Hello everyone, today I'm back to talk about another new game that was recently released, Tower of Fantasy.
Tower of Fantasy is a free to play MMO gacha game thats widely compared to another game already on the market, Genshin Impact. Most Genshin players/waifu collectors (and content creators) are flocking to Tower of Fantasy to find out how this new competitor fares in comparison to Genshin.
Spoiler Alert: Its gacha is alot more forgiving compared to Genshin, but we'll talk more about that later.
As someone who grinded Genshin Impact for the past 4 months or so and ran out of content, I thought I'd check out Tower of Fantasy and see whether it lives up to its hype.
However, as you can probably tell by now, the theme of the games are quite different. Genshin focuses more on a fantasy world, with magic and dragons, while Tower of Fantasy is more science fiction and gives off a more techno/dystopian, post-apocalyptic feel. It's even mentioned in its lore, where 80% of the population was killed off when an experiment by humans to capture a comet in order to harness its energy goes horribly wrong and leaves the planet in a radioactive mess. Theres apparently also time travel(?) based on what I've been seeing in the main story quest.
I've been to 2 towns thus far, and the towns are all built using bits and pieces of scrap metal. There is, however, a technologically advanced city(?) in the sky, where the governing body that rules over most of the surface world is. You have to take a teleporter in order to even reach that place.
The game starts you off with a little cutscene, where a male and a female character are ambushed by monsters. Time then freezes for no reason, and you then pick the gender of your character.
The other character that you didn't pick (the other gender) then splits up with you, never to be seen again. (at least, not where im at in the story) I like to think that they were sacrificed to the monsters in order to bus time for us to escape. I picked the female character, of course, because gacha games = waifu simulator xD
A few cutscenes and a short tutorial later, we finally get to the good part, customising your character!! Theres a few presets you can use, but you can also go all in and create your personalised waifu. Or if you're a hardcore genshin player, you can also make your characters similar to the Genshin units. Being a total newb at customising characters, I went with the short white hair preset and just changed my character's outfit.
We also get introduced to Mi-a, our very own android companion. Much cuter than Paimon (from Genshin, who travels the world with you. Is emergency food) but Mi-a part android/robot so she can't be emergency food :(
She also follows you around in the overworld, how cool is that?! In comparison, we almost never see Paimon unless its in a cutscene, where she does all the talking for us
(edit: in the span of me writing this post, i made alot more progress and realised that she doesnt always follow you around. Also realised that I procrastinate too much and should probably get this post out before it becomes an old game xD)
Speaking of which, unlike Genshin, your main character is voiced in this game, so you can hear him/her interact with the NPCs. In genshin, paimon is basically the main character at this point, and you're just following her around. She's the point of contact between you and literally everyone else 😆
I'm rambling on about Genshin too much, but can you really blame me? They've been compared since Tower of Fantasy was in beta. There were a few other games being compared as well, such as ZZZ, or Zenless Zone Zero, which is developed by the same devs as Genshin Impact, but is still not released yet.
Gacha System
Lets move on to the gacha, shall we? This is the main focus of many gacha players, and will make or break the game for them. To me, the best gacha is one that does not make players feel like they are being forced to pull in order to progress, but for players to pull for weapons that they want to play / enjoy playing.
In Tower of Fantasy, instead of characters, the gacha system ONLY allows you to roll for weapons. These weapons range from R, to SR and finally SSR. They're the genshin equivalent of 3-star, 4-star and 5-star weapons respectively.
You maybe wondering, how then do we get new characters to use? Well, the answer to this question is in the form of a cool little cutscene in the game. i'm a dumbass and forgot to screenshot/record it, so I'll explain it in words.
Going in line with the techno/dystopian vibes, you gain access to a database with many powerful fighters and their weapons. You can download these data, and use it to gain knowledge in using the weapons. You can also take the form of the fighter whose weapon data you downloaded Their way of 'downloading" is, of course, through the gacha system.
These are the skins I have unlocked currently. Each skin corresponds to a SR weapon or SSR weapon.
You can equip 3 weapons at a time. However, you can only equip 1 skin at a time. Your skin does not change when you switch weapons.
draw weapons. each weapon linjked to a chara. can use said chara skin as your main character.
gacha system: black nucleus- f2p, no guaranteed pity, can farm from world
gold nucleus- guaranteed ssr at 80 pulls, butneed to buy w dark crystal(premium currency, from events etc)
There are 3 types of weapon banners you can pull on: Black, Gold, and Red
Black Nucleus Banner
The lowest odds of getting anything good. This banner is pulled with using black nucleus, which can be gotten via in game exploration. They are renewable (as far as i know), which means you can keep farming them. The downside, however, is that they have no guaranteed SSR or SR (ie. no pity system) so whether you get anything good is entirely up to luck.
