ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 มิ.ย. 2024
- I swear, it's by sheer coincidence that this video released on Wuthering Wave's launch date. Anyways, welcome to the fourth volume of the Atrocious Gacha Reviews. Today's game will be one that I'm sure a lot of players are familiar with: Tower of Fantasy. Originally marketed as the "Genshin Killer", Hotta Studio's newest project has you exploring the world of Aida and uncovering its secrets. However, 3 years later, does the game still live up to its name? Let's find out in this video, where I played the game for 1 month, and am ready to discuss its aspects in detail.
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Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
0:48 - Overview
5:09 - Story Preview
9:16 - Gameplay
14:06 - Progression
19:30 - Gacha & Monetization
27:54 - Presentation
31:59 - Late game content
33:56 - Fear of Missing Out
35:27 - Variety & Content frequency
38:09 - Final rating
Music used:
pastebin.com/SM6sWqhd
Outro music:
• Special Record Vol.2 -...
References:
Saint Quartz Asset Theft post:
/ so_the_star_grit_icon_...
Saint Quartz Asset Theft post 2:
/ tower_of_fantasy_new_e...
Why Tower of Fantasy Failed on China - By Nerfa Me
• Why Tower Of Fantasy F...
PvP event discussion post:
/ thoughts_on_the_pvp_ev...
PvP event footage:
• NEW 2V2 MEGA PVP EVENT...
Hide and seek event footage:
• Easy points farm in Un...
Hide and seek event footage 2:
• Hide and Seek Full Gam...
PvP event footage 2:
• Event PVP "Mega Arena"...
World Boss footage 1:
• Tower of Fantasy not a...
World Boss footage 2:
• Tower of Fantasy gamep...
World Boss footage 3:
• Tower of Fantasy: Crow...
4.0 trailer:
• Tower of Fantasy - New...
ToF Lore footage:
• The World of Tower of ...
Player Activity tracking post:
/ tof_global_activity_re...
Fruit Barrage event post:
/ fruit_barrage_is_the_b...
What is Pay to Win - By Josh Strife Hayes:
• What is Pay To Win?
#gacha #toweroffantasy
v1.0 - เกม
![Fc ครับ ขอแนะนำให้รู้จักกับ "น้องเปียโน" l [Nickynachat]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/HQU6Q_IYTLo/mqdefault.jpg)
Fun fact, a large part of the spread of the "self-proclaimed 'Genshin killer'" idea actually came from people on ToF's Discord server pretending to be staff and handing out stolen keys to the game pre-release. This was then reported as being from actual developers by a BilliBilli user who got sued by ToF's parent company for misinformation.
I don't even like ToF, but the fact that their most infamous tagline was completely made up is still horrible.
And also during a time where people caught on to "genshin killer" meme where alot of game company start submitting their open world game idea and Tower of Fantasy is the closest for people to memed on. And also content farmers like Tectone just keep making vid about Genshin killer.
1)The reason they were sued had nothing to do with them saying "ToF is a genshin killer"
But because they were giving chinese ID to foreigner (mainly Russian) to play ToF in China, which is a massive crime since China lock foreigner out and distributing online ID, is essentially usurping people identity. And they were doing this massive crime while themselves passing as ToF devs, which obviously, was really bad publicity to have criminal pass as your dev
But what you said is pure disinformation
2) ToF never tried to fight Genshin Killer renown, and couldn't have either way, because even if they never user this specific phrasing, there is several instance of them advertising themselves as the direct genshin competitor/Challenger or the next one to take best mobile game after Genshin.
Genshin killer is an exaggeration but it is not something they could fight off due to their early marketing being too open to deny it could be interpreted this way
3:56
I want to know more about this story tbh
@@antisaltknight887 they have never done that once. A news article or game article DOES NOT mean the company themselves did. In absolute no ToF marketing or official release have they themselves said they were the "Genshin Killer" so no it is not false and YOU are wrong. Everyone believes that crap without actually checking it for themselves.
Your custom character is truly your thumbnail avatar in game.
Kiana, Honkai Impact 3rd. Also made by Hoyo, lmao.
It's an abomination 😂
@@diegojesuscv9446The difference is the storytelling kianas matures every arc which makes her different from different protagonist she has an goal and grow as an character.
The "self proclaimed Genshin killer" thing was, in fact, a massive hoax created by a bad actor who was actually called out and was hit by legal for damaging their reputation because of it.
Take a shot everytime psychie said "but there's a problem"
*dies*
true
Im throwing a table everytime he does that
Yes, im running out of tables
Yeah it was a bit much
No cap, what really killed that game was that the time gating was so hardcore it's insane, no one was able to actually beat any world boss unless u had at least ONE whale in your team with a full team fully built (not every piece of armor was even unlocked yet) Like some of our player in our old clan spent thousands to carry us. It was very cringe and most of the players basicly felt absolutely useless in most fights against bosses.
It would be insane to beat a world boss as a low level single player in any mmo
@@Kill3rrockstar time gating? dude still playing 1.0 ToF ngl
@@Adam-bc1unyeah, that's their point, what killed the game back during 1.0 was time gating, by the time those issues got fixed most of the people that payed the game day one had already left
That is some big bullshit, it is funny... Saying you need a whale to do world boss seriously ? Anyone could join for world boss so it is about number of people more than whale or not. Especially in 1.0 where Crow, a standard character, was realy powerfull. The "timegating" was just about some chest that give a little amount of curency, that didn't change anything about the overall power of an account, at most you could have one copy of a random character if you were lucky.
@@prisciliaflora eh forget about him, people just want a reason to hate the game lmao. we the actual players are actually enjoying the latest contents they released.
