go one way without any decision points. It should have been better just to simply leave this whole part out. (not especially annoying, just isn't working at all)
- story: It was ok. Some twists maybe felt a bit cheap, the whole main protagonist thing was also a bit awkward to me, but all in all, its kinda interesting, and uniqeish enough.
Decent graphics animations and story (8 out of 10) but tedious and repetitive combat (total turn-off, 2 out of 10). Loot system is not bad, though by the time you're able to craft proper gear most loot you find will be under-leveled so there's that.
I ended up switching to the easy mode just to get through the boring fights, still couldn't complete the game. It's not that game mechanics are bad per se, it's just that fights were tedious and it felt more like a chore.
This game is complete garbage, all I wanted was a top down RPG to rival diablo. Reasons this is a waste of time: the intro narration is boring, long and pointless, the art style is awful, too much color in things that shouldn't even colored at all. The music is atrocious, whoever composed the score should be arrested and charged with crimes against humanity. the gameplay is some weird combination of dragon age and mobile RTS games. it has an unnecessary intro sequence where you "control" a young version of the main character, which they call "you". The story is absolutely banal, except the tower concept, that was kinda stimulating. The overall gameplay is like a mobile game or past generation PC game, definitely not something that should be coming out in 2018.
SummaryTower of Time is a classic RPG with a unique real-time combat system where tactics are more important than equipment. Explore the Tower, buried underground for millennia, and uncover the history of times long gone and the mystery of why your land is dying.