Gold Nucleus Banner
This is the same banner as the black nucleus banner, with the same weapons available. The only difference is that you are guaranteed one SR every 10 pulls, and one SSR every 80 pulls. Gold nucleus are rarer than black nucleus, but you can buy it using dark crystal ( the premium currency of the game, can be farmed through daily/weeky missions). There are currently events where they give you a generous amount of Gold nucleus to pull weapons, though they might just be launch rewards.
Red Nucleus banner (Limited Banner)
This banner is usually only up for a limited amount of time, and brings with it a limited time weapon. This weapon is ONLY available through this banner, not the gold/black nucleus banner. Whenever you get a SSR through this banner, there is an increased chance that it is the limited weapon/character which in this case is Nemesis. After the banner ends, it will usually be replaced with another banner with another limited time character. (based on my Genshin experience, not sure if it works like that here) You will NOT be able to get Nemesis again until her banner returns next time. Like gold nucleus, you also receive some red nucleus just by playing the game. red nucleus costs the game as gold nucleus if bought using dark crystals.
And finally, a little flex from my 10 pull in the Limited Banner. I didnt get Nemesis, but I did get another SSR which is good enough for me xD
The splash art for the weapons/characters look pretty sick as well!
Finally, some fun things i found in the game that I'd like to share
Theres vehicles(mounts) in this game!! They arent very good for uneven terrain, but they look pretty cool ( fire effects not included lol, they're from my weapon)
Looking forward to unlocking that unicorn horse thing in the bottom right owo
For some reason King from Tower of Fantasy reminds me of Diluc from Genshin Impact lol, the red hair definitely looks similar
Everyones favorite PIZZA
Ah yes, in the midst of all the chaos in the cutscene, I spotted my favorite fast food chain, BFC (can you spot it? its near the lower middle area)
What Tower of Fantasy does better than Genshin:
There's more multiplayer going on in the game, we all share one world ( although there's many different servers which cannot cross play, you and your friends have to coordinate and join 1 server to play together). Theres different types of events and world bosses which you can run with your friends ( and/or randoms) and spend your stamina on, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, there is PvP!
To be honest, my level isnt high enough yet for PvP since I havent been playing much since launch, and I spend my time getting sidetracked and exploring the map more than actually clearing the Main Story and leveling up lmao, but i've seen enough videos of it to want to try it! Tho I'll probably get my ass kicked in by some pro beta player
Speaking of which, one helpful function of the ToF map is that chests are labeled on the map, which makes it easier for people going for 100% exploration on maps, in comparison to Genshin's chest finder, which is locked behind weeks' worth of reputation quests. It's not as bad as it sounds, its just that reputation quests in Genshin refresh weekly so you have to wait quite a while to unlock that chest finder gadget. (I'm talking about the treasure compasses btw, in case Genshin players get confused by my choice of words😅)
Why are you comparing these games so much? They're pretty different!
Now, I know that I shouldn't compare both games so much, since they're pretty different in playstyle. But they're both gacha games at its core, and I think many ToF players might have played Genshin at least once in their lives before, so people who play both games (including me) have a tendency to compare everything in this game to Genshin.
This is especially true for people like me, who have a limited amount of time to play, so we tend to compare and focus more on the game we think is more fun or has more features.
Fun fact: I recently just started my uni course! So I've been trying to adapt to uni life, which means lesser game time and more work to do :(
Thats all for today, thanks for reading! I'm writing this as a form of procrastination from my school work, and I think its finally time to start on my work now xD
Feel free to add me if you play Tower of Fantasy / Genshin Impact and are on the same server as me! My Tower of Fantasy UID is 1602055707 (if you look closely theres one screenshot with a different UID, thats because I was rerolling characters and took a screenshot halfway 😅) and my Genshin UID is 804857183 (asia server)
I'm also thinking of making a post about Genshin Impact and my progress so far (aka i spent a lot of time on Genshin and I wanna share it with you guys 😆), let me know if yall would be interested!
Credits: the images used are my own screenshots of the games and/or from the games' (Tower of Fantasy and Genshin Impact) official website