The timing of this upload just before Wuthering Waves is impeccable
Wuthering waves is NOT an atrocious gacha
I literally got a Wuwa ad on this video lmaooo
@@junyaiwaseafter playing for a few days, I think they are on the same level
whats stopping me from touching this game after giving it a chances multiple time is that, when u play as a tall male body character, it will shrink down to short female animation during cutscene and it took out my immersion so hard. and its still there when i come back after a year
that's so goofy 😭😭😭😭😭
tall female character gets shrinked too. looks so goofy
True, one week downloading, made my own custom made character (i shape the nose, eyes, everything that could be customized) but they somehow kept changing my character nose like, wtf happen
If its small things sure, but its noticable
I give it a chance already, that good enough. If i can give Genshin where i have hate/love relationships a chance. Why not this? I don't give HSR and ZZZ a chance tho bcuz i simply don't/rarely play those types of game with that gameplay
The game lacks polish. That’s one reason it declined
You can tell if a game worth playing by count how many time Pseychie says "But there's a problem"
It's all in the gacha part lmao
tbh he is not deep enough into the game. he doesnt even mention currency from exploration can give u red nucleus/dark crystal for pulling limited banner if u use that currency in machine inside vera. well, cant be help if he missed that feature, this game is more complicated than any gacha game in general.
ToF had a lot of servers when it came out. By the time 6mos came, it had only one server per region and less than 10 channels. Come anniversary well.. Also player count dropped at the 6months. Don't blame. I left too.
@@arzurianrein4612 If the game can't pull you in within the first month, the game isn't well-designed somewhere: it has to have a hook that pulls me in, even if the game isn't that complex at the start. In other words, pull me in with the story, the gameplay, the graphics, the gacha, or even a nice bouncy pair of breasts, entice me to keep playing, then blow my mind as the mechanics and systems unfold for me. Give me a reason to keep playing that doesn't involve sunk costs.
If the game "only gets good after 100 hours," then what the hell are those first 99 hours there for? Some of us just don't have that kind of time to waste: just get to the good part.
@@zenspeed404 Not gonna lie for me it was the opposite. It went from good to decent after 100 hours, then continued to slowly decline.
heavy whale theme, coop lags that the devs gave up on fixing, lack of people to coop on low level areas, powercreep, then Global only nerfs, etc
The power creep coupled with the constant influx of pay to win weapons with stats that damn near break the game made me give up-I’m not gonna spend mortgage level money on a mobile game
ToF is in the mud it just had a toxic community let’s accept the truth. It’s nothing more than what any other open world tried to be. They were never even close to be a genshin killer. WuWa right now have the combat system going for them it’s looking good but it might need alot more time to prove itself worthy of genshin killer title.
Don't be like me.
Saved 300$ to roll and maxed out Lyra.
Enjoy being the top for 1 month.
Then was forced to watch her got power-creeped by a new character that come out 1 month later.
300$ wasted. Never before i felf so regret from spending in game like this.
Hi there another me, I too spent a lil bit too much to get A6 and 4pc Lin, just to see her getting stomped by Fiona a few months later.. xD
Since then I hate Fiona so much I never pulled her altough Ive got the resources.
Then I A6'd 4pc'd Rubilia and Meme (volt comp), just to get powercrept again this time by -not only 1 but- 2 simulacras, which was Fiona Nan Yin Meme Altered Volt comp.
Since then I gave up building my volt comp and just go for a weapon that can fill the gap on my weakest element. So I chose Asuka, and now my flame and phys comp are stronger than my day 1 volt comp. Damage is not optimum but I can enjoy my spent money longer by doing so. Mind you youve got to have Avatar gears to walk this path.
Lyra is still meta heal comp at her 6 star, really needed at high lev origin of war and void abyss
@@tornadoofterror1481 ya but seems the gaming experience for most people is to play as DPS, that's why powercreeping is really suck.
lyra is one of the most coveted standard SSR tho, she's busted for healers
deserved
as someone with 2860hours on my steam record, the game started to die out when the global was reaching it's 1 year anniversary, they started adding too much "weekly objectives" that made the game more grindy and they removed alot of rewards so F2P players are really getting left behind by whales or spenders on the competitive side, it's Disheartening to witness everything, one by one, my ingame friends started to say their farewells since they didn't liked the game's directions after giving it alot of times for the devs to do something, there alot of server issues, server capacity limit which prevented alot of people farming for gears/items since there was alot of parties that were recording the boss's timers so they can wipe it immediately then move on to another lobby, overall it's an bittersweet end for me when i decided to quit.
This, this is the reason why I left, beside it being a broken mess. 5 times my pc went BSoD on me, when reaching the new area. And I know I don't have a potato for a pc.
Completely agreed
You already done your part to have some fun
The thing that really bothered me the most when i played was the horrible story. ToF Story is so badly written that even a randomly thrown together AI generated story would be better. Its absolutely horrendous. Combine that with the stiff combat, real world chest timers on release and overall sub par gameplay it failed to impress me and most other people on release.
i tried it on release and it was fun for like two days, ironically actually taking the world elements and playing with them in writing was more fun than the actual story. i don't remember too much of it by now, but it was a shame honestly because it's not even that the base is bad, it just needed WAY more time in the oven. if the story was actually taking its time it could've done better, i just remember all the people dying/having bad things happen and kinda just nodding because like... i'm not attached to anyone here please give me time
most of (if not all) koreans/chinese MMORPG have trash story
Story was my biggest complaint when I played at launch. Characters like Zeke were massive hypocrites and everywhere you went you got your ass handed to you by crying children cause anime cut scene trope. Just utterly horrible, no attachment and they doubled back on their own rules multiple times.
So then they just want you to forget all the crap and go right into 2.0. Yeah not surpising but then having played 1.0 and all the asspulls, I'll just say it would of meant more if Shirly had properly died.
To be fair, most gacha games have mid/trash stories. WuWa had to completely rework theirs and its STILL garbage tbh.
@@skylerfreeman1173 The good ones have an incredible story tho. I play Honkai Star Rail, NIKKE and Genshin and they are all extremely good story wise.
Thats why i can keep playing them long term without getting bored of them.
My whole issue with Tower of fantasy was the storyline. It kinda sucks for me and I think because the creators pretty much forgot that you exist. Before this video I didn't know what the story was about. How do you go from finding out who you are and why your memories were wiped to trying to save a random girl you met and talked to for like a day. Like not you been friends for years or you grew up together...she just helped you once and now its your life's mission to try to find her and her brother and save them. Since I don't feel any connection to them I find the story about finding them annoying and again we just completely forget about who wiped your memeories and why.
One of the biggest moronic things in this game is that it has a built in dps meter in dungeons so you being a F2P player is pretty much on show and shaming you at all times.
