Towerborne early access review: Workin’ hard or?

Towerborne is almost unplayable when latency joins the equation

Microsoft

I really wish I had a bunch of positive stuff to say about Towerborne. The concept is solid and it seems like, with some tweaks, it looks like it could be quite fun. As it is, though, I can’t say I enjoyed my short time with the game, and I think that mostly comes down to the implementation of its ideas. 

As a bit of quick background for those unfamiliar, Towerborne is a free-to-play action game that’s a bit of an MMO-lite. It works a little bit like Destiny, in which there’s a hub world where you can bump into other players, and then instanced missions where you can team up with a few friends or get matchmade with random players. 

The story is largely inconsequential, but here’s the rub: the medieval world is in a bit of a rough shape, with monsters roaming the lands, destroying cities, and wiping out populations. One central tower city called the Belfry provides a safe place for all of humankind, and to keep it that way, special magic is used to resurrect people as immortal fighters who protect the tower from encroaching monsters. It’s a fine story told mostly through unskippable text boxes, the worst kind of text boxes, and yet it’s somehow still very easy to ignore. 

Onto the gameplay, and this is where it all fell apart for me. When you enter a mission, you’ll pick one of a few classes and hack and slash your way through enemies before being allowed to move on to the next part of the mission. I’d liken this to something like Castle Crashers, which is a good game that I enjoyed very much, and there is a bit more variety depending on your chosen class. 

I stuck with the starting class, armed with a handy sword and shield, and I’d love to tell you that I had a great time, but in all honesty I barely lasted two hours before I decided to call it quits. The biggest problem is the latency, which made the game utterly unplayable for me, and I’m not sure where in the chain the problem lies. 

Pressing the attack button would cause the attack animation to play almost instantly, but the damage wouldn’t apply for a second or two. And when enemies can hit back in that time, that makes for a very frustrating experience where it’s easy to get overwhelmed and die. There’s also a parrying mechanic, where well-timed blocks would knock back and stun enemies briefly, but I only got it to activate once — the latency proved too much. 

You can team up with friends, but I don't think that would help the latency / Microsoft

At first I thought this might be down to my choice of controller, a wireless controller that has had some issues in the past, but switching to mouse and keyboard showed the problem was still there. My monitor was a possibility, too, but given the animations were playing when I hit the buttons, I didn’t think that was it, either. Network or internet latency were the only options left, and I keep my local network in tip top shape, so the only remaining culprit was internet latency. 

And it makes sense. I live in regional Tasmania, in the very south of Australia. The closest mainland capital city, Melbourne, is over 700km away – about 500 miles – and that’s assuming there are servers in Melbourne. It could be that servers for the game are located in Sydney, almost 1000km away, or not in Australia at all. That might improve later, but right now, the latency makes Towerborne a complete non-starter for me. 

Even if that latency was gone, I have some small issues with the game, or at least the little of the game I played. Combat takes place in three dimensions, but characters only really move and attack in two dimensions, so it’s easy to attack and totally miss an enemy that’s standing right by you, because it’s located slightly above or below you. 

Despite a gorgeous art style and a solid enough premise, Towerborne’s reliance on online play makes it impossible for me to play. If I’m playing solo, I shouldn’t have to rely on my inputs being sent back and forth from a server before it connects, and that’s a huge bummer. It’s the nature of the beast, though — always-online MMO-lite games like this are built to be played online and with friends, and if you’re not in an optimal location, that’s going to suck a little bit. Hopefully, with time, this problem becomes less intrusive, but for now, I won’t be going back to the game. 

Version tested: PC (Steam)

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