Tower of Fantasy test: the best mobile MMORPG ?

Let's dive together into the fantastic universe of the planet Aida with our Tower of Fantasy test, available since August 7, 2022 on Android and iOS. This new title from Level Infinite is an open world MMORPG that has been a great success since its release. Let's go over the storyline, gameplay, graphics, music and business model of Tower of Fantasy in detail.

Tower of Fantasy test: a post-apo SF scenario

Let's start our Tower of Fantasy test with the exploration of this universe at the crossroads of post-apocalyptic and science fiction by its history. We must go back several centuries, to the origin of the lore of Tower of Fantasy. Lacking resources on its original Earth at that time, humanity had to travel through space in search of a new home before settling on the sublime planet Aida.

Humans then discovered a unique resource in Aida: omnium. An incredible source of energy, it ended up being overexploited in the usual human way. As a result, the omnium generated a wave of radiation, like a nuclear bomb, causing the death of a large part of the population and turning the humans' machines into technological aberrations.

In this renaissance landscape, you play as a rookie with amnesia who has been taken in by a refuge on Aida. It's up to you to help the locals while unraveling the intrigue and mysteries of Tower of Fantasy's story.

Gameplay inspired by the greatest

Let's move on to the second part of our Tower of Fantasy test with the gameplay of Level Infinite. Often compared to Genshin Impact, Tower of Fantasy is also inspired by other popular games of recent years such as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and its open-world structure.

Character creation

It all starts with character creation. This Sims-like feature allows you to customize everything, right down to the shape of your eyes, nose, or any other facial feature. With a wide range of colors available, you can easily create a one-of-a-kind anime character.

Once your avatar is created, it will appear in all your adventures and even in every cinematic of the story. And if you are out of inspiration, you can choose to use stylish presets created by the community like Hisoka or Hitachi.

With this Tower of Fantasy test, we won't be able to talk about all the gameplay aspects of this MMORPG, which offers a lot of in-game activities, but we have gathered all the essential elements so that you can make your own opinion of the game.

If you've ever played an open-world game, you know that travel times can quickly become tedious. So Tower of Fantasy offers you to discover all the corners of the planet Aida, by paraglider, motorcycle, jetpack or even by surfing to move on the water.

As you explore the map, you'll find many spots full of loot and enemies to defend them. You'll also find puzzles, small dungeons, world bosses to beat in groups and plenty of resources to cook your future bonus dishes like in Genshin. What is sure is that Tower of Fantasy is full of activities, so there is no time to get bored.

Simulacra, Tower of Fantasy heroes

In parallel to your great adventure, you will have to collect simulacra to improve and change your fighting style. Simulacra are characters, which allow your character to carry their weapons. There are three different weapon rarities: R, SR and SSR which affect the effectiveness and power of them, and SSR is the highest.

Simulacra characters are really just skins associated with a weapon that you can use for visual pleasure at the beginning and will only be useful once they are awake with additional stats. For the best characters, I invite you to visit our best Tower of Fantasy Simulacra tier list.

Dynamic fights thanks to weapon changes

Let's move on to the combat part of our Tower of Fantasy test. To face all the dangers of Aida, you have three weapon slots at your disposal. Each weapon in the game has special moves and sequences, which you can find in the survival guide, available via the exclamation mark below your minimap. It is the change between these three weapons that will vary your fighting style.

In addition to all this, your weapons have two spells. The first is an activatable spell that requires a recharge time. The second one automatically charges on unused weapons and increases every time you deal damage. Once the charge is full, a single change to the charged weapon can trigger this ultimate attack and create an explosive result.

Besides, your three weapons have different recharge times on their abilities, so it will be interesting to change your weapon regularly during the fights to take full advantage of the power of your 6 spells. And don't forget to take into account the weapon element depending on your opponent or the part of the world to explore. For example, you will need a fire weapon to burn the brambles blocking the access to a treasure chest in front of you.

Even if you are the gruff type, remember also to dodge your enemies' attacks from time to time. By dodging with the right timing at the last moment, you can trigger a bullet time called fantasy. In Tower of Fantasy, the energy gauges for dash and movement like climbing are separated.

In addition to helping you inflict damage, triggering bullet time after a dodge will instantly recharge your weapon ulti, allowing you to create devastating combos. With a little practice, you'll find the right timing to trigger this effect regularly.

Although you will still need to use the touch screen in the menus, I recommend playing with the controller for a smoother experience on Tower of Fantasy.

