Sandboxes and survival simulators come out quite often, and while many of them are similar to each other, some have certain distinctive features. Ever since its announcement, Towers of Aghasba attracted attention thanks to its unusual setting and declared spirit of adventure. However, in the end, I personally remember the game as one of the most inconvenient “survival games”.
The problems started from the first launch of Towers of Aghasba. As it turns out, in order to play in co-op mode, you need to spend several hours completing the starting quests. No, in fact, you can invite someone from the very beginning – to do this, you need to select “Teleport to the multiplayer gate” in the menu and through it find a special code that you need to send to your friends. However, the catch is that even in this case, all tasks will remain on the starting island, and the bridge to it will never be built. Therefore, playing cooperative games together will have to endure for some time.
The first island is not at all thought out for starting gameplay. For some reason, the developers are very greedy for the most basic resources (not to mention rare ones), which is why you have to run around the neighborhood for a long time to find one single simple stick. Although there are a lot of trees around, you won’t be able to make sticks out of them, which is why you need to be distracted from time to time searching for them. Considering that ordinary tools break absurdly quickly, you will have to do this quite often.
The interface and controls are designed to make the player feel frustrated. For example, you cannot assign different actions to different buttons, such as crafting, building, map, interface, and so on. Literally everything is called up through the TAB menu, which is very inconvenient. The radial menu with quick access is called up via the R key, and for some reason it cannot be closed via Escape – you must press R again. Markers on the global map appear two seconds after opening. To extract any resource, you need to spam with the E key… All this can be called a trifle, but it is precisely such unpleasant moments that the game consists of.
It’s also worth emphasizing that the game is not as beautiful as in the screenshots. The same thing happened as with Enshrouded, when the images showed us something really technological, but in reality everything turned out to be much worse. There is also some strange white filter that only spoils the already not the best picture. As for the musical accompaniment, it is boring and monotonous. When an enemy appears nearby, a boring composition begins, which does not stop for several seconds after leaving the fight.
There’s basically nothing to say about the combat system. It’s as average as most other low-grade survival simulators in Early Access. There are attacks in the most basic form, there are dodges… The battles are not very exciting. To explore the world, there are “Zelda” mechanics, such as flying on a local analogue of a glider and climbing walls. True, the latter is done incredibly crookedly, which is why your character will often become detached from the walls or twitch in place.
There is also a plot in Towers of Aghasba, but it is made solely for show. It’s not interesting to follow him, which is why you quickly start skipping boring and drawn-out dialogues, of which there are quite a lot. The tasks are done in a “go and fetch” format and exist only to send you to some place, find certain resources, or teach you something.
Although it must be said that, at its core, Towers of Aghasba is not exactly a failed game. It has a lot of opportunities for development and crafting, a large (albeit monotonous) world to explore with many points of interest, a variety of opponents with their own characteristics. The world itself, as was said at the beginning, is quite unusual. However, none of this simply works due to the game’s numerous problems. It is quite possible to fix most of them, but only time will tell whether they will do it. However, even if this happens, the project is unlikely to greatly impress a fan of the genre. The studio has already presented a roadmap, according to which the developers plan to mainly expand existing capabilities, and this is not enough to captivate for a long time.
Towers of Aghasba had all the potential to be a standout sandbox game, but in practice it turned out to be disappointing. While the game offers extensive crafting and exploration opportunities, its many drawbacks outweigh its pros. Ill-conceived starting gameplay, a lack of basic resources and an inconvenient interface make the game extremely inconvenient. The graphics do not correspond to the stated screenshots, and the musical accompaniment leaves much to be desired. Despite its unique setting and potential for improvement, Towers of Aghasba isn’t all that fun to play yet.
