As a lot as we love being informed a versatile, involving story wealthy with flowing prose, typically all you need out of an RPG is the chewy, meaty exploration and fight. Tower of Time affords simply that: An unlimited subterranean world of traps, caverns, get together administration, monsters, loot and all of the stats you’ll be able to eat. It’s been lurking in Early Access for a while, gathering unholy energy, and at this time it threw off its shackles, launching itself upon an unsuspecting world. Word is that it’s actually quite good.
At its coronary heart, Tower of Time is a realtime-with-pause tactical RPG within the fashion of the traditional Icewind Dale sequence. Less story-focused than adventures similar to Baldur’s Gate or Pillars of Eternity, however this permits additional concentrate on the fight mechanics. Tower of Time specifically has larger-scale battles than many RPGs of this type, with some encounters taking part in out over near-RTS-like scales, with large swarms of enemies requiring dividing and conquering in equal measure.
John went for a spot of dungeon-spelunking with Tower of Time again in August of final 12 months, and returned to the floor with a smile on his face. Going in with little in the best way of expectations, he discovered a genuinely rewarding and sophisticated recreation that you simply wouldn’t count on from a debuting impartial studio nonetheless arduous at work on improvement. He was particularly keen on the JRPG-esque resolution to have battles happen on separate, semi-random fight maps.
So happy was he with this early, unfinished model of the sport that he slapped a shiny gold RPS advice sticker on it. Even because it stood again then it was effectively value taking part in, and skimming the exhaustively massive update notes for the sport since final 12 months, it appears protected to imagine that Tower of Time is considerably greater, higher and extra polished now.
The previous 12 months has introduced lots of change to the sport. Notable milestones for the reason that evaluation embrace a serious graphical overhaul, new core sorts of fight encounter, many extra hours of story content material and the addition of gradual or pause-time modes, which had been absent on the time of John’s preliminary evaluation though he discovered himself in a position to sustain with the sport in full real-time mode.
We’ll see if we will’t coax John again into the mega-dungeon for some kind of official evaluation revision someday after Rezzed, however contemplating the excessive reward he had for the sport even again then, this looks like a stable decide for people who wished one thing a little bit extra chunky and systems-driven than current RPGs like Pillars of Eternity or Torment: Tides of Numenera.
Tower of Time is out now via Steam for £19.50/$25.
