Tower Song

Rock solid RPG. It has very easy to understand mechanics that nevertheless allow for a great amount of strategy and engagement with the combat. Encounters aren't random, nor do they respawn, so each fight feels significant. This is coupled with two other great features: your entire party fully heals after each battle, and they refresh all items they used. It means you can just go all in every battle, and you're highly encouraged to do so, since fights can be quite tough. Tie that together with a genuinely interesting world to explore, and you have a complete package. Highly recommended if you enjoy RPGs.

Tower Song is a heavily customized RPG Maker game. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it but it may not be for everyone. [b]TL;DR[/b]: Complex world, solid writing, unique combat mechanics for each character, no grinding, and no handholding. You gotta figure things out yourself, be it story, combat, or puzzles. If you're willing to put in the effort, you'll have a grand old time for the 10-12 hours it'll take you. [b]Setting & Story[/b] Tower Song is set in a non-traditional fantasy world of magic, swords, guns, and a hand full of enigmatic towers. These towers are feared and revered at the same time and have now begun stirring again. The game is very light on direct exposition and instead drops you right in and expects you to pick up on what's going on yourself. And so far, I'm liking what I did pick up. The cast of party members is colorful in personalities and don't appear to be as one-note as you might expect from most of what comes out of RPG Maker. After a prologue that lets you get to know (and fight with) five of them, you're asked to select one out of four to accompany the (fixed) fifth on a mission. That choice will stick with you for the entirety of the game. The overall story was enjoyable but you do have to pay attention to pick up on some of the nuances - a theme for all aspects of Tower Song. [b]Gameplay[/b] The diverse set of characters make combat more varied than I've seen in other turn-based RPGs. Each of the party members has their own unique resource mechanic and totally distinct abilities. As an example, you have a gunner whose resource is ammo that she can spend a turn reloading. Not only do you get to consider whether you want to spend a turn honing in on a target and thus not use any ammo to triple damage next turn but before combat you also get to think about whether you want the high-damage 3-shot sniper rifle or the lower damage 8-shot assault rifle which won't have to reload nearly as often. Further abilities down the line expand on these questions nicely. There is also a witch whose available spells are randomly determined by a tarot deck at the start of each of her turns who comes with a cat familiar as an added party member or a technomancer who freely switches between magic and a mech where using one's resource refills the other. All this combined with the enemy variety and relatively large groups of them you encounter from the get-go can feel a tad overwhelming to start with. You are thrown a bit into the deep end here, as well. But there is an encyclopedia for common terms, stats, and status effects. Additionally, the difficulty isn't too punishing, especially since you fully regenerate after each encounter. Speaking of encounters, all enemies are visible on the maps, no random encounters. And no respawns either. Which is just as well because level-ups only happen after certain story beats, so grinding would be rather pointless anyways. The maps themselves are nicely designed, though visually definitely can't compare with something like Sea of Stars. Exploration is decent, with various spots requiring the out-of-combat abilities of certain starting characters to access. I'm not sure on what the design intent here was because you won't be able to access the ones for the characters you didn't pick, yet they still tantalize you constantly. There are a two bigger puzzles in the game, one entirely optional and the other as part of the final stretch. Those also follow the same principle of the rest of the game, trusting you to figure things out for yourself. That might take you a bit, but it's absolutely doable. As far as UI goes, there are some holdovers from default RPG Maker fare, but things are very customized with optional mouse controls and plenty of non-standard menus. One of which related to a crafting system that lets you disassemble crafted gear for full resources, incentivizing experimentation. If any of this sounds up your alley, I highly encourage checking out Tower Song There is a demo available but with the caveat that your save does not carry over, which I learned the hard way. Reason being that the demo is only chapter 1 and skips the prologue. But that's mitigated by the fact that you can pick a different character the second time around, so it's not fully retreading old ground.

Tower Song is an enjoyable small indie RPG. The standout feature is the combat design, with each character having their own unique systems. One uses tarot cards, another has a sniper rifle with ammunition, another changes between elemental stances, and so on. Fights feel a lot more dynamic than the standard set by classic Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. I enjoyed the characters. The plot and setting were both very cool, but a bit lean. What's there is certainly worth the money, especially if you have interest in replaying with a different main character to see new dialogue and mix up the gameplay a bit. Character and monster designs are great, and the environments are substantially better than most RPGmaker titles. I really enjoyed the music, though the overall sound design and mixing was a bit off at times. I recommend the game for anyone who likes shorter RPGs with that indie flair and lots of unique ideas.

