Tower of Fantasy is one of the latest gacha games to be released in the West during the year 2022. Many Genshin Impact players were excited to try something new, with Tower of Fantasy being branded a "competitor" at first. Both share similar elements such as the fact that they are both gacha games and feature a colorful anime art style.

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While they do have comparable aspects, they each offer a fun and fresh experience to players. While gacha games may not be appealing to some, there are many players who stand by their free-to-play attitude towards the overall genre, and they still thoroughly enjoy the games available, especially the dedicated Genshin Impact player base.

5 Gacha Element

genshin impact wanderlust invocation keqing mona qiqi

Avid Genshin Impact players will be familiar with the gacha genre and what exactly this entails in a video game. Many gacha games feature an anime style, making this game genre a popular choice amongst anime fans. For those who enjoy the gacha elements in Genshin Impact, they will assuredly appreciate the gacha system in Tower of Fantasy too. However, both games take on the gacha feature a little differently.

In Genshin Impact, players earn primogems that can be spent on wishes to get specific characters. The character roster for Genshin Impact covers 4-star characters and 5-star characters, with the latter being the more sought-after type. The 4-star characters are just as popular as some of the 5-star characters though, with the entire cast of characters being much-loved by the Genshin Impact fanbase.

In Tower of Fantasy, players earn 3 different types of gacha currency called nuclei. There are the purple nuclei that are spent on "pulls" at the lower end of the reward pool, however, a percentage of players have actually won SSR characters on this particular banner. Every 10 nuclei will reward the player with a guaranteed SR or SSR, similarly to Genshin Impact's guarantee of a 4-star character or weapon for every 10 pulls. Tower of Fantasy players also earn Black Crystal, which are mainly saved up to spend on red nuclei. Red nuclei are used on the limited-time event banner for specific characters, which makes Black Crystals an important currency to farm.

4 Great Character Design

the character lin from tower of fantasy

One of the main appeals of Genshin Impact is its fantastic character design that focuses on an anime style. Fans of Genshin Impact adore these designs, and many take it upon themselves to make some amazing fan art for each character. The overall attention to detail on the character's appearance as well as their flashy abilities makes for a delightful time when playing Genshin Impact.

Tower of Fantasy players can create their very own customized characters too, something that Genshin doesn't allow. Tower of Fantasy doesn't slack on the character design elements either, and while the aesthetics are different between Genshin Impact and Tower of Fantasy, they're certainly appealing.

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Tower of Fantasy gives Genshin Impact players a fresh new style to appreciate, with Tower of Fantasy focusing more on a futuristic, sci-fi aesthetic, rather than the extremely fantasy-driven designs of Genshin Impact. The abilities are also pretty flashy in Tower of Fantasy too, with the different resonance types and unique weapons that feature awesome animations.

3 The Environment

Tower of Fantasy and Genshin Impact

It's no secret that the environments found in Genshin Impact are absolutely stunning, with each area featuring its own style. There's the Japanese-inspired Inazuma, filled to the brim with sakura trees, or Mondstadt, that focuses on a more European landscape style. Players are free to roam wherever they want to in Genshin Impact, due to the fact that it is an open-world game, much like Tower of Fantasy.

Tower of Fantasy is also open-world as it is branded as an MMO gacha game. In both games, players can wander around the environments as much as they want to, and can take their time appreciating the scenery. When playing Tower of Fantasy, it's clear that they lean more towards a sci-fi fantasy type of environmental design, rather than the magical, naturistic style of Genshin Impact's world. It's a joy to explore both worlds, and it's easy to spend hours wandering through each area while trying to find chests and hidden rewards.

2 The Abilities

genshin anemo battle

One of the most important parts of the combat in Genshin Impact is the fact that each character harbors elemental abilities. As of right now, there is electro, pyro, cryo, hydro, geo, and dendro. Similarly to how elements work in real life, certain elemental abilities will cause strong reactions with each other, such as the combination of dendro and pyro leading to the burning effect on enemies. The characters in Genshin Impact have their own set of animations that come with their abilities, with the 5-star characters having a small animation when players use their skill ability.

Burst abilities and skill abilities are vibrant and unique to each character in the Genshin Impact roster, such as Yoimiya's skill ability that plays an animation of her jumping into the air surrounded by colorful, exploding fireworks. The difference between the two is that weapons in Tower of Fantasy can be used when appearing as any character within the game, whereas Genshin Impact requires you to look like the character who wields the weapon.

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Tower of Fantasy also features small animations when using abilities, with the discharge attacks having a more intense animation compared to the skill ability. The Tower of Fantasy SSR characters also feature a short animation that appears when players tap the button for the discharge ability, similarly to Genshin Impact. The Tower of Fantasy animations take a more realistic approach, heavily rooted in a more elemental sci-fi aspect, compared to the artistic style that Genshin Impact uses for their ability animations.

1 Co-Op

Tower of Fantasy Simulcrums

While Genshin Impact features co-op play, the requirements can block people from playing each other if one is further behind in the progression of the game. Genshin Impact players are more than welcome to wander the world together, fighting enemies and bosses while farming important upgrade materials together. They can also join up as a team to travel into domains, which are used to farm artifacts and talent ascension materials for their characters.

There's plenty to do in Genshin Impact co-op mode, and it's a fantastic experience with friends, but players can only join each other's worlds if their world level and adventure rank are the same or one is lower than the other. This means players who have a wide gap between their levels aren't allowed to play together, making it difficult for some people to enjoy the co-op mode.

With Tower of Fantasy being an open-world massively multiplayer online game (MMO), players can hang out with their friends in-game no matter what level they are. There are multiple channels available in Tower of Fantasy, so if a group of friends wants to play together, all they have to do is enter the same channel number. The MMO nature of Tower of Fantasy allows players to wander around the world together while fighting the challenging world bosses and random groups of enemies sprinkled throughout the environment. Players can also create groups that can then be queued into an instance such as the Joint Operations and Void Rifts, which are duties that offer bountiful rewards.

Tower of Fantasy is available on PC, Android, and iOS.

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