Ohhh man . . . so, listen, I played a lot of Tower of Fantasy yesterday and got to level 22. I noticed a couple things about myself as I was playing, and it was a little distressing for me.
First things first, I enjoyed myself. It felt a lot like a PC-based conversion of a mobile MMO take on Legend of Zelda's Skyward Sword, which, is exactly what I've heard about Genshin Impact. It's a fun formula for a game. It's got crafting food, going through shrines, climbing mountains, riding mounts, cool weapons, short solo dungeons, flying, jump puzzles, gacha stuffs, chibi robot chefs, neat scenery, and mildly entertaining anime story bits . . . what's not to like? And it's free!
About half-way through though, I had this sneaking suspicion that I was the oldest dude on the server, and it felt weird. Reading the general chat kind of filled me with a ton of embarrassment. Probably not true, but I'm being honest about that feeling. I almost asked in chat if there were any older people playing that had a guild together, but I figured it would out me. AND LOOK, I typically don't care at all about any of it (I mean, I played Wizard101 and Pirate101 -- IT ISN'T JUST A KIDS GAME, IT'S A FAMILY GAME), but for some strange reason it struck me funny yesterday.
Anyway, because of all that, I didn't even try to find other people to play with. I just took it solo and explored the starter island, unlocking all the gates and visiting as many locations as I could. I did get a little lost once the story quests dried up.
I'm still confused about possibly having to get to level 24 before chapter 2 really starts to play? Or possibly it's time gated? Anyway, the game did a great job of telling that there were things I could do other than play on the main story quest. Literally, there was a giant text box pointing to a button saying to click there to see all the other stuff I could do in game.
So let's talk game systems a bit. First thing I have to talk about are the controls on PC. It very much feels like this was built to work on mobile first. Your mouse is not free moving in the game. Perhaps there's a way to set it like this, but it's not default. Because of this you have to press Enter to free up your mouse to click buttons on the right hand side of the screen, and you have to press Escape to click on things on the left hand side of the screen.
You may be thinking, what buttons on the left hand side of the screen? Ah ha! The most important button for a blogger is there, the camera button. That's right, there's no default screenshot button (at least that I could find), and that makes sense if the game was designed mobile first. When you do press the camera button, you get a few camera controls that center your character in the action. The resulting picture has your game name, server name, and a logo on it. Um . . . Print Screen and a paint program it is!
There's an interesting system in the game called Simulacra where you can win personas in lock boxes and use their skin while playing the game. You woo these simulacra with gifts, which then causes them to awaken, which leads to cool powers. You can also go through special quests that play some of the backstory of the Simulacra. I was pretty happy with the Zero Simulacra and his cool cube of death weapon.
Oh yeah, by the way, I love Gacha games that have an amazing box opening sequence. The box opening sequence for Tower of Fantasy is absolutely amazing. Check it out.
So, end of the day, I had fun and will probably play this game a little bit more despite my resistance and feeling old. I may even get brave enough to out myself in general chat to find a nice guild of older folks . . . or not. Probably what I should do is go give Genshin Impact a go. Not that I expect it to be filled with an older faction of people, but at least I wouldn't be playing a game called Tower of Fantasy. Yikes the name of this game is so cheesy.
Happy Dueling!
2 comments:
Try Noah's Heart too. It has better PC controls than GI and by the sound of it ToF as well. As for feeling old, almost everyone on my server seems to be Brazilian so I have no clue what they're talking about! I'd say more but I'm on a Kindle Fire and I hate typing on a virtual keyboard.
Thanks for the tip! I'll have to check it out!
Post a Comment