Игрок 7690·Не рекомендует·122 ч в игре

Combining classic fantasy setting with sci-fi elements in an RPG is always a dangerous move, yet there are successful counterexamples such as Final Fantasy or Wizardry. This however still makes this mixing off-putting to some - what makes a difference is the plot that helps overlooking this unusual hybrid of genres (assuming that people who LOVE this specific mixture form a minority). Tower of Time succeeds at both: alongside an interesting plot, there's a well-crafted world (although just a tiny fragment of it is presented), furthermore an explanation is given for the mentioned genre blending. It's also noteworthy, that we play as an 'outsider', who's not present conventionally, but watching from above by being telepathically linked to our heroes, influencing them. All of this provides a strong basis to a game that I would normally love, considering it also uses the combat system of Baldur's Gate - we can pause the game at any time during battles and assign orders without pressure. What's wrong then? Sadly the game suffers from significant problems at its very core: the gameplay consists of a series of rather similar arena fights, there's a flawed progression system, which is dependent on gold - the game's currency - and there's a tiered equipment formula. The low number (4) of equippable skills further deteriorate the arena combat. These flaws are not apparent from the get go, but they become evident, as we progress - ruining the entire game in the process. We are in a grim, post-apocalyptic future, after an age of advanced technology followed by magic. No one knows what went wrong, as people are fighting against the bad weather, for food and the previously amassed knowledge can't be accessed anymore. As a child who visits the titular tower - a mysterious, gigantic construction, turned upside-down; we encounter a being who claims we are chosen. Years later we return, now as a leader of a settlement, but instead of personally descending down below, we send 2 of our trusted servants/soldiers to explore the tower and its secrets. The plot effectively captivates us by pouring just a small amount of information at a time (this kept me playing the game through), but at ~2/3s through the game we can pretty much guess where it's heading to - except for the uncreative ending. The gameplay can be divided into 2 parts: exploration & combat. In the vast majority of games these come hand in hand and aren't separated, here, whenever we encounter an enemy (basically anyone we meet) the game switches to arena-battle mode. While the exploring part in the beautiful environment is delightful, these arena battles grow old fast: we are going to fight hundreds of battles of the same kind within (very) slightly different-looking arenas where only the newly acquired characters provide some refreshment - for a short time. Most of these arenas have the exact same layouts with the only difference being their backgrounds that changes as reach other floors. In addition to these, we have to do unlockable, 'optional' (we are forced to) challenges in order to gain gold, the game's currency required to increase the levels of our characters and these battles are almost exactly the same as the ones we fought before... Of the 7 characters we can only deploy 4 at a time (except for the final battle), each with 4 active skills (8 in total)... a restriction that makes combat even less engaging, since we don't need to change them at all, as certain skills are usually more effective than others regardless of the current situation. During the exploration part these characters usually have a say depending on their personalities, although seldomly they tend to contradict their previous opinions. At certain points the game asks us to help them make a decision, which we can decline - in this case the choice is randomly made. These however have no consequences other than our characters 'alignment' shift which only provides them a minor bonus/penalty to their main ability. This simplification of things undermines the very essence of a true RPG. The combat system itself takes place in real time, which we can pause to give orders, but even here there are mistakes as the overlapping portraits and certain other objects can cause misclicks, so double-checking is advised. Some status effects are not shown, such as the one that reflects damage back to us, leading to cheap deaths. Due to the tiered (1-5) equipment system we are on a constant lookout for newer (and stronger) items to match the increasingly more powerful enemy types. Since loot is wildly random and there are no vendors, we must rely on a forge, where we can create lower level items and upgrade them with coloured crystals. Not finding proper items can get us seriously stuck if we are unlucky. Thus saving and reloading is advised when opening chests - another thing I don't like. While only purple equipment can be enchanted, blue and green items have more slots through which they can be improved, making fully upgraded green items stronger than actual rare, purple items... there are also unique/gold items, which can be powerful, but most are useless due to some serious drawbacks. As we get no experience for anything, we gain levels by training in town (it's just a screen, so we don't get to see how the surface world actually looks like) requiring blueprints (?) to be found first and the game's currency: gold. It's rather costly, so we can't level everyone up, even if we do the challenges (again, saving & reloading helps, so we might find a bit more gold in chests). Difficulty is scalable with some achievements tied to 'epic'. It should be noted however that after getting these, we can lower it for the rest of the floor, so we don't waste time unnecessarily. There are 2 difficulty spikes around early and late midgames (especially if we fail to find proper weapons - there is a practically impossible fight against an orc leader, the ones uploaded on the internet are from a previous version of the game) with the endgame being very easy as our characters get maxed out. Fair warning: at a certain point each of our warriors are put to the test in single combat, so even if we don't use them, they need to be at least level 10 (+ decent equipment) in order to succeed. As we descend lower, below floor 5 the number of quests decrease along with the levels' layout becoming more mazelike and the number of spelling mistakes increases. Throughout floor 4 loading times are longer for some strange reason and on floor 5 the same note can be found 2x. Graphics of the environment are great, we get to see some magnificent vistas as we gaze down at the rest of the floor in the depth in front of us, where we can actually set foot in later. Sadly, the fact that the tower is upside down (meaning we should be walking on the ceiling) is only visible on one of the floors (even there it's just a small fragment). The story is presented through nicely drawn still images, there are no cutscenes whatsoever. Character models don't look nearly as good as the environtment and their movement seems clumsy. Music is usually enjoyable, but the ones played during arena fights quickly become tedious to listen to. Tower of Time generates ambivalent feelings: the bad ones however overpower the positive experiences, letting us down more and more the further we go. The combat system built on a flawed design choice makes battles a tedious pastime and these take up the majority of the gameplay - especially if we play on the hardest difficulty. I would only recommend it for its story, but even that's a letdown eventually, so I would advise against playing it through. PROS + detailed, interesting story + some decent visuals CONS - arena combat with similar battles - levelling-, loot system - tiered item system can cause serious difficulties - only 4 skills we can actively use - the 2nd half feels rushed - character models RATING 2.5/10

