Humanity’s last bastion, The City of Numbers, has been destroyed. Not just a little bit destroyed either, we’re talking overrun by evil creatures and corrupted by decay. Without a home, the human race sought sanctuary in the Belfry, an immense tower, but the spread of evil attempted to follow them. Humanity needs protectors – known as Aces – warriors tasked with protecting the last inhabitants. This is where you come in.
Towerborne is a scrolling beat em’up – or is that sword ‘em up? – where you and your friends can come together and face off against the denizens of the wilderness who seem set on getting rid of every last human. While it’s a complete change of pace from their The Banner Saga trilogy, Stoic’s pedigree is clear and it’s a gorgeous-looking game. It might also only just be entering into Early Access, but there’s already a lot for budding Aces to get their sword into.
Towerborne’s character creation tool is excellent, which is all the more impressive when you’re likely to have a helmet on that stops you seeing your character’s face most of the time. The Facial Features setting is particularly expansive, offering a batch of freckles, birthmarks, pigmentations and other details, just about stopping short of being able to place specific moles. There’s a vast array of hairstyles, noses and ears too, meaning you’ll be able to make a character that’s absolutely your own.
Combat starts out as you’d expect, with light and heavy attacks, launchers, and then special skills called Focus Attacks. However, each class has its own Class Mechanic that uses your Weapon Meter. You build Weapon Meter by dishing out damage or taking it. In the case of the shield-toting Sentinel, your Class Mechanic allows you to block and parry enemy attacks.
Once through the tutorial you encounter the other available classes, from the explosive Warclub-wielding Pyroclast to the dual-blade toting Shadowstriker. You can change your class at any time, with each levelling up individually alongside an overarching character level, meaning you’re not tied into your earlier choices, and can concoct a blend of playstyles when buddying up with other players. That goes for your appearance too, so you can change things up whenever you feel the need.
You also gain an Umbra, an entity from the spirit realm that accompanies you in battle. They have their own special abilites and attacks that further add to your loadout, letting you customise your character that bit further, and being a cute reward for certain milestones in the world.
You can effectively combo attacks into one another and it all flows together really effectively. There’s obvious overtones of classic sword ‘em ups like Golden Axe and Guardian Heroes, but there’s much more depth to the combat system, giving you a variety of options and ways to tackle the gruesome creatures in front of you.
Grotesque they may be, but Towerborne is still a lovely-looking game, brimming with Ghibli-esque charm. The Belfry in particular, looks like something straight out of Howl’s Moving Castle, and it carries that sense of excitement and wonder that a social hub needs, playing host to blacksmiths, mission givers and training areas to continue to improve your skills.
This is where you set off on missions, and selecting the world map sees the Belfry at the centre, with a hexagonal grid overlayed across it. You expand your area of influence by completing missions in adjacent tiles, and as you move further across the map you come across boss characters which stand as a major challenge to overcome. There’s danger levels that will block you from going too far before you’re powerful enough – you have to beat a solo challenge to progress – but if you want, you can ramp up the difficulty of missions closer to the Belfry to keep the challenge up.
Towerborne is surprisingly tough. You have to be very aware of being overwhelmed by groups of enemies, learning to split them apart or tackle them as a group. You absolutely need to use all of your skills and abilities, dodging in particular proving immensely useful throughout. It feels more like Monster Hunter than I was expecting, and button-mashing just won’t be rewarded at all. There’s enough options available to you that it never feels one-note, and while its fundamentally an old-school framed adventure, it has the trappings of a modern RPG/multiplayer game with class progression, new skills and plenty of loot to deck your character out with.
Towerborne comes into its own when you play with others, with co-op for up to four players in both online and couch co-op. Thankfully, there’s a good bit of leeway and flexibility with how the overworld is structured, so that you can join and be carried along by higher-levelled players – helpful if you want to buff up a little used character class, as there’s no background uplift for any you’re not playing as – and any progress you make on the map together is fed back into each individual player’s progression. Given how you might all have set off in opposite directions on the map, this can reveal little puddles of tiles that might lure you to clear the fog of war in a new region.
Right now the online matchmaking doesn’t seem to draw anyone in that you aren’t friends with. I’m sure there’ll be the option soon though, and this is one of the few clear signs that the game is in Early Access, as you wistfully watch other players disappear off on missions from the Belfry that you’d have liked to join them for. Still, it’s great as a single player experience too, and slaying goblins soon cheers you up.
Towerborne is a lovely old-school treat, with gorgeous art, an interesting and exciting world, and chunky, enjoyable combat. Stoic has ambitious plans for this as an evolving game, with Seasons that will continue the story, add new regions to discover and enemies to battle, new abilities and more. I can’t wait to play more through Early Access and see how it grows from here.
Xbox provided a copy of Towerborne for the purposes of this feature.