Online game "Tower of Fantasy"

After the resounding success of Genshin Impact there was a fashion for anime games with "gachi" mechanics, and some started making outright clones of Genshin. The authors of the Chinese MMORPG Tower of Fantasy followed approximately the same path and also achieved great success - as evidenced by the 3 million pre-registrations before the global release and the 10-hour queues at the game's release. What are the similarities and differences with Genshin Impact and why is Tower of Fantasy so popular?

Tower of Fantasy is made in the same colorful anime stylistics and looks great, making a special bet on the picturesque landscapes and the appearance of the characters, especially the girls. The latter we also collect and collect through the same gacha-mechanics (this is such a variant of the loot boxes invented in Asia), and then switch between them.

And even some of the plot moves are similar. For example, just like in Genshin Impact, at the very beginning of the game during the spectacular roller we choose between a girl and a boy, which one of them will become the main character. And then the big epic adventure begins, which will lead us through many different regions, quests and events.

But the world and, of course, the plot are different. If in "Genshin" we see a fairly typical cheapo fantasy, in Tower of Fantasy the events unfold in a more serious sci-fi setting, namely on the planet Hades. Here in the 24th century mankind founded a huge colony, but after people tried to use the very Tower of Fantasy to seize the comet Mara and pump energy from it to the Omnium (which is very valuable and powerful), a disaster happened - the Omnium exploded, Hades was exposed to radiation and many people died. Those left behind survive largely due to special structures that suppress the radiation.

But still the living conditions on the planet are deteriorating, more and more mutants and even local analogues of zombaks - people who have lost their minds. Nevertheless, a Hicross organization has been created that continues to study Omnium to make it safer to use. It is opposed by a secret and oppositional structure, the Heirs of Aida. This confrontation is the main plot nerve, around which all events are twisted. And it is up to us to sort it all out in order to save the planet.

However, we often have to save specific people and witness their personal dramas. So, at the very beginning we meet a charming and brave girl Shirley, who helps us in everything. And then she almost sacrifices herself and falls into a coma - there is a danger that she will turn into one of the local zombies. And then for several story chapters we (and not only) are looking for a way to save her and bring her back to normal life. But some of the other characters we meet in the story can't be saved. And there's a lot of tragic stuff in the script in general. In that sense, the story in Tower of Fantasy looks more adult and serious, with more personal dramas.

In any case, there are a lot of events and content in general - 8 rather long story chapters, a bunch of side missions, orders to catch/destroy criminals, mini-games, gambling, racing and much more.

There are also individual, excellently crafted stories of some of the mimic girls - these are the ones we get and collect through gacha-mechanics. Now, these are always interesting, special quests - for example, in one of them we assemble our own music band, and in another we visit a remote region of ice, trying to remember sad events from the girl's past.

By the way, the regions here are really different - there are the aforementioned icy territories, where you can die of frost, and hot sandy deserts, and picturesque forests, fields and rivers, and huge cyberpunk cities. Ten minutes ago we were running away from a sand monster in the desert, and now we are flying in an air cab through a neon-filled futuristic megalopolis similar to the one seen in Razor Blade Runner.

Well, in general there's great dynamics, a lot of well staged cutscenes, often changing environments and gameplay itself. We do not only run and fight on the ground - often the story involves racing a bike, flying a jetpack, shooting enemies, or, for example, racing a glider to get away from the chase.

However, you don't get bored here, even if you don't specifically take any quests, but just explore the world. And there are a lot of similarities with Genshin Impact - even if you just run through the woods, fields and mountains, you constantly stumble upon something interesting. These can be camps and clusters of monsters guarding treasure chests (or rather, useful items and resources), or artifacts that are cunningly hidden and not easy to get to - you have to find a way to do it.

And also there are a lot of entrances to caves and ruins, where you need not only to fight, but also to solve puzzles. These dungeons open as the character reaches the right level - first you need to pass them on the normal difficulty, and then you can try and on a higher one. And for this you can try to attract other users to play in a group.

In Tower of Fantasy, there are many special challenges, operations, and modes designed for solo or cooperative play, where we encounter more serious resistance than in the story quests. Somewhere you need to clear the location of monsters and then defeat the final villain, somewhere we get a date with a strong boss, somewhere we are sent down waves of enemies and count the rating, and somewhere you need to conquer the tower floor by floor - the higher we climbed, the better the reward we get. And in Wormhole mode you need to defeat enemies and open the chests within the allotted time - after that the character starts to lose health.