I had to spend hundreds just to compete. dumbest decision ever.
yeah, it also shames the so called pros: if a dungeon requires 3 types to trigger the bonuses ( DPS, Shielder and healer) and everyone goes in as DPS just to show off.... That's one of the reasons why i stopped playing for good at any multiplayer game, mmo in particular.
This actually ruined me so much and that’s when I realized this game pvp going to be hell for f2ps. Stopped playing since then lol, I just hate seeing how long you can complete those stages without the whales carrying you and make the whole process faster. What’s worse is me regretting spending hundreds on a character to make them stronger just for that character to get powercrept a couple patches later and you still get 3rd and 4th place in coop, yeah no
Just annoying and not that fun tbh, but hey at least they get the challenges over with fast. But yeah sad thing is no matter how hard you grind to make your character stronger it’s never going to be strong enough.
So at that point just play whatever you want but then again this game is kind of meta-demanding…
Good things i stopped before these phase lmao. I stopped playing during Lin release. So I'm not yet on spending phase
The one thing I love about ToF is how unchained its weapon system is. I feel like Genshin and now WuWa paint themselves into a corner by only having 5-6 weapon types, especially with current Genshin and how big it's roster has become. In ToF, weapons can be literally anything and I found that creativity refreshing and that translation into diversity in playstyle and loadout building was a lot of fun
So true! Why I really like that hsr has lightcones instead of weapons to pull for so you can literally just throw chalk at people
You would love Honkai Impact 3rd tho. Surely they also have weapon types like Genshin and WuWa. But at recent releases they seems as just merely equipment and the corresponding valk will use literally anything but their equipped weapon. There's kinda recent-ish weapons that just being literally a concrete brick, listed under Gauntlet weapon, but the user (Herrscher of Sentience) use Chain, Sword, Spear, and Greatswords in most of combat , with the brick only show up in weapon active and Ult finisher lmao
PGR, Kuro Game's previous game, does the same thing! With each character released is their own weapon class exclusive to them (or at least with the new gen chars). It keeps the playstyles fresh, but it might get harder to pull for the right weapon when there's soo many different kinds that u can't even use on other characters lol
Wuwa really isn't as chained as you'd think it is. Jiyan has a broadblade, but he fights a ton with his polearm. It just means that you can have a nice stable of weapons that don't really chain down a playstyle. It's way better than the fucking chip system >.
I played ToF on launch and it was fun for about a week or two. One of the big things that took players away, that Hotta really should have accounted for, was that they were marketing the game as an MMO. And on launch, it was only a few weeks before a major FF14 patch release. Myself, and many other MMO players who were playing ToF for reasons completely unrelated to Genshin, played ToF for those few weeks and then jumped right back to our regular MMO once we got that patch update.
The most hilarious thing is that the same thing happened to Genshin players, they dropped it A WEEK before the Sumeru update, which was Genshin's single most important update ever. Not only adding an extremely reknown area expansion, but also an entire new element for the combat system.
The fact they decided not only to do this, but also timegate exploration basically guaranteed Genshin players were going to drop it like a bad habit
@@miskarletFGC most of my friends, including myself, dropped Genshin after the Inazuma update. It was bad. Some keep telling me from time to time that I should get back and give it a go, since the locations after Inazuma are fun and interesting, but I just can't get through Inazuma's tedious pacing and gameplay.
@@VGHOST008I find Inazuma as a map is quite fun, can't say the same for the story arc though. After Inazuma there's Sumeru, strong story arc, fun jungle map but there's also desert map which got me burned out and stop playing for a while. Now we got Fontaine, yet another strong story arc and introduction of underwater gameplay which got people split opinion.
If you can still access your old account I'll also say give it another go, since Inazuma arc is quite short you can skimmed the story arc and quickly move to the next map.
@@GjordDeLad05 I wish I could but it's Inazuma we're talking about. It's so boring and drags so hard that I just can't. Believe me, I tried on 4 separate occasions.
@@VGHOST008In all honesty, save yourself. Exploring is only fun as long as you can put up with boring ass dialogue spam from the world quests cock blocking your way into a cave (as an example). Like, you literally have to do this days long chain quest to even explore Sumeru in its entirety.
the white haired girl in the background of the footage with the guns looks exactly like kiana herrscher of finality lmaoo
Bro I thought the same. Had to double take if he was pulling footage from honkai impact or not lol
I kept getting bothered by it like the entire time I was like what is Kiana doing here 😭
Same 😂@@NatWarrior1
That's what I was thinking
The girl was throwing me the entire video it was genuinely distracting XD
NO WAY the game INTENTIONALLY SKIPPED A WHOLE ARC.
I thought I HAD FUCKED UP the missions thing. No WAY there was supposed to be like that
I learned more about Tower's Lore from your video than playing the game...
_That says A LOT_
I was lvl 100 with 170K CS when I quit, so I was in it for a longggg time.
I played the game for a few months I didnt know a meteor was sitting in the air until he mentioned it.
So you quit last month got it :clown:
Hmm i quit when lvl 120-140
i've quit when saki fuwa released with lv.73 and 41k cs, now i comeback to see what they have rn and its pretty interesting to me
I think the most fun thing I can remember about this game was that the exploration doesn't feel like a chore since they provided systems that helped players in searching for treasures or the farmable gacha currency. You have vehicles, and some simulacras are helpful with exploration (ie. Lan and Alyss). But the game was managed by a questionable company, so yeah.
Sadly the exploration was the only thing that this game done right that other open world gacha games can’t do (aka genshin, little bit of wuwa). But the rest of the game is so flawed and so bad compared to the others
I'm a day one player. I still play the game and log in almost everyday. I still enjoy it but when the player base keeps declining its a sad thing. I had to quit two guilds because of inactivity. I'll probably jump ship one day in the far future.
If ur in NA join nyne lives... We have 100+ active players.. we are the biggest and most active crew on NA
How can you still play and support this game it has way to many flaws and problems that just overshadow the great potential that this game had just to mention some way to many not needed stuff to grind lack of playerbase for a mmo is a no go to the point where u cant find players played the ps version not pc but even on pc u dont have huge playerbase and all the stuff mentioned in this video it had its chance to shine the devs didnt care about the problems and there it is
^The devs are fixing bugs and listening to feedback wdym
@@charginginprogresss Looks like they cant fix the optimization the game will always be with lags crashes performance problems if you dont play on pc
@@dragonsky8396 Bro I play on my phone when am at work just fine, I have a s22+ what do u have??