Игрок 1546·Не рекомендует·8 ч в игре

I have to give this one a no, sadly. The devs tried some new stuff here and there and I generally like when games try something different but none of it landed for me. Combat is real time with pause, but it takes place on instanced maps that get recycled constantly, and you'll be fighting the same enemies repeatedly. There's no exp in the game, leveling requires you to level buildings and then pay gold to train. This makes fighting feel pointless since the rewards are low. You can craft gear, but the base stats are identical no matter the rarity you choose to craft. You can tier up gear rarity but it's limited by the number of single use forges you can find. You can enchant items but only if they're purple rarity, gold rarity is generally above purple but will either already have an enchant or have no slot for one. You can buff stats on gear, but lower tier gear has more slots making the ideal seem to be crafting low gear to buff as much as possible and rank it up with forges, but that is incredibly tedious. There's an "Alignment" system that is more just a relationship simulator, the game will force you into situations where your party will disagree how to solve it, forcing you to pick one option and piss some people off. If the relationship with that person goes negative they actually debuff your team, this system is trash and the game is worse for having it. The music is uninspired and I'm pretty sure there were only 3 songs I heard, if that. The game just doesn't have any good gameplay to latch onto. You'll spend lot of time walking through the dungeon just picking up gold and looting chests. The chest loot will about the same as what you can craft so it feels like busy work. Then you'll get into a fight with enemies you've probably fought a dozen times, on a map you've probably seen 3-4 times at least, using the same 4 character with 4 skills each you've gotten used to using. Eventually you'll stumble somewhere and you're characters will dialogue for a bit, then you move on. Honestly I put the difficulty down to story fairly quickly to shorten the fights but I still couldn't make it through this game. I realized I was just mindlessly clicking around trying to move along, I can just as easily read the story online and play something with combat I actually enjoy. Also a nitpick for the end so people can just ignore it if they want. The game keeps mentioning that the tower you're descending is actually upside down. Some event flipped it in the past so you're actually walking on the ceiling. The devs did NOTHING to make this feel like the case, the ceiling apparently has sewer grates, bridges, and stairs built into it. All the doors and bookshelves are built to be flush with the ceiling. It was really annoying when they kept mentioning that as part of the mystery and they put no effort into selling the effect.

Игрок 9863·Не рекомендует·34 ч в игре

Such a bizzare game. They made a dungeon crawler where the story is actually quite good and worth watching, but combat is a miserable slog of repeating "enemies spawn in portals and rush you" from start to end of the game, and it gets boring very quickly. If you want to enjoy it, just play on the lowest difficulties so you can "skip" combat, and if you are here for interesting and challenging combat, look for a different game.

Игрок 5032·Рекомендует·10 ч в игре

Mechanically, it's simple. Story wise? Best written game from a small studio i have ever played. Would recommend on that alone.

Игрок 0310·Рекомендует·56 ч в игре

This gets a thumbs up, but only just. Some of the writing is very good, and some is fairly bad. Writing the dwarf to try to imply some sort of phonetic-based scottish accent is so much worse than even a bad scottish accent if it were actually voiced. The latter half of the game relies way too heavily on a mystery box of who the villain(s) actually are, and given you have no actual choice in how you progress through the main story just ends up being tiresome. I quite enjoyed the combat, then I disliked it, then got to like it again once I focused skills and crafted some supporting gear. Final verdict: decent, but not amazing.

Игрок 3585·Рекомендует·38 ч в игре

This game needed a lot lot more time in the oven. It feels like the middle levels/floors were made separately and were just mashed together. Game has a lot of issues. Please read the longer negative reviews for them. But if you could get past them, there is a good game here. -The characters are interesting and makes you listen to what they have to say. You do start to care about them. -The world building is somewhat deep but becomes convoluted later on as they try to put in as much content as possible. -The story will keep you pushing (though looking back, it has a lot of plot holes and inconsistencies). -Character attributes can easily be reverted at a small cost. Skill point assignment can be adjusted anytime for free. The key word here is potential. But also content creep. In my non-developer opinion, this game should be half as long and they should have focused on tighter combat, visual story telling (show don't tell), cutscenes and world building. I don't finish games I don't like but the final half of this game was a slog. If the developers do remake (not remaster) this game with enough time and budget, I would come back just to see if they realised their full vision for this game.

Игрок 6958·Не рекомендует

Convoluted tactical battles So, you are free to run around but positioning matters and there are skills to use and a pause menu. Have you played Total War games? Now imagine you only have a few units and the worst UI possible in a Total War battle. That's basically it.

Игрок 1020·Рекомендует·79 ч в игре

Tower of Time is an excellent RPG that genuinely rewards exploration and curiosity. What impressed me most is the level design. The environments are carefully crafted, visually appealing and full of places worth exploring, with secrets, side paths and details that make you want to look around rather than simply move from one fight to the next. It doesn’t have the scale or style of something like Darksiders 2, but it achieves the same important thing: the world feels designed to be explored. The combat is tactical and engaging, while the character progression, classes, abilities and equipment provide plenty of depth without becoming unnecessarily overwhelming. And then there is the story, which ended up being one of the highlights for me. It is genuinely interesting and gives the whole journey a satisfying sense of purpose. I actually enjoyed it enough to play it twice, the second time without any walkthrough — which says a lot about how much I enjoyed figuring things out for myself. A fantastic RPG with great exploration, strong level design, satisfying tactical combat and an excellent story. Highly recommended.