Cooperate with other players to fight the most powerful enemies

But our experience of this Tower of Fantasy test would be incomplete without a good dose of multiplayer. With the weapon resonance mechanic, you will get bonuses depending on the three weapons you equip to specialize as a tank, a DPS or a healer.

In Tower of Fantasy, an optimized group must respect the balance of roles if it wants to defeat all the enemies that stand in its way. And to make this balancing easier, you can create up to three sets of weapons that can be swapped at any time. You can then adapt your gameplay to your group or to your desires in a few seconds.

And you're likely to have a lot of desires. Indeed, the variety of content of an MMO as vast as Tower of Fantasy will require an equally important variety of builds to reach all its challenges. But you will enjoy the beauty of the planet Aida even more in multiplayer, in the purest MMO spirit.

By joining a guild, you can unlock new weekly quests and get more rewards. The daily energy system allows you to complete a limited number of daily activities such as group dungeons or monster wave challenges. With 180 energy points, your energy points recharge in 24 hours, which encourages you to play daily so that you don't waste the opportunity to build your account.

In addition to having a very rich social content, Tower of Fantasy has been able to gather a friendly community since its launch. Moreover, I could observe a lot of mutual aid in the different chats, which reassures newcomers for their first steps on the Aida planet.

Graphics and music

This world full of adventures offers above all a complete immersion. The game is beautiful, the textures are worked and we find perfectly the Asian MMOs style. We could still find some bugs, especially during the cinematics where some NPCs stop talking without any reason or a character suddenly disappears.

The weak point of this pleasant graphic level is its impact on the phone battery, which heats up very quickly. You will need a very recent smartphone if you intend to run the game properly.

For more comfort, the ideal is to use a tablet combined with a controller or even to play Tower of Fantasy on PC, since the game offers a full PC version and not an emulator. Plus, you can easily switch from PC to phone to continue building your character all day.

As far as sound is concerned, the B-O multiplies pleasant and varied musics that greatly contribute to the captivating atmosphere of Tower of Fantasy and make the fights and the cinematics really epic. However, we were disturbed by an audio bug of a boss music that continued after entering the city and that can make you a bit paranoid.

Nevertheless, these launch bugs are minimal and don't affect the game experience much, so I won't complain too much. Especially since Tower of Fantasy is completely translated into French except for the voiceovers which are available in English and Japanese.

A fairly generous gacha business model

The last aspect we have to talk about in this Tower of Fantasy test is its economic model. If the game is entirely free-to-play, it integrates a gacha system with the invocation of simulacra that give you weapons. Several currencies are needed for these invocations and participate to the economy of the game. The three main ones are black, gold and red nucleus.

Black Nucleus are easily obtained by exploring the world of Aida and can be spent in a permanent banner with a low SSR weapon drop rate of 0.3% without a pity system.

On the other hand, Gold nucleus have another permanent banner with a pity of 10 to get either a SR simulacrum or an SSR as well as a guaranteed SSR every 80 draws. The drop rates are better and the pity doesn't reset when you get an SSR, so you can make the most of it. Gold nucs are looted by exploring and completing quests.

Finally, the Red nucleus from Tower of Fantasy give you access to a limited-time banner with exclusive and limited simulacra in addition to a pity equivalent to Gold nucleus.

There are also some secondary currencies such as dark crystal, tanium or black gold. By the way, I advise you to save your dark crystals to buy red nucs because they allow you to get the new characters and they are naturally the hardest to get.

In the end there are many different currencies and you can get lost quickly, but remember that the nucleus allow you to summon simulacra and thus obtain new weapons while the other currencies allow you to buy items in the store.

Overall, the Tower of Fantasy model allows free-to-play players to fully enjoy the experience without being restricted by bad drops, but you will have to optimize your farm to collect all the resources needed for summons.

Our opinion to conclude this Tower of Fantasy test

To conclude our Tower of Fantasy test, we can say that the game borrows the strong points of successful open world like Genshin Impact or Breath of the Wild and appropriates them with a more futuristic universe. The mounts allow you to fully enjoy the planet Aida and the fighting style as well as your character are largely customizable.

So, if you're looking for an MMORPG with beautiful graphics, a nice business model and a wide variety of content on mobile and PC, don't miss the release of Tower of Fantasy, available for free on Android and iOS. To discover our tips and tricks, visit our tips page Tower of Fantasy.

Positive points

• A universe between SF and Fantasy
• Beautiful manga/anime graphics
• Dynamic battles
• Lots of different activities

Negative points

• A few audio and visual bugs
• Gourmet for modest phones