7 is the most generous review i have ever seen, i cant even play for 10min lmao
higher than it deserves that's for sure.
The accuracy and depth of this review is just as good as ToF's polish at launch, but this is very representative of what people think of the game. Doesn't help that the game's new player experience is shit and will never improve and honestly a lot of information is from video guides and discord servers so I don't entirely blame you.
I'm a simple man. The whole reason I like ToF over Genshin, even after all this time, is simply due to ToF being a sci fi theme. Always preferred science fiction over fantasy, especially when it leans heavily into the cyberpunk sub genre, which ToF does plenty of times. The new 4.0 zone for example is incredible.
Wuthering Waves has an interesting sci fi spin to it which I'm digging, but nothing is going to replace how much I love the aesthetics of ToF.
Same, definitely a vibe to it
what do you think about honkai star rail? granted, it’s not open world or real time combat but it does have the sci fi theme.
If you like sci-fi themed games then I suggest you trying "Honkai: Star Rail"!
Unlike Genshin and ToF, it's not an open world game and the combat is turn based but the story, character designs, and environment is really good!
The game has won the best mobile game of the year award for 2023 so you know it won't disappoint!
@@Zukie- Nah. Its not sci-fi. Its literally just fantasy in space but once you get to each planet and world therre are no sci-fi elements. Like you're literally on a train. Why are you even recommending a hoyo game blud wants to play ToF leave them alone (gotta be bots)
@@sleepyheartss What are you on about?? I'm just recommending a game 😭😭😭
ToF has BIG potential and HOTTA itself it also a decent dev team, the problem lies in Level INFINITE, they sucks big time because most of the game they publish we're F2P shooters which have vastly different monetization tactics.
what insanely wasted potential, it had its audience but it just didnt capitalize on it. It was almost as the ToF devs thought they won when they had their initial success and stopped trying any harder after that
i undestood one thing from this review, tower of fantasy is a fun game BUT there is a problem
I've watched 3 out of 4 vids in this series and I gotta say it really gives great insight on what is considered a good gacha game and what isn't since I only stick with "that" one. It's thorough but also entertaining as a review, so props to you for keeping my attention span interested. Looking forward to more of these, man.
I think you hit the nail on the head for me when you said if story, writing, animation or polish is important to you, theres better stuff out there.
When i played the game at launch, I struggled to give a damn about the characters or the story, especially with dialog overlap and really REALLY rough animation snapping taking me out of it every other minute.
Because for me, I stick to these gacha games when characters and their stories capture my imagination and attention. I actually feel emotional when i think about the conclusion of Misha/The Watchmakers story in Star rail. Or Furina's or Nahida's stories in Genshin.
In ToF I got to the end of the content about 3 weeks after launch and just dropped the game when I realised the exploration and grind was just boring me. I gave it a good shot and It just never stuck
This game used to be my guilty pleasure. I spent money and fell into the "sunk cost" fallacy for a year. What made me quit was the community. I used to complain that there are no new male characters and the community would say keep it that way then downvote you. I wouldn't mind no new male units if they actually put effort into making separate animations for the male MC when using female simulacra weapons. But nope, if you use female weapons on your male MC, he's gonna have zesty animations. They don't even give the male MC his own animations during the cutscenes of the game, they just shrink your MC into the small female preset and recycle the female animations for your male MC.
A lot of Chinese games are targeted towards male fanbase unfortunately, that's why they put much more effort into female characters or just make them for fan service
And as a female player this kinda sucks, I want less fan servicey female characters (maybe like arelcheno and furina) and more male characters in general
But the worse part that this'll never happen because the fanbase is already filled with male players so the company would just listen to them
This game is great if you just want to play for fun because the gameplay/combat is great. But if you want to compete with people for doing the most damage or something, dont bother cause its too expensive.
Events in ToF are notoriously bad. I play the game since launch and I honestly never met anyone who enjoyed the events, many players even skip events or only do part of them when there are dark crystals or red nucleus. This is because they are designed in a way as overcomplicated as the UI system and on top of that theres no detailed explanations and most of the times no way to even check the rewards you can get from them. You are required to watch event guides on youtube or check the wiki to even get a general overview about what you are supposed to do. Ingame explanations are basicly on the level of "Play this game mode to receive various different rewards. If you beat special enemies you may get a chance for rare materials." Like what were they thinking?
On top of that events are always increadibly grindy. To make a genshin comparison: ToF sometimes runs a hide and seek event that is basicly the same as the early windtrace event in genshin. In Genshin you play around 6 rounds to get all rewards. In ToF you can expect to play around 50+ rounds to get enough currency to clear out the event shop.
Lastly, every now and they they put events that are just RNG and you may or may not get the main prizes. For example you need to play an event story to be able to get 50 shards for an event box where you can pick the unique event main rewards. You need 100 shards to claim the box. After playing all of the event to get the remaining shards you need to open daily gift boxes. But you can only open 5 boxes every 2 hours and only up to 20 boxes per day. Out of those boxes you have around 5% chance to get 1-2 shards.
So if you just have bad luck and dont get enough shards before the event ends all of that time you spend on the event was for nothing.
And keep in mind that many of this is not explained ingame properly, so it is very well possible you dont start opening those boxes from day 1 of the event onwards because you dont know the spawn locations of the boxes in the world or about the 10 minute timeframe every 2 hours and keep missing it.
loving this series, would love to see you review more games
I just love your choices for background music
I just wanna say, thank you for this well thought out, well prepared with much effort and very informative review.
Bro dropped the coldest take i've seen about wuthering waves.
Not even comparable.
