Tower of Time

Got this during this past winter sale for free. I appreciate that there seems to be a lot of love put into this game with the scenario and the design assets - but the game is just really boring. I can't say I'm really inspired enough by the story to continue on past this first hour or so I've sunk into the game. Additionally, it's really weird to me that everyone is supposed to be in hard times and there's no sun or food or fun and DOOM! is upon everyone. But then, I look at my characters in my inventory screen and they have some fat, full faces. In contrast, I think of Summoner where a lot of the characters were in a ravaged world and they absolutely looked the part - gaunt, skeletal peasants scrambling against an empire. The combat system is interesting, but ultimately felt a bit lacking to me. The main fighter nearly singing all of his combat lines is both incredibly hilarious (unintentionally funny) and also super cringe inducing. I gave it a shot, was left wanting more. While I also wasn't that impressed with Pathfinder, it was a wee bit better than this game. The standard bearers for CRPGs will still be Fallout, the Infinity Engine games, and some of the early, 3D BioWare titles like KoToR.

If you like RPGs for their stories, quests and dialog, this game does a decent job. It's not something you will never forget, it's not a ridiculous story that just serves as a filler between combats either. If you like RPGs for their combat, this game has interesting ideas but fails to use them properly. The promise of challenging combat that will force you to think out of the box and adapt your strategy to many encounters is unmet. Encounters favor DPS by design (mostly because new ennemies spawn regulary and you want to kill a wave before the next one spawns). It's challenging for whatever time you need to get used to its gameplay, understand the stats and know what your characters can do, but once you've reached this point, nothing survives long enough for any tactic to matter, even on highest difficulty. Besides, if the game was really challenging, a combat log would be necessary to really understand how things work. There is none. If you like RPGs for character customization and building, this game has no "roleplay" customization. You control pre-generated characters with their own appearance and personnality, so it's more an adventure game than a RPG on that part. It has a simple but effective stats system. Itemization, on the other hand, is a bit messy. The most important stats are on magical properties that are completely random, even on crafted items. If combat was really challenging, this would force you to reload to get the item you want. If you like RPGs for their graphics, sound and music, this game does a good job on that part. Overall, it's a good game, but with several big design flaws that make it repetitive and boring after the first few hours.

That was a surprise

The game is marvelous. It's polished to the highest degree and very addictive.

I liked it, but some of the game's pacing such as combat can be more annoying than enjoyable.