​ Tower Song is a love letter to SNES era RPGs. It has wonderful music, an interesting story, a deep crafting system, unique turn-based encounters, and charming pixel graphics. The key, for me, however is how much this game respects your time. Imagine playing an old school JRPG without random encounters—this is what you get in Tower Song. Want to get into a fight? Walk into an enemy you can see and fight or avoid it if it’s an optional area/chest. Knowing when I can get into a fight allows me to enjoy the art and environment and manage resources better. But that’s not all—the game also fully heals your health and secondary resource (mana) after each fight so you don’t have to spend time topping off with consumables and spells after each fight. This might seem like it makes the game too easy, but it doesn’t. I found that each encounter was challenging and unique, based on the enemy strategies and my party composition. So Tower Song eliminates the grind but keeps the challenge. You level up as a group at certain story moments, so you are never behind or need to worry about leveling and grinding to progress. If that wasn’t enough, the crafting system allows you to deconstruct any weapon/item you have made for a full return on resources, allowing you to experiment without fear of losing items and, once again, having to grind to get materials. Another cool thing about the game is that each playthrough can be wildly different depending on which character you choose for your main party, both in terms of environment options and combat techniques. So replayability is built into the game! I think Tower Song is a fantastic throwback, retro RPG that is made with love and care. I recommend it to anyone who loves a good turn-based RPG! I have also done a full video review of Tower Song, which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/M6bYzdoAj40

An absolute labor of love, clearly made by/for people raised on the best of 2D JRPGs. The classic turn-based deliberate decision making combined with the fleshed out fantasy world and characters takes me right back to the days of playing Golden Sun and other similar games on my GBA. The combat system combined with the inventive character design make for encounters that are always engaging each turn, and the modern amenities like the lack of truly random encounters (fights are started by sprites with vision cones) and end-of-combat party healing keep the game focused on the parts that really count. On top of the well-tuned combat, the character design and music are also super refreshing, with certain tunes taking on a more experimental electronic vibe, and characters like Solace featuring a kit built around smart rifle use that I really like (I have a soft spot for fantasy Gunslingers that break the standard Pistol Duelist archetype.) Altogether it's an engaging throwback that proudly takes turn-based combat and shows that there's still plenty to be done with depth and strategy on that particular front. And Jiji is cute as hell!

I'm not really into PC games that much...mainly just console playing. I saw this game at LA Comic Con this year and the demo was so much fun to play that I wanted to try the full game out at home. I'm nearing the end of the game I believe and I've had so much fun playing. Some of the battles were really tough but not annoying. Just had to figure out the right mix of attacks to take them down. I really like the art style. Takes me back to the great SNES JRPGs to give that nice nostalgia feel. The music is really great too!! One of my favorite things about playing video games is the music and how it helps immerse you in the world....really well done! Hope there is a OST sometime! Looking forward to playing the game through again with the Neat, and then when the other playable characters come out.

Good RPG that removes the usual grind. I played on Hard difficulty. The game is designed so leveling up comes through passing certain story thresholds. This makes it so fights are tailored specifically to how strong you should be, whereas normally there is variance of the player being over/under leveled. Due to this theres more room to tailor specifically how hard a fight should be. You can still change gear/builds which will make things easier/harder/change the vibe of your party which i like as well. I think it has a nice balance, feels fun, give it a try~

I've only played an hour so far, but I can already tell this is shaping up to be something special. Though a traditional JRPG in many ways, it has unique mechanics for every single party member; from a sniper who needs to reload between high damage shots, to a street fighter who builds up "combo" with his attacks to unleash a devastating finisher. The story's only just begun, but it's plain to see that this is a world with a great deal of thought put into it. Eager to see more!

I just rolled credits, and this game is great. The writing is great, the battle system is great, the world is an interesting place, and the music really sets the mode, making a really creepy vibe sometimes. I always think it's funny when some indy title has way better writing than your typical AAA title, and this is one. The world is an interesting mix of fantasy, science fiction, and eldritch energy. And I liked the battle system, your characters change; the enemies change; there's lots to discover and try. I only had to redo the last battle, but I came close to losing many times. This is not a battle system where you turn your brain off and spam the same attack over and over. Definitely worth your time and money if you like RPG's and don't mind an indy title.

Great art, challenging combat, each character well designed and fleshed out too. Its a solid experience with a few routes for great replay value. The games story universe is really interesting, and heres to looking for more from this Developer!