Wuthering Waves is a Genshin Killer for me personally. I haven't seriously played Genshin since Wuwa launched. My friends got me to log in for the 2P co-op event, and I had a visceral reaction to how much clunkier movement felt. The thought of exploring a new region or playing abyss again with the same teams (although I have actual dozens of sort of interesting and involved teams to play) that shit is just played out. There are teams that are interesting conceptually, but you don't really interact with any of it aside from in team building. When you're playing it's just what order you skill in / who you normal attack on. Functionally, whether it's Rational or Thundering Furry, most teams play nearly exactly the same. The most enjoyable team to play for me physically is Keqing Quickswap Aggravate, and that's just because it's trying to be a Wuthering Waves team but less interesting. Wuwa gives me exactly the only team I really love in Genshin, but in almost every team
I don't think WuWa will kill Genshin, what it can do is to show Genshin players that Stockholm is not the only place to live
Edit: can you people read? I said that WuWa CAN'T kill Genshin, nothing really can even if I hate it with hot passion, I want Genshin players to get something good, something better than that piece of trash
having more games on the market is not a bad thing, people want better combat we getting it with WuWa
@@kyotheman69 god i hope so, PGR in terms of combat is great since day one so Kuro got my trust
I don't want WuWa killing Genshin, but I want them to scare Hoyo to the point where they start actually listening to the players.
@@SilverYPheonix I don't think they will, 3 years and they still treat players like shit
@@shorterazer6858 Just let it happen man, if they keep doing that they'll be killing themselves. I'm already playing other gachas instead of Genshin and lemme tell ya, it's a wonderful experience.
A tower of Fantasy, I remeber it as a fable dream.. but drop it at one week really xD I cam here mainly for the Nikke content but I am glad you evolve it on Gacha Games reviews, and helping us sort the good ones from the mediocre and the "don't waste your money/time" ones, keep up the good work.
Awesome analysis! Loved your explanations, as well as your use of borderlands music.
I think NieR reincarnation did a good job with powercreep by giving new units crazy power at their specific element or support, so they're always worth using on a certain team without making a ton of units unusable.
the reason I quit ToF is because of the MMO aspect itself.
Making a Gacha game MMO means that you WILL play and meet with whales.
In endgame dungeons, a lot of players are asking to be carried by whales.
If you're not a whale, you can say goodbye to playing DPS, your role is now a support/healer to the Whale.
Also, a lot of things have leaderboard ranking in this game. Of course, the top ranking will be whales.
Sure whales exist in games like Genshin, but I don't have to see them and I can still clear the hardest content without asking whales to carry me and be their slaves
It's an interesting take and I agree about the whale and F2P element.
Only thing I have to say is, surprisingly a lot of people cried hard when they realise Genshin was NOT a MMO. To me, that was hilarious because people knew nothing about gacha games at the time :D
Every single bit of content you need to clear to progress your account can be cleared with launch weapons.
Don't cry after whales bruh
@@charginginprogresss That is fundamentally not true. And I say this as a day 1 player.
Great video as always! Oh boy, there were a lot of "but there is a problem" moments in the monetization section. It seems unnecessarily convoluted with all the extra rules and differing rules between banners. Having a worse gacha system than Genshin basically rules it out of games I would want to try by default. I hope WuWa will handle it better.
this game has option to skip dialog that win to me
As someone who's played since launch, I think the real main problems with it are the following:
1. The powercreep is insane, and they simply do not respect your previous money spent. Even as a whale, the pace that characters get invalidated by newer characters is extremely fast compared to basically all of ToF's competitor games, and it feels like no amount of spending is ever enough to keep up unless you're going all in on every banner.
2. The game has been riddled with jank and low quality experiences since launch. The servers frequently were not able to handle more than a few players fighting a boss at the same time, and the lag would get insane. The racing events also suffer from poor design and your vehicles running into invisible animals/enemies that haven't spawned in yet, because the vehicle travels faster than the time it takes to detect and spawn offscreen entities. These are just 2 examples, but there have been a lot of things similar to these 2 over time that just give an impression of the game being lower quality and janky.
3. The events are VERY time consuming. Many gacha games can get grindy and feel like a chore after a while, but none have felt as bad as ToF can for me. There are simply too many things they expect you to do too often. It starts to feel like a full-time job trying to keep up with the events. And the points you can earn from them is often so high you have to do the same exact content over and over again dozens upon dozens of time just to finish the event and clear the shop. It simply does not respect your time.
Yes, it's true that the story sucks, but I don't think that really matters to most people who are more gameplay focused. I don't think people will care about the story in Wuthering Waves either.
Ughhhh yeah number one is my main criticism, because at least I can skip the story (though when I tried to follow it initially, I was so distracted by the strange and weird animations and mouth movements lol). It's so frustrating because the 50/50 was never guaranteed unless you pulled enough to buy the character outright which, if you aren't spending, would require months upon months of saving which just wasn't feasible. Despite playing from launch until about 6 months ago, and doing my daily dungeons, upgrading equipment every day, I still only tickled the newer overworld enemies which just annoyed the hell outta me. I liked the idea of combat and weapon variety but the powercreep is what killed it for me, and the shitty practices by hotta, like the "gacha" events where the price to pull kept increasing to insane amounts to where most people wouldn't see the special item until spending close to $40+, or during the anniversary I think where you would get those special scratch tickets or whatever by spending dark crystals in the shop, but they specifically SINGLED OUT buying red nucleus, which is what I'd say most people buy with it, just as a big middle finger towards players even more. Like that rubbed me the wrong way soooo bad, and it's a shame because I love the world design and think it's so cool, sci-fi is awesome. Also the UI sucks balls
I'd like to see you cover PGR, I think there's a lot there to enjoy.
Interesting video! I played ToF day one and had to grind like crazy to pull a character who is definitely now mediocre (haven't played much since first patch at all). I hit a wall when it got to equipment grinding, because my builds sucked but I had to grind to get better, but my characters/weapons weren't good enough to properly grind, so it ended up in a vicious cycle that was pretty discouraging.
Actually, when I saw Genshin's Fontaine content I thought it was **Tower of Fantasy** because even if I wasn't playing ToF anymore, I still check its updates and the last time I checked it was with the underwater region and Gnonno's release. I pity the people thinking ToF copied Genshin's Fontaine when it was actually quite the opposite...
Due to certain aspects of the game not meeting what I wanted based on this review, I will not be playing this game. I will say this; your review of the game is top tier, you did a fantastic job, and if anyone says otherwise F them because they don't know what they are talking about. Hope you continue making reviews for different games.
