Tower of Time

Tower of Time is very atmospheric. I was pleasantly surprised by the game’s mood, the beautiful environments and music. In the upside-down tower, you find a skeleton in a skiff floating on a dark lake, and see detailed manufacturing plants in the far distance long before you descent between the machines. The gameplay reminds me of Dungeon Siege from 2002. Your growing party presses onward on a linear path while fighting endless mobs. Combat takes place in arenas, which support simplistic AI pathfinding in a tactical game of positioning. It is not about violence and bloodshed. Huge axes swing without sound or impact. That does not mean that the combat is bad, quite the contrary. Encounters are handcrafted. The result is balanced combat that becomes progressively harder. You find optional fights that are challenging and offer interesting loot. Some of the stronger loot breaks the typical rpg rule of more is better. An item can drain life, but provide a large decrease to casting delay. This allows a glass cannon build or shifting healing from passive individual healing to placing party healing totems. The balance brakes later in the game. The variety of options allows builds that are too powerful. Spells that hit an area with damage over time become obsolete. Where epic difficulty provides an enormous challenge early on, requiring varied party setup and slow time to survive, it provides hardly any challenge on later levels. The game tells you to play on a just doable difficulty. This might be true, but also replaces flexibility by min-maxing. At high difficulty, the choice between a physical axe and fire sword is replaced by picking the weapon with most penetration. The story deserves some mention. It is unique and starts by complementing the atmosphere. I was enthralled, till the Organthe. From there the story derails, completely. I found it bogus as hell, and worse. After completing the story (100+ hours), I’m left confused about all the non-sense.

Good gameplay that overstays its welcome a bit. Honestly, the game could have been a little shorter, it becomes repetitive at one point. However, I am not going to lower the score because of that. Also, the game could have paced its difficulty better. Hard is not really hard, it's more normal. Story becomes better as the game progresses. Dialogue could have been better but I understand the limitations of an indie game. Good job devs, for a fair price you get 40-50 hours of very fun gameplay.

I really enjoyed this game even before I found out that the elvish conversations actually start with a greeting in Quenya. Now I am in love with it.

This is a phenomenal game. If you like tactical RPG's, I highly recommend it. I've put 70 hours in, some on normal, some on hard, most on epic difficulty and I am now heading to the 6th level of the tower, so I still have a ways to go to finish the game. This game has given me some of the most epic and satisfying battles I've EVER played in a tactical RPG; some battles can last for 30+ minutes and include a lot of tactical micromanagement of your characters. The game does real-time with pause right by giving players a limited number of skills and different maps to fight on. The problem with a lot of cRPG's in my opinion is that there's too much choice: too many items, too many skills, too many spells, too many characters, too much dialogue. This game follows a less-is-more approach and I found it to be just right. 4 characters to command in battle and equip is just right. The only complaint I have about the game is that I found it to be too easy. I am playing on the hardest difficulty (epic), and by the time I reached level 4 of the tower, I started intentionally handicapping myself by playing with only 3 characters because the game got too easy. Even with 3 characters, I am still winning battles too convincingly so I might have to drop down to 2. I wish the devs would make another difficulty level for the most hardcore fans. I also think that RPGlite mode should start where the regular game starts because by starting directly at the tower, the player misses a lot of important chests and equipment that can be gathered beforehand and there's a really tough boss fight coming up and your party has very little gear. Replay value is good if you are willing to get a little creative. I'm going to replay on RPGlite mode with all different characters for more variety and challenge. Thanks to the developers!

Rare that I would describe a game as "Beautiful" - but this one definitely deserves the description. The scenery is amazing, really well crafted, it's a pleasure to play. The pausing / slo motion thing is a little strange to begin to with, but it's ok once you get used to it. Wide range of difficulty and play style, so far there is nothing I don't like. This competes with the AAA titles and in a lot of cases surpasses them.