Ultimately when it comes to any free-to-play mobile game, the development team needs to rake in the money, and in many cases that comes down to the gacha system. For a select number of a premium currency, available in small amounts through in-game exploration/events and in-bulk through real world money, you have the chance of unlocking rare characters and weapons that would otherwise be unavailable to you. Tower of Fantasy, a new mobile and PC adventure-exploration game from Hotta Studio and Level Infinite released a couple of days back, does just this. While it has been compared in many ways to its competitor, Genshin Impactone way I would argue the game does it better is in the gacha system – or at least the implementation of its Pity System when you are seeking to pull Simulacra / Weapons.
The Pity System in Gacha mechanics is where, as its name implies, the game takes pity on you for your misfortune. Typically if you do not pull an SSR character after X number of pulls, your next pull will be guaranteed to contain one of the characters. If you do pull an SSR character, the counter starts back at 0 and you begin pulling from there again. While the game’s multiple currencies can be confusing at first, Tower of Fantasy does a few things differently which I would argue makes things a little bit fairer – at least for the premium pulls (Choice Weapons and Limited Pull):
- Full transparency about how many pulls you have to go until hitting 80. This could be seen as a positive or negative as it could just encourage you to “spend a little more to hit the 80”, but it is nice to know how close I am to hit the target without having to count back through my pull history.
- Perhaps the most significant element, is that pulling an SSR Simulcara/Weapon in Pulls 1-79 does not reduce the counter at all. So technically you could pull an SSR character on pull 78, and in two turns still be guaranteed an SSR. It is nice to see that a ‘Guaranteed SSR in 80 Pulls’ actually means you will pull an SSR on your 80th pull.
- Selective SSR Simulcara/Weapon Pull Event – Sometimes you don’t want to leave your character choices up to lady luck, so when launching the game, the development team have implemented a ‘Newcomer’ point-gaining event, where undertaking tasks in the game will eventually allow you to unlock a chest letting you choose whatever SSR character you wish. Granted, you only get to choose from the base weapons (Thunderblades, Rosy Edge, Icewind Arrow, Absolute Zero, Scythe of the Crow, Chakram of the Seas, Negating Cube, Dual EM Stars or Molden Shield V2), but a free SSR is a free SSR, especially if you are like me and have pulled two of the same SSR in a row.
Tower of Fantasy is now available on the PC, Android and iOS platforms. More information on how to download the game can be found HERE. As indicated above, the game itself is free to play and requires no purchase, however makes its money through a gacha-style ‘Special Orders’ system. While the game isn’t too bad with providing you free currency to pull N-SSR tier Simulcara/Weapons, the pull rates for SSR is very low at first, so keep that in mind before picking up the game to play.