The fact that genshin introduce gacha to the mainstream but also at the same time set the standard bar so high is so freightening to me
1.0 Genshin by today standard is mid, but they have all the time and money/resources at that time tho with no competition. So no pressure to improve the quality and the results show. But still kinda rush the inazuma bcuz they busy planning to make HSR first as priority.
Your discussion of meta and “Can an argument be made that’s it’s pay to win?” really resonated with me and my nebulous feelings on Punishing Grey Raven.
The community always defaults to giving advice to new players regarding the meta, and usually don’t bring up “pull for waifu/husbando” until the last sentence. Power creep is real, and older players always dismiss newer players who talk about characters that interest them but aren’t meta. I like Crimson Abyss, but the discussion for physical damage is always Bianca Stigmata.
If your investment in the game is appropriate, you can just fight in PGR’s combat rooms and have fun chasing scores knowing you aren’t going to breach the upper ranks. But it sure does paint an image differently when meta players are by default at the top of the scoreboards, with whales above them.
I dunno, I won’t say the community itself is hostile towards the waifu 4 laifu players, they still celebrate the characters through memes and art. But this video on Tower of Fantasy does help me crystallize these thoughts I’ve had for awhile regarding gachas that can and are pay to win somehow.
Thankfully, even if some Nikke units are shit, they'd still respect your opinion.
Your PGR experience is actually similar, not so much so, to my experiences with the Genshin community with Yoimiya.
so in regards to the gacha portion of your video, i am a very lucky free to play player. i managed to get some of the older SSR and new SSR weapons without spending money. it's one part i have good knowledge of the game and know when to save up and 2 parts I got lucky. I play as a frost main in the game and every weapon i have was not bought with real money. the black nucleus banner helped me a lot in this regard. while the percent is 3% I got a lucky 3% roll very often. i started ToF shortly after it had released on global so while there was a period of catch up, I was able to eventually get caught up until the last 2 major patches with Innars. I'm level 95 with the max now being 100. I dont have the best gear in slot, but i am able to some degree handle the content. The main enemy of any gacha is a patient as hell player and I am one of them. I take my time with ToF like I do all the gachas I play. So yeah, if you're going into ToF being a free to play, just know you will be slow on the uptake, but I'd recommend new players to use that time to learn the fundamentals of the game and plan your builds accordingly.
What a monster of a review. Really good stuff.
Thanks to your muvluv video getting recommended to me, I fell into Pseychie rabbit hole and I'm fully enjoying it.
Damn, really miss playing this game and my guild.. Shiro best girl btw
i thought i knew who you were the deadcells player your vids saved me lot of trouble and helped in deadcells good shit
Hi there Pseychie, great work with the video, but only a punctualization, i personally would consider to add the last part, the risk of termination one, bcs i think even if you do it with the best of the expectations, that can backfire the entire video, and thus, the game. You can have an idea of how or when can the game break itself, but proclaiming it its like an ultimatum for those who see your videos, i mean, if i wanted to test the game after the 90% of the video, then i "understand" that the game is probable to end by itself in short time, do you think that will be a good signal for your fanbase to try it? I personally think that ppl can misunderstand that last part very easily, so i encourage you to think about it a little more. Thanks for your hard work and keep going doing it, the snowbreak one made me fall in love with it, and im pretty sure im not the only one (i would even argue that some of the extra gainings on that game was purely bcs of you).
That was probably said already, but there IS actually a guarantee on the 50% chance rate up. If you win twice, you will 100% lose the third 50/50, and if you lost twice, you are guaranteed the rate up character next.
I played this game for a brief period of time after launch but man I won't forget those times, I don't usually play mmo rpgs or any other games that require other players but the combination of community aspect and early enthusiasm when no one knows how things work yet and everyone's figuring stuff out together was so much fun. Most strongly I remember climbing on this amusement park with other people when quest was still timegated and we didn't have gadgets to make it easier, and also farming for unicorn part and bonding over it with someone
I have been playing ToF since launch, I agree with all your points and a rating of 6 or 7 seems pretty accurate IMO
ToF depressed the fuck out of me. I put money and time in to it, but the more time I put... the more I realized that in order to enjoy the game, I'd have to sink more hours in to it than I did most mmos I've played. Not to mention that once I wanted to stop spending, the amount I could help my teammates dropped massively. Their banners are awful. You have the character banner which is whatever, but then you have these fucking FOUR CHIPS you have to roll for that all can be refined with dupes.
It's awful. It's disgusting and it ruined any sense of enjoyment I got from the game. But not only that. As someone who doesn't have a ton of friends willing to just randomly play a game like this, grinding dungeons/domains for materials was a god damn chore. This game was NOT friendly to people with a more casual playtime available to them. It was a nightmare.
I was part of that group that started playing at global launch. I had high hopes for this game but tbh I fell out of it before 2.0 even came out. I think I played it for maybe 6 months if even that.
15:21 i can help here. fire burns obviously. volt does causes paralysis and DoT. Frost locks you in place. Physical can stun and altered is a debuff to your stats i think.
yooo, i was wondering where you disappeared . Was watching your dead cells videos, nice to see you still making content. So as God's strongest Fu Hua simp i want to recommend Genshin's cooler older sister- Honkai Impact 3rd, or as Alpha's weakest simp-Punishing Grey Raven by Kuro games(as far as i know it was their first game)
Edit: PGR is their second game
2nd game their 1st game got shut down
@@hack1440 really? Didn't know that as I only played PGR since it's Chinese launch and never heard anything about Kuro before that
As for the skipping to Vera, this is something they allow for almost every big area in the game (Aesperia, Vera, Innars, Gesthos network) so you dont need to go through all the story if one just wants to explore said areas which I really enjoy tho the way of doing it can be finicky cuz you need to be in one of the areas other than Aesperia to skip. Also one can just go back to the story of the area if they never completed it, another reason I enjoyed skipping was cuz Aesperia story was such a slog and also is the longest story ingame.
Ive just been playing on and off and having issues with it kicking me to menu but as for the gacha I kinda just pull whoever I like the gameplay or looks of and have fun cuz i can barely interact with the MMO aspect if I wanted to.
