Yesterday I posted my impressions of Towers of Time, Augments and the Krypt, and I promised to update you when I get some more time with it. Well since then I cleared Noob Saibot's 2nd Character Tower, and summoned the third. And came across the 2nd worst fight in the ToT so far.
I'm linking a video review of the towers of time at the bottom, but if you are having trouble with my accent or the audio, I'm also going to summarize it here. The towers are more intricate than they've ever been. There's more to see and do and the konsumables are fun distractions, but the towers are currently ruined because of two things:
1) The input/output ratio is bad. Noob Saibot's 3rd tower requires the following for the point of summoning to the point of finishing - 75,000 koins, 300 soul tokens, 100 Krushing blows done, 25,000 pints of blood spilled. In exchange, the rewards you get are: 1 end of round taunt, 1 victory pose, 2 skins, 3 gear pieces, 2 Noob Saibot Augments, 2 variation icons. This is not a good enough reward for the time and effort you need to put in.
Any other game with a different economy would just reward you the victory poses and skins for doing 100 krushing blows and 25,000 blood spilled as a challenge. And the other trinkets could be purchased by spending 75,000 koins or 300 soul tokens. But here, all of that just gives you the privilege of playing the towers. You still need to beat them to get the stuff, which gets me to point 2.
2) The towers have inconsistent difficulty spikes, and some of the worst balanced fights in fighting game history. I know a hard fight from bad game design. This is the latter. Trust me I'm not throwing this term around lightly. I've played old SNK bosses, I've done the MK9 challenge tower, cleared IJ2 multiverse bosses, and cleared SFV extreme survival. All of those are downright friendly compared to what we have here.
Most of the fights in the Towers of time are pushovers if you've been playing fighting games seriously for a while. They're just moderate difficulty CPU battles where the CPU does 3-4 hit combos and occasionally reads your inputs. But then there are occasional fights that make you question your reality. Try fighting a Kano while your normal and special move damage is halved, your Fatal blow damage is nerfed by 75%, while the Kano calls in an unblockable air strike that drops 4 explosives that do 10% of your health each, and also a single missile that reverses your controls, and both of these on a 5 second cool down. You tell me that is good game design.
In my video review, there's a fight which can only be won by losing till the CPU performs a mercy on you, and then making a comeback on him while his assists are disabled. If this is the only realistic way of winning these battles by a seasoned semi-serious fighting game player, then oh boy, new players or casuals are in for a very bad time.
I estimate that seasoned players can do
80% of the battles without konsumables with none to moderate amount of challenge
15% of the battles with konsumables to reduce the considerable challenge to make them fair
5% of the battles are impossible on paper without relying on mercies and mercy + heal konsumable strats
For the casuals, it is much, much worse
20% battles are easy to moderate and can be beat without konsumables
30% battles will be really hard but manageable with konsumables
50% of the battles will be downright impossible with or without konsumables, due to reduced player damage and increased enemy damage, and the reliance on big combos by the player to cope
There are a couple of easy solutions to this off the top of my head. The first is to make every assist/special from konsumables blockable. Even if that means the CPU can block it when I use it. That's a fair exchange. Second, if I'm facing a boss who has additional damage and I have reduced damage, like most fights in ToT, then make the boss not have assists to use. This makes it so that veteran players can overcome the damage limitation of their character and high hp of the boss with their skill, and don't have to deal with bullshit assists on top of that. Meanwhile, newer, less experienced players can use the konsumables to make up for their lack of combos or damage, and use this mechanic as intended.
Keep these assists and hazards for lower tier enemies in the towers who would normally be pushovers for veterans, and only slightly problematic for new players. Also, don't limit the damage of the players for these cannon fodder enemies. This way, rank and file enemies can still be annoying to veterans due to the assist characters, and be a slight wall to new players, who can use the konsumables to even the odds. The current system is similar, except that even rank and file enemy battles have player damage nerfed.
Yesterday, someone asked me if I would recommend this game to someone who's only in it for the single player, and I said yes, especially if you haven't spoiled the story for yourself. After reading a few posts and putting myself in the shoes of the average casual player, I'm not so sure anymore. For me, a lackluster story or a downright badly designed towers of time mode can't even scratch the brilliance that are the stages, characters and 1v1 fights in this game. But if you're not in this for the online or tournaments, then I could see you pulling your hair on some of these fights.
It's a 7/10 for the story and 5/10 on towers of time as they currently stand, for a 6/10 overall for the single player suite of the game. If you are in it for single player + online or just for online and the competition, then the game is easily a 9/10 or 10/10. But if you're someone who only wants to fight the AI, use the game to relieve stress, watch fatalities and unlock stuff, then I would recommend you wait till launch or a few weeks after to see if the final product is different. Or wait for a sale.
