Webtoons have certainly gained popularity across the past years, given with so many adaptations we’ve received from The God of Highschool anime, to the Netflix adaptation of Black Knight; and now comes Tower of God: New World.
I was deeply intrigued by the anime adaptation of Tower of God back when it aired in 2020 as it had some genuinely interesting world-building and colourful cast of characters. When I heard that this IP is going to have a mobile game, I had to try it out.
Tower of God : New World is a 3D mobile idle game by Netmarble which retells the story of the original Webtoon created by Lee Jong Hui or better known as S.I.U. An oversimplification of the overall plot revolves around our main character, Twenty Fifth Bam traversing the mysterious Tower to find his friend Rachel. Inside, Bam meets newfound allies that helps him up the tower.
A Fresh Coat of Paint
Much to my surprise, the graphics are surprisingly pretty good and clean, whether it be in terms of the characters or just the backgrounds that you come across during the various maps in the game This is more prevalent when it comes to the characters using their ultimate abilities, which has their own unique animation sequence too.
Most of the characters are given a brand new look as opposed to the designs they had in the Webtoon and anime. I’ll admit, I kinda dig some of the new outfits especially with Ha Yuri Zahard.
Tower of God: New World also went for a more “anime-esque” style for the 2D character visuals. While it certainly looks pretty don’t get me wrong, but to me it feels like they removed the manhwa charm they had going on from the Webtoon. Again, despite being extremely pretty, it certainly makes it look a lot more generic.
The story of the mobile game follows the events of the original source material through the game’s Story Mode, which I have no qualms about because I genuinely think the story is pretty interesting overall.
I did appreciate that they added a neat “Prologue” of sorts where they introduce a new character called Rin who acts as our Navigator and explains the tutorial of the game and its features, which ties in the gameplay aspect and the narrative pretty nicely.
It’s also really nice that they got the Japanese voice actors back for the game, and all of the story mode is fully voiced too which makes it a lot more immersive. Aside from being dubbed in Japanese, if you want to appreciate the game in different languages, there’s also English and Korean voiceovers available.
Speaking of the Story Mode, while most of the game is done pretty well, there are certain times where the animation and delivery of lines gets cut abruptly. It certainly doesn’t ruin the experience but it can break the immersion somewhat, but it’s a very minor gripe.
The Core of Shinsu
As with idle games go, there’s not much you need to do during combat aside from choosing when to click your ultimate skill, which can be set to auto too. The main bulk of time you spend is from team building and picking the right team members.
Characters are composed of two main aspects, their roles and elements. Elements are your usual rock-paper-scissors type of interaction; where if your character’s element is stronger than the opponents, you’ll deal double damage and you’ll deal halved damage if you element is weaker. There are certain buffs for your party member for bringing different amounts of the same element characters. The more of the same elements, the higher the buff.
Next comes the more interesting aspect with roles. Combat stems from a 5-man party in a 3-2 orientation, 3 front liners and 2 back liners. Before a battle starts, you’ll need to build up your party where you’ll need your tanks or melee damage dealers to be on the front lines while your supports and ranged damage dealers be on the back lines.
One of the most interesting mechanics that Tower of God: New World has is the Shinsu Link feature. Instead of the usual increasing your character levels, you instead level up the Shinsu Links tied to the formation of deployment of your party members. This means that you don’t need to level up your characters individually as the levels of a character are tied to a Shinsu Link slot.
It’s a very interesting mechanic that allows players to freely team build without worrying if they’ve invested too much character levels into specific characters and opens up the freedom to team build.
Of course, there’s also many ways to build up a character. There’s the usual equipment for different types of characters. There’s Limit Break that levels up a character’s skill and you get the materials by getting the duplicates of specific characters. There’s also Proficiency and Rapport that increases a character’s stats too.
Tower of God: New World features a ton of game modes in the game too. Story Mode which essentially retells the story of Tower of God. There’s adventure mode where you have to climb floor after floor and defeat enemies, and also the Expedition section which has Trail Area, Arena, Conquest Mode, and Battle Facility.
Gacha
There’s also gacha in the game that lets you pull for the iconic characters from Tower of God. Additionally, there’s also a neat feature where you can hand pick 5 characters from the pool of SSR characters and those selected characters will get a Rate Up, which is very neat to have if you’re looking for specific characters.
After hitting 100 pulls, you’ll be entitled to an SSR bonus where you can select and obtain an SSR character from the banner. Once hitting 200 pulls, you’re given an SSR+ bonus where you’re given 1 chance to change the summoned character if they’re not who you wanted.
Final Thoughts
All in all, Tower of God: New World is looking to be a promising game. Fans of the series would definitely want to give this game a go since it’s essentially a retelling of a very solid story mixed in with fresh new ideas. The gameplay is smooth, looks good and feels very polished, and the Shinsu Link mechanic is very unique. Even if you’re not a fan of the series, it’s still worth picking up because there’s some genuinely interesting features and a colourful cast of characters.
Tower of God: New World launches for Android on 26th July 2023. For more information, do check out the game’s official website here.
