Tower of Time

I'm a big fan of the classic real time with pause rpg's as well as the more recent ones however this game is nothing like Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale, Pillars or Kingmaker. What you get is a game that is totally linear with pre generated characters, pretty crummy unbalanced combat and RNG. While in the classics of old if you got stuck you could change your party, your build level up, buy items, or just go somewhere else and comeback later here when you get stuck which you will, you will find yourself with two options, keep trying the same battle over and over again until maybe you might get lucky or lower the difficulty which is a choice no gamer wants to make. It looks fantastic and the story seems promising but I'm just finding it extremely unpleasant and unrewarding to play.

I'm 12 hours in and so far performance is sweet. Graphics are beautiful. Music(OMG) just stop and listen to level 4. Gameplay (even crafting) is intuitive. Characters and skill progression are straight forward and fun to use. Micromanaging 4 characters doesn't feel like a hassle. Maps and puzzles are well thought out, but not so complex I had to stop and look something up. Normal mode might should be considered "Story" mode. If you like to have the best of the best on everyone, all the time, you may want to crank it up a notch. I didn't know I had been looking for this game.

In order to make it short, it's a great and solid RPG with RTS elements. I ended up with ~36 hours gameplay and I'm satisfied. :) If you like to have a challenge, directly start it on hard difficulty. At least for me the beginning wasn't that easy but later on a big part of the fights just felt like a distraction, because they have become to easy.

This Dungeon Crawler is a blast. It seems everyone is a game critic these days. Take the reviews (including mine) w/a grain of salt. I played this in between Vaporum and The Legend of Grimrock II. It was a nice break and took me all week to play through it. Buy it on sale and you have nothing to lose but a week of your time. lol

It looks and sounds quite good, but the game itself is just an average RPG whose elements you've seen before in a 1000 others. It is rather linear as well, which is minus point for me. Another minus, you have to use the supplied characters, you can't fully create your own. It's basically similar to "Torchlight" without the tons of junk and is slower paced. Levelling up is rather pathetic also. Oh and the rigid camera angles do not help. I played for one evening then the next decided to call it a day when I hit two "impossible" battles. I could have restarted on an easier difficulty setting (I started on "normal" - I don't recommend you do this) but I could see this problem happening again later in the game, and it just didn't make me want to keep on playing to see what's next. I also have many other as yet untried games to get around to - life's too short too waste too much of it on Tower of Time. "Tower of Don't Give it Much Time" would be a better title! :D In just one word, it's "humdrum". And that's why it was given away on a free offer a while ago........ do NOT pay the full £19.49 for it.