Tower Song has combat that veteran developers should be jealous of | Early Access impressions

There are all sorts of important elements that make up a classic turn-based RPG. Some people are more than happy to play RPGs for the narrative alone, but I personally am much more likely to remember a game for its engaging and well designed combat. Tower Run is a throwback to SNES RPGs that admittedly doesn’t really look like much at first glance, but it has some of the best turn-based combat I’ve experienced in a long time.

The world of Tower Song was long haunted by the songs of Eldritch structures that are spread across the land. That all changed though when The Mana Knights banded together and stopped the songs, making Spectrum a safer place for all. It looks like peace isn’t going to last though, as there are signs of the music returning.

Tower Song opens with a group of the Mana Knights at the Fire Tower, where a mission to help someone enslaved there ends up with the whole land in jeopardy. This prologue serves as a way to introduce you to the four characters you’ll be able to choose from as your main character, and I was blown away by how different they all are. It’s not just your standard mages and healers here, there’s a technomancer, a street fighter, and even a witch who attacks with cards drawn from a deck of spells each turn to choose from.

Now as you’d expect from a turn-based RPG, combat in Tower Song involves choosing a move on your turn and trying to defeat the enemy before they defeat you. There aren’t any bog standard attacks here though, with each character having totally different mechanics to master in battle. The technomancer has to balance two different resources to attack and can change between his mech form and magic form at will, the street fighter has a combo meter that builds up over time that can be used to unleash powerful finishing moves, and the sniper has to manage ammo and flashbangs to effectively batter any demons she’s faced with. I can’t think of another RPG with characters that function quite so differently, and it makes fighting hordes of Treants a joy.

How Tower Song handles resources between fights is just as masterful too, as all your health, mana and items are entirely restored before the next scrap. I absolutely love when RPGs do this, as it ensures that you never feel the need to hold back your best moves for a potentially tough encounter around the corner. The fact that even your potions and reviving items regenerate between battles is especially cool, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that before.

It wouldn’t be an RPG if your characters didn’t level up as you played, and this is another aspect of Tower Song that seriously impressed me. Instead of levelling up by gaining experience in battle (and potentially encouraging grinding) your characters in Tower Song all level up together at specific moments in the story. This means the only reason to fight as many enemies as possible is to get more crafting materials, so if you’d rather power ahead with the story then you’re more than welcome to dodge the enemies as you wander through a dungeon.

Tower Song is currently in early access, which means that at the time of writing you can only choose from two of the four potential main characters. The game is fully playable from start to finish though, with a campaign clocking in at around fifteen hours to enjoy. The developers are planning on adding some extra side content to the game before it launches in full too, but for the most part Tower Song in its current form feels like a feature complete game (and the characters you can choose between in early access were my favourites from the prologue anyway).

I only really have one complaint about Tower Song, and that’s the visuals. It’s clear that, despite being a labour of love, they weren’t necessarily the priority when making the game, and that RPG maker aesthetic is really apparent. Some people will struggle with them more than others though, and to be frank after the first thirty minutes I was so engrossed by the combat that I stopped caring about this surface level issue.

Tower Song is a prime example of why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, or a game by its screenshots. The fact that a team with no development experience crafted it in just over a year is mind blowing, and when playing it you can feel how much they love the genre. This turn-based RPG has combat that veteran developers should be jealous of, and a story that feels well thought out and well paced. I’m excited to jump back in and try out one of the other characters when it leaves early access later this year, and if you’re an RPG lover you should be too.

Tower Song is available now in early access on PC.