In addition, there are the battles between the players - in the format of conventional duels or as part of the rating Apex League, which is balanced so that fighting users of the same level. And that's one of the main differences between Tower of Fantasy and Genshin Impact - it's practically a full-fledged MMORPG where there are battles between players, general chat, the ability to see other users running alongside you in some locations. And where there's also a guild system - by participating in related activities and quests, we accumulate glory points of our guild and get rewards for it.

Our main reward in Tower of Fantasy, as in virtually all online games, is experience, which allows us to upgrade our character. The higher his level, the more and more effectively we can improve weapons and equipment. It is the weapon and its power that primarily affects the combat rating of the character and its specialization and fighting style, because initially there is no division into classes.

And here there are differences from Genshin Impact. There we beat out new characters with the help of gacha and assemble a team of four fighters from them. In this case, each of them initially differs in their skills and preferred element. And in Tower of Fantasy we always play as one character, not in a squad. And switching between the received mimic girls, we basically just change the appearance.

Yes, the girls differ in rating and degree of rarity, they have their own biography, and you can develop a relationship with them by giving them different gifts (each likes something different). Reaching a certain level of liking, we will unlock unique mimic skills, which can be more battle-oriented (and therefore PvP) or world exploration (such as more efficient use of transport).

Still, these are not such fundamental differences, and everything depends more on the equipment and weapons used. You can take three types of killing weapons with you - they can be blasters and rifles as well as swords, spears and bows. They allow you to use different skills and also differ in their elemental specialization - dealing damage by cold, fire, electricity, and so on.

I.e. it's the analogue of Genshin Impact fighters: there you switch between characters, here you switch between weapons, there certain combinations of fighters and their elements give certain effects for the whole party, here too, if you choose several weapons of certain type, you can get the resonance effect and different bonuses from it. For example, if you use 2 support weapons, the whole squad in cooperative mode will heal more effectively.

In addition, there is also a system of modifiers for weapons (chips), which affect health, attack, resistance and critical damage. And if we collect the sets from several chips of the same type, we also get different useful effects like accumulation and increase of damage with each hit or more effective use of combo skills.

So, both weapons and chips have a rarity rating (the highest is SSR), and they need to be upgraded for various resources, which we collect throughout the game. You also need to increase their stardom, awaken and elevate the weapon - this allows you to strengthen it even more.

But the fights in which all this is used are a lot like the ones we see in Genshin Impact. And this is only for the best - because they are just as dynamic and spectacular, with excellent animation. As damage is dealt, skills are charged, the most powerful of which activate when you change weapons - they deal area damage, toss enemies in the air, set them on fire or freeze them, and so on. At the same time it is necessary to take into account the resistance of the enemies to one or another elemental damage and select weapons accordingly.

And what distinguishes the battles is the fact that in addition to the usual equipment you can use unique gadgets (relics) that can seriously affect the course of the battle - these are quantum cloaks that give invisibility, exoskeletons, hovering guns, shields that stop missiles, the ability to launch turrets and control drones and many other exotic things. And all of this, too, can be developed, increasing the class of the relic and its effectiveness. True, it's not easy to get these relics, either.

As in all the free-to-play games, we get some of the resources, materials and currencies needed to pump up equipment and unlock new items / characters for free, including for completing a combat pass, and some of the rarer ones can be bought for real money - as you can buy more advanced versions of the combat pass for your hard-earned money. But that said, Tower of Fantasy is different in that there's just a huge amount of free rewards that are given not only for quests, for completing daily and weekly activities, but literally for every sneeze and every useful action in the game, even just for exploring the world and getting achievements - so you have to spend 10 minutes each time just to collect these rewards.

Tower of Fantasy and Genshin Impact are indeed similar in many ways, but for fans of such games this is only for the best - they got another one as fascinating, beautiful and spectacular MMO with cute elaborated characters, a huge amount of content and a lot of opportunities for development and pumping. However, Tower of Fantasy still retains its face, it has unique features, here is a completely different setting, more adult and personal storyline and more attention is paid to multiplayer - at the same time there is almost perfect balance between single player and online. That's why the game has developed its own large, loyal audience, which at the same time can play and Genshin Impact - there's enough room in this market for two such great games.

Zarium. February 2023