Tower of God: Great Journey Review

Just Like in the Anime

Tower of God: Great Journey is the newest game based on the famous webtoon and anime Tower of God. Developed by NGELGAMES, it offers a new gacha RPG with auto-battler mechanics. Tower of God: Great Journey has a great story and many characters to collect, but the game has cracks within the tower walls.

Tower of God: Great Journey follows the same story as the webtoon and anime. Players are in control of the franchise’s main protagonist, Twenty-Fifth Bam. Bam has spent his entire life underneath the Tower with his lifelong friend Rachel. That is until Rachel finds her way into the Tower. Upset by the situation, Bam is determined to reunite with his friend and enters the Tower. This is where the game begins as Bam discovers that the Tower is home to different creatures and humans. Bam needs to gather humans and creatures to come to his aid as he discovers he needs to scale the 135-floor Tower in his search for Rachel. 

The story is very intriguing, and as someone who has never seen the anime or read the webtoon, I enjoyed it in the mobile game. However, staying true to the webtoon and the anime can come off as lazy to some. Most anime spinoff games try to incorporate their own stories so fans of the series will have a new story to follow. Newcomers like myself will enjoy the story, but hardcore fans of the series will most likely skip most of the story content. The gameplay, characters, and overall design must do most of the work to keep hardcore fans happy.

How to Scale the Tower

Tower of God: Great Journey is like any other auto-battler. Players will have an over-the-top view of their roster and watch their favorite characters battle for victory. The gameplay lies in team building and strategy of when to deploy certain moves. However, this did not feel like the case in Tower of God: Great Journey. The gameplay design feels lazy since there needs to be more strategy involved. I went through the first three floors of the Tower with a team of level-five characters that the game auto-selected for me to use. No fun is involved if the game does all the work for the player.

As for deploying moves, the game also easily did that for me. At the end of the day, the game felt like it could play itself. I could only help summon and level characters and set their gear while the game did the rest. What did not help was the confusing user interface of the game. The game’s UI is all over the place. The background has your characters auto-battling while small text and icons create the menu surrounding them. The screen just feels cluttered with so much going on. The tutorial tries to explain where everything is, but it becomes a jumbled mess once it hands the player the reins. I got lost in the game menu trying to find where to edit my team and level them up multiple times.

Great Journey Poor Execution

Graphically, Tower of God: Great Journey has a few well-done animated moments during battle. The anime cut scenes are also lovely during story moments, and some character designs are incredible. But the characters themselves do look blocky and stiff during battle. Unlocking characters through the gacha system is also dull since no excitement is involved. I unlocked epic characters without knowing they were epic at times. The gacha system did not feel unfair, and the monetization practices were not exploitative. I got a pretty good team within the first couple of hours of the game without having to spend anything. But the game has many characters, so getting your favorite might feel daunting and unfair, depending on player preference. 

RPG auto-battlers are a dime a dozen in the android play store. Games like this need something that makes them stick out from the crowd to get players to dedicate time and effort to them. Tower of God: Great Journey does not stand out from the crowd. The game does feel like a great journey regarding the story, but bad gameplay and terrible UI do not do it any favors. The game did have characters I wanted to invest time and effort into, but graphically, the game could be more impressive. Considering all this, reading the webtoon or watching the anime might be the better option.