With Sony releasing one live-service game after the other (to mixed results), Microsoft is now also releasing one for themselves. Towerborne, the new game from developer Stoic and published by Xbox Game Studios, is a co-op beat ’em up build as a live service game with continuous updates. It is currently in Early Access and sold for $25 dollars, but will become free to play once it launches into 1.0.
In Towerborne, you play as an Ace who’s been reborn to fight and protect the people of the Belfry, a tower protecting the people on the inside while monsters roam the outside. You are reborn with no memories, but what’s clear is that you’re powerful and have the capabilities to save people. And so you wander outside the Belfry to save the people in need and push back the wild beasts. Now, considering Towerborne is the new game from the developers of The Banner Saga, you might be surprised to hear that there’s very little focus on the story here. The plot beats that do exist are extremely basic, and the quest design around them is just as lackluster. Basically every quest comes down to either playing a few levels, killing a few enemies, or beating a specific boss level. There’s not really more to it, whether story quests or daily ones. It’s a mindless grind type of game.
The structure of the overworld map is neat. It’s essentially a giant grid with hexagons that you need to conquer one by one, slowly working towards the bigger boss levels spread across the map. It feels good and makes thematic sense with the story to take control of the map as you play and fight more; the only problem is that the discovery missions for each hexagon are entirely interchangeable. I’m not expecting the team to create hundreds of unique levels, but playing Towerborne truly feels like you’re stuck in a loop. Every level has the same visuals, the same few layouts, and the same enemies. Eventually you’re lucky enough to unlock new biomes and get a few extra enemies, but within that, things very quickly go back to feeling exceptionally stale. Like I said, it’s a mindless grind type of game.
When you complete a mission, you gain exp to level up and a bunch of gear. That’s what you’ll be grinding for after all. If only the new gear actually felt like meaningful upgrades. Apart from some flat stats, such as higher armor or damage with a piece of equipment that’s fixed for every gear level, most of the modifiers are just small percentages on stats that are close to meaningless. Revive Ally Time -4% is not exactly a game changer, as it turns out. There are some armor sets where you get a special bonus if you have equipped a certain number of pieces from it, and those effects are marginably more interesting, but for the most part, what equipment you wear really doesn’t make much of a difference as long as it’s the highest level you have available. The only time there might be an extra caveat to that is with your weapon; your abilities are decided by what weapon you have equipped. This is fun for a little while as you try out different things, but you quickly realize there’s only a handful of abilities and figure out which one you prefer for your playstyle, and from there on out you just make sure to equip a weapon with those abilities.
What all of this means is that there’s just no real build variety in Towerborne, which makes grinding for gear a little pointless, as well as making the game feel very stale over time. Now admittedly, whatever will be the proper endgame in Towerborne is probably just not in the current version yet, but there really needs to be more impactful gear introduced with it once we get there. A bit of extra poison or burn damage doesn’t cut it. You can get a little of variety in your playstyle through the different classes, though. Sentinel is a classic sword and shield character who can parry, Shadowstriker is your standard thief that fights with daggers and can poison enemies, Rockbreaker fights with massive gauntles in case you ever want to cosplay Vi from League of Legends, and the Pyroclast fights with a huge Warclub that can also shoot flames. All the classes are fun in their own right, and there’s a really nice quality of life feature that lets every class have its own loadout, meaning all the gear automatically swaps whenever you change classes; no need to respec every time. Although I will say that every class levels independently as well, meaning you can’t just swap back and forth endlessly.
I don’t have much to complain about with the moment-to-moment gameplay. It’s a serviceable beat ’em up with fun combos that are pretty intuitive. But it is hurt by everything else I’ve mentioned so far. The combat is good, but it can’t sustain that many hours if barely anything around it changes. And while there’s some depth here, it is hindered by the lack of proper builds that would allow you to truly play around with all your tools.
Towerborne is a pretty game, though. It took me a bit to get warm with the visuals, but I did end up liking them quite a bit. I’m going to make the most boring, overused comparison in recent gaming history, but Towerborne really does have some Ghibliesque features in its visual design. Especially the grassland and farm levels. It all looks surprisingly calm given that you’re in a war against vicious monsters.
At the end of the day, Towerborne is a grindy live-service game with gear that doesn’t feel meaningful to grind towards, little to no real build variety, levels that have no distinction from one another, enemy variety that’s lacking for big parts of the game, and with all of that, not much reason to put hours into it. I can’t possibly recommend Towerborne in its current state; it needs much more time to grow into something that feels like a meaningful time sink, and that it’s paid Early Access puts the final nail in the coffin for me.
Nairon reviewed the Early Access version of Towerborne on PC with a review code.