Also yea the UI and million menus is crazy, i find it easier to navigate from honkai impact 3rd but it lying with notifs is annoying and I also hate how the quest menu is laid out its so bad like I wanna know what quests I have or need and its more useful to just press quest navigate and scroll.
I dont know how this game could regain players other than overhauling and making it work more for casual audiences, tho I guess casual audiences might care more for exploration, story and side content.
I know you're probably going to review WuWa next, but please consider doing PGR first, or maybe after?
as someone who plays tof from day 1, the game is alright imo, defo deserves and dosent deserve the hate it has, i hope the 4.0 version will revive it in the global section
the best way of movement imo was the shield weapon bug that the game had, i dont remember the name of the weapon but imagine that the ground slam hitbox could instead land horizontally allowing you to keep moving... really fast.
Do you think you'll ever do an Arknights review? I think it would be really cool to see your thoughts on the game!
ToF is one of these games where you just... Don't care whether about jankiness, it's just fun. The gameplay loop is satisfying and you're not reliant on the mmo/multiplayer aspects although the option is there for you.
If you're a solo player like me you're gonna have a lot of fun exploring this game. BUT, you're gonna need a limited 5*. Pick literally any of them that best suit your playstyle, after that just let yourself get lost exploring the regions and doing all sidequests available and you'll slowly be gathering the resources needed to bring flavor to the overall experience.
Yo pseychie since it looks like you're trying to play a different genre of gacha for each video you should try Punishing Gray Raven which is a gacha made by the same dude that made WW, it's an action game like HI3 so I think it'd be nice for you to check it out
Just like to say your work is exceptional it's been informative and interesting, also entertaining and witty! Check out Brown Dust 2 it's got more than you'd expect, I think it'd fit well in this series.
Carry on, safe journeys! ❤
Funny how this video came out right with the launch of Wuthering Waves, yet another supposed ''Genshin killer''. I personally enjoyed my experience in WuWa so far, even though the launch was pretty rocky. Lots of people opt to compare it to ToF instead of Genshin which... made me worried honestly. I played Tower of Fantasy during the global launch of the game in 2022, and my expeirence was initially okay until I stopped trying to cope with how unpolished, dull and unimmersive it was. Some of the same points hit WuWa as well, mostly the lack of polish, poor optimization, mediocre story and voice acting. I really don't want the game to meet the same fate, but this video sort of gave me hope.
Admittedly, I think WuWa feels a lot more polished and nice looking than ToF. Characters and NPC's have nice proportions, good animations (especially in cutscenes) but it's still lacking in a lot of areas. I'm happy to see Tower of Fantasy went on to fix a lot of the issues, despite a stagnating playerbase. This is a problem for me though as what I mostly enjoy about the games I play is the community aspect such as videos, forums, fanart, discussions. That's why I'm still refusing to let Genshin go. I'm a university student in my early 20s and you have no idea how big of an ice breaker/conversation starter Genshin is even in real life. I made so many friends purely because I noticed a Xiao or Zhongli pin on their bag. I guess I just hope WuWa not only thrives as a game, but as a community too.
I played some tof back when it came out, but even then I struggled with dmg contribution as a f2p. I started concentrating on shielding and healing which pushed my value in the group by a lot, but also reduced my solo dmg xD I stopped playing when hardly anyone would fight the overworld bosses anymore. It was rather exhausting to play and keep up
The real problem in this game is that getting to the point where you're powerful enough to actually contribute in content that matters takes 3+ months at minimum and thats only if ur gonna be a support - dps you can wait a whole year probably if not longer. They have increased this somewhat but it's just not enough. Most people (including me every single time I have tried playing this game which is about 5 times +1 right now) will quit before they get to that point, tired of the daily grind. This power timegate is NOT based on any gacha stuff whatsoever and is purely based on timegated gear upgrades. The game with its mountain of exploration content to do gives you plenty of pulls to get both a dps and support team (or a more advanced form of one of them) made up of all limited ssr characters AND matrices, so it is quite f2p friendly in that regard it's just the timegated gear upgrade resources that gate you.
Regarding what you said about being able to catch up to meta by keeping to save up and roll on the newest banners: That won't work. Remember the equips you put on your character, that has the random stats and are this games artefacts (not the matrixes)? Aside from 5star weapons and pulling for duplicates for those, those equipments will be the main source for your main stats and thus your effectiveness as a damage dealer or healer or tank. Gacha matrixes are not even giving that much CS, you pull those more for the effects since f2p gold matrixes give similar base stat increases. The catch is that in order to increase those equipments you need a very high amounts of materials, hundreds and thousands of upgrade materials and f2p you can only get those in weekly limited amount of a few dozens + very small amount from world bosses. The main way to get those materials are the fixed weekly free amounts + buying packs with real money.
Because of this time restriction if you start playing ToF 1-2+ years late and you don't spend, you will never be able to catch up to anyone. And new endgame content is usually balanced around what the average spenders power is at that time, so it doesnt matter if you start now and play for 1+ year and pull all the latest characters - you will never be useful because everyone is gonna be more than twice as strong as you and that will never change. PVP doesnt account your strengh, so there are not many pay2win concerns, but for PvE it can take alot of fun away to forever depending on getting carried by veterans and whales for harder content. Alot of people I know stopped playing because they felt bad asking for carries every week and ultimately came to the conclusion that endgame is not meant for non-spenders.
Do you know if you'll ever do an Arknights review? I think it would be really cool to see your thoughts on the game!
14:52 IDK if it's changed in my less than half a year off... but you're not expected to deal damage as a support (unless you count the % Health execute that one of the characters has), and it's okay if a tank doesn't deal damage; but since a tank's role is also to break shields and shieldbreaking capabilities scale off of damage dealt, they will still almost certainly deal damage.
24:51 The CN Tower of Fantasy unanimously agrees (notably, CN's powercreep is such that each new character without fail and by a large margin outclasses at least one old character). Some CN players wish that they could have Global's balance instead (though there's still a lot of powercreep)
26:02 This is not true. You merely need to choose one element and stick to it if you're a DPS player (though frankly, F2Ps can't really keep up with paying players' DPS), or choose to be a tank or a healer and stick to it, and watch videos on whether you should pull an upcoming character. Of course though, that does mean that if you choose to pull for anyone else, then your account is screwed for a few months if you get unlucky and lose multiple 50/50s in a row (if you don't get unlucky then you're still usually fine).
