Tower of Time

I don't recommend games; even less do I write reviews. This game deserves it. I only give 5 stars to the greatest game ever made, and that is Baldur's Gate 2; but this game is worthy of every one of 4 stars. Surprisingly, the story is engaging and the characters fun and appealing. It is a slow start, and can be frustrating. Make sure to do the challenges, and get the levels you need before going back to the tower crawl. I say "levels" but there is no "character leveling" at least by experience points. You attain gold and "blueprints"; then take them back to the city screen, and train up your characters. It is new and refreshing. The combat system is the gem, and makes the game shine. It is a joy to play this game. It is not too fast (RTS) or too slow (turn based) not that either of those are bad, but Towers of Time hits the sweet spot, you can slow game time to like 75% of normal speed (and you will need to sometimes) and hit your abilities and adjust positions. I will buy the sequel, and I will look out for this company's new games, this Tower of Time is a marvel, and I'm excited to be playing it. Bravo, well done.

I am giving this game 3* because how awesome the developers' attitude is, and because it was quite fun for the first 5 hours or so. But it gets boring quickly, and would easily be 2 stars, if I had to remain objective. To explain what I mean, I will have to spoil this game, so be warned. SPOILERS BEGIN HERE Lots of people praise the story, so let's begin there. Initially, this presents itself as a classic fantasy cliche, but soon, you will find out that in the ancient times, people had trains, planes, and space rockets. A race of omnipotent beings from another universe, who devour all matter and energy and are powerful enough to extract energy from supermassive black holes by going below their event horizon (yes, really...), opened up a small wormhole, scattered some energy crystals on the planet's surface, hoping that people would absorb them and use their power to perform magic, which widens the wormhole, eventually enabling the aliens to come into this universe and devour it. All of this is dumped onto the player in the first 20% of the game, and it only goes more ridiculous from there. A different story for the sake of being different, a fantasy/sci-fi merge that was completely unneeded, is how I would describe ToT's storytelling. Add to that the obligatory "plot twist" that you can see from miles away. So, what saves this, you might ask? Is it the exploration? Is it the combat? Sadly, neither. Exploration is on rails most of the time, it includes obligatory back-tracking, and combat starts strong but becomes a boring chore quickly. You see, there is no tactics in ToT besides the "keep tanks at front" classic. Every fight is simply a gear & level check. Either you are strong enough to win, or you aren't, and that's it. On top of this, ToT also suffers from being overly long. Developers of this game craved to create a different experience, something unusual, but in the process of making that, they forgot that they actually need to craft a good game.

It is not often that a game has enough original lore and mystery to allow me to suspend my disbelief and take a game seriously. This game is greater than the sum of its parts, combining tactical combat with resource management and exploration with a world that feels lost and real at the same time. Story: Unlike other reviewers, I don't like stories that trie to make evil good and good evil. It was refreshing to have a strong male character, who interacts respectfully with the female, rather than the endless parade of bumbling, effeminate males cravenly cowtowing to the super-masculine female. I'm going through the lore and carefully exploring the secrets of each level to discover the mysteries of what destroyed this world, in the hopes that we can find a away to save it. Combat: Rewards thoughtful, time-slowing strategy and positioning. Allows you to draw many of your own CC spells in the way you best see fit for the terrain and enemies that you are facing. Highly recomend playing this on Epic difficulty and with the time-slow, rather than the pause. Crafting: I just unlocked crafting and haven't had a chance to get into it yet, I'll update when I've explored that more.

Very few games have affected me as much as this one. By the end I was emotionally involved with both the characters and the story, and the finale is a real kicker. I hope intensely for a sequel in which I can meet the cast again. I agree with some who consider the writing a little clunky. I did, at first. It seemed awkward and somewhat cliched. However, as the story progressed I became increasingly fascinated by the blend of traditional RPG and Sci-Fi elements, and my desire to find out how it would play out became intense. Early on it seems that the story is 'tacked on' and superfluous, but by the end I found it completely engrossing. I would suggest not judging it by the early stages. The game itself is not quite AAA standard, but it works well, crashed only about twice during my playthrough (which may not have been the fault of the game), and is very well thought out and executed. Your party 'crawls' through the mysterious inverted tower in fairly traditional style, seeking to uncover its mysteries and what lies at the bottom. At any time you can exit temporarily to a 'town', where character upgrades are performed, using gold rather than experience points. I played on normal difficulty and never had a shortage of gold - I was able to upgrade all of the characters to very powerful standards. Of the characters you recruit you can take any four into combat, which makes for great variety in battle tactics. The battles themselves I found highly enjoyable, making extensive use of the excellent slow-time system as I am not a fan of frantic clicking. There are many ways to approach combat, and there is always a way to win. Some of the battles are truly epic and I felt a huge sense of achievement winning them. To sum up. It's not perfect (what is?), but the exploration/combat/crafting/enchanting/loot variety are all excellent and combined with an intriguingly original story to create one of the best game experiences I've had. Highly recommended. 'H' key reveals loot!

This was a pretty good little action RPG with some interesting design elements. My real beef comes with the ending. I won't reveal it but I will say that I pretty much hated it. I usually love a twist in the tale but this one just irritated me. I cant say much more without saying too much and there are probably those who think it was a neat little surprise...but I wasnt one of them.