You can swap between weapons at any time and combo their effects, just like flipping through Genshin characters. It has a stamina bar that limits how quickly you can execute a powerful attack or climb a mountain, but, on the test server I played on, it had plenty of give for whatever activity I was engaged in. Like Genshin, Tower of Fantasy is ultimately a game about whacking monsters with swords to make the numbers pop out. If, however, you're someone who finds clearing out sections of a map to be one of the most gratifying things in games, Tower of Fantasy's maximalist approach could be for you.

Tower of Fantasy's utilitarian approach to open world design overwhelms me. It instead goes for the Ubisoft approach where you're encouraged to squeeze the world and every system in it like a sponge. Tower of Fantasy is a messy game that doesn't have a clear vision for what makes it distinct from all the other options out there. The open world is stripped of the illusion that you'll stumble on secrets as you explore and the friction of having to do most of it on foot is largely gone too. It's nowhere near as elegant: Genshin-style environment-based puzzles that are tucked away in the world are replaced with a bunch of chests and interactable objects, and you have access to mounts that effectively shrink the entire map. Tower of Fantasy mirrors the boundless exploration of Genshin too. Your character's ability to frequently launch powered-up attacks keeps skirmishes exciting, but, like Genshin, it'll take a bit before you find a groove that will remain engaging for the hundreds of hours the game expects you to spend with it. The lack of character-specific abilities in Tower of Fantasy puts a lot of pressure on the weapons to fill that role, and without a lot of time to experiment, combat can be disjointed. Shoulder-mounted cannons and dual-wielding pistols don't have the same oomph of Genshin's superpowered team-ups, who might suck enemies into a tornado so an archer can obliterate them with frozen arrows. I couldn't find a flow with the weapons I picked up in my few hours with the game.

Tower of fantasy 2022