Praying for wuwa to make it to top3 this month and able to sustain the community for at least half anniversary
I don't know if this still holds up since it's been a long time since I've played the game, but I remember that I dropped the game because all the areas you need to farm to get stronger felt very bullet-spongey. No idea if it was just my gear, but it felt like that game nudging me to spend money to make the problem go away.
World level system exists now
Regarding story content, while there is an increase in presentation quality, they seem to have difficulties with sound, especially voice actors. In the 3.0+ story there are multiple main story dialogues where they didnt record voice lines for some characters and they just reuse random old stock phrases like "Let's go!" when something entirely different is said in the script. Also some new minor characters they didn't bother hiring VAs anymore and opted for using AI generated voice over. The evangelion collab had no voice for any of the collab characters in the collab story. You can only hear them in PVs and as battle shouts and noises when playing as the collab characters when you pull for them. It's probably to cut costs for voice acting, but that's just a guess. Quite a contrast to how for the japanese voice over they hired stars like Kana Hanazawa, Yui ishikawa and other high profile ones on 1.0.
I started playing tof a while after launch and though I was a bit interested at first, they spoiling and skipping half the story killed my interest in the game. I returned for the EVA collab with the sole purpose of getting Asuka and Rei and was incredibly frustrated by the world exploration rewarding either black or gold nuclei. I literally had to look up a farming guide and thanks to all the content I had to burn through thanks to not having played the game(and a cheap package having 5 pulls) I managed to get the 120 pulls for Asuka and then got Rei as an early drop. And after that I felt like there wasn't much else to do in the game as the daily grind is beyond boring and the story was totally ruined by their gamer move of, well, ruining it.
It's such a pity since the game becomes much better after you reach Vera. Mirroria is an amazing city and a nice place to hang out with friends. It even has minigames and other stuff to do that I would've killed for when I was waiting in queue for hours for a wow raid (Although I'm sure it would become stale at some point). I didn't play enough to reach the underwater region but I guess it would also have some nice places.
Honestly, I think what killed this game the most was advertising as a Genshin killer. Gacha games lovers would come to this game, realize it tried to be Genshin but worse and then leave. Then their main target: mmo players, wouldn't even want to touch this game since "Oh no stupid ass lootboxes game". On the early days this game felt like Guild wars 2 felt on release, and it would have been amazing if they focused on that instead of trying to scrape off other gacha's popularity. (I had to double check since the character in the video looked a lot like HoFi Kiana lol)
I quit because they time gated everything at the beginning. Story progression? Had to wait 3 days. Open world chests? Had to wait X hours. It really killed my joy to be forced to wait on these things. I really love the song for the game and still listen to it to this day.
It is not stated in the gacha description, but there is actually the hidden guarantee to pull the rate-up weapon. If you got 2 offbanners twice in a row, the third one will 100% be rate-up one. But on the other hand, if you win twice in a row, your next is also guaranteed to be the offbanner. In any other time it's honest 50/50.
Tbh for a gacha game to last this long and still pretty famous is quite a big deal, the company really put a lot of effort into it. After watching your video I think I will try it, hope it's fun
Do a Honkai Star Rail video now, please. I am curious about how you will review it, especially after the recent updates
19:30 _Gacha & Monetization_ ❎
_"But there's (always) a problem"_ ✅
Whos watching this after Wuthering Waves got released ?
I played the game at launch and it was sort of enjoyable, got decently lucky with gacha, had fun raiding and exploring. I also found it funny that the game tried to time gate the map access but I managed to break out of the tiny starting island and explore the very empty next area on day one. Got mauled by a bear. My first issue with the game came when I started genuinely being unable to progress the story because I didn't have enough power level (forget the name) to go into an area without dying from radiation and I couldn't level my weapons to catch up because they needed materials that would refuse to spawn in my world for dailies so I had to helplessly stalk the global chat for team invites for those material grinding gates and usually wouldn't get enough for even one weapon by the end of the day.
My breaking point was abysmal voice acting further in the story. I am a staunch english voice acting enjoyer (I like being able to recognise voice actors and to still understand what's going on even if I look away because I have an attention span of a goldfish cracker) and some NPCs were voiced horribly. Whoever directed those voice actors must have been asleep.
Risk of termination was a great addition, it helps people to decide if they want to invest full on the game or keep it casual/f2p
Never trust people calling games "... killer", it's impossible to kill popular games, they can only make good alternatives. The same is with WuWa. It's a great game but genshin will still exist and still will have lots of players (but i'll keep playing Wuwa XD)
Pour one out for all the poor WoW and Pokemon "killers".
'Flat, as a loli' cracked me, that came outta nowhere
Excellent video, the next game could be afk journey or wuwa.
28:55 it used to be worse than that. i made a specific complaint about this and they fixed the UI like 3 months later. it's not great, but at least they heard some feedback and did change it. it needs to be more streamlined than what it is.
You should look into the death of FF BE, it started out fine but quickly became pay for power when TMRs became requirements instead of fun bonuses.
39:20 On the contrary, if that's all they care about, since 3.0 all you need is to roll the newest character of your element at A0 or A1 and you are already meta like every other f2p.
i just got back into it after almost 2 years and i still find it really fun lol
well see yall later in about 2 years for a video for wuthering waves. i hope it actually ages well unlike TOF
Any plans to do reviews for Punishing Grey Raven or Honkai Impact 3rd?
Yeah I think the worst part for me was the interface. I played on playstation and navigating through that was interesting. I got used to having to bring up the mouse, that was fine. It was more like... How do you get anywhere? And I had absolutely no idea how to pull for limited characters. Every time I thought I was on the banner I somehow wasn't, and idek if I was even pulling on standard or limited by the time I figured out how to pull.
I redownloaded it to get ready for the Evangelion event because I really wanted Asuka and thought maybe it would be cool to get back into, since even just jumping around and collecting things was quite fun. But nope. Once I opened the menu again I realised how stressful it could get xD I am pretty dumb though but I don't really need another gacha game so maybe it's a blessing lol
We def eatn good with wuwa. "They arnt bugs they are features" ~100 times the Todd Howard