As a seasoned gamer with over two decades of gaming under my belt, I must say that my foray into the realm of Towers of Aghasba left me more disheartened than a Dwarven miner who’s just lost his pickaxe to a rogue Goblin.
At some stage in the open-world survival crafting game ‘Towers of Aghasba’, developed by Moonlit Games, I encountered an issue where I was unable to reach my storage and consequently couldn’t fabricate the necessary tools for progressing with my harrowing expedition. Frustrated at scavenging through Midhaven in search of materials such as fiber and wood, I mounted my steed and journeyed back to my starting farming village, Laila. Since the portals weren’t active yet, it would be advantageous to return there and establish connections between the two locations.
Setting out at a steady pace, I charged forward through the night and eventually into the early morning, crossing a truly impressive bridge I’d constructed earlier using wood, rope, thatch, and oddly enough, a meat skewer. A villager with an identifying symbol caught my eye off to the side, and like a fool, I paused to see if they had any quests for me.
In a specific part of the bridge, I slipped through into the water due to its construction. Exhausted from swimming, I lost my strength and ultimately perished. The game subsequently transported me back to Midhaven, forcing me to embark on this journey once more. This harrowing experience can only be encapsulated by the poignant words of author Harlan Ellison: “I have no voice and wish I could shout.
Initially, the game has an appealing character and cast, such as Culkin with his less-than-stellar humor, Ajit who constantly delegates tasks to you while claiming all the credit, or the woman who blesses everything with “Shimu Shima”.
An event transpired where I scaled a sunken vessel within an abandoned shipyard. Remnants hinted at my Shima ancestors attempting to escape some calamity, yet perishing and transforming into stone statues. The tableau was captivating, leading me to suspect there might be something noteworthy on these ships. Alas, nothing of value was found, and I eventually ran out of energy while ascending a ship, causing me to slip and plunge into the water. However, instead of meeting an instant demise, the game became stuck in a loop.
After shutting down the game from my desktop and restarting, I found myself back at the shipyard with reduced health rather than in Midhaven. These instances, among many others, are contributing factors to why I dislike playing this game as it stands now. Despite an intriguing concept and beautiful setting, engaging in tasks that feel insignificant and contribute little to nothing is disappointing.
For those not familiar, “Towers of Aghasba” was revealed last year for both PS5 and PC, capturing attention right away with its stunning visuals and artistic style. The idea behind the game also seems enticing – you play as a young architect from the Shimu tribe, returning to their homeland of Aghasba. However, a catastrophic event known as Withered Eruption has made a large part of the land inhospitable, and there are numerous Withered Nests and creatures wandering about. Your mission is twofold: first, you rebuild Midhaven, which appears to be the Shimu’s capital; second, you work to re-establish a bond with nature and the various entities that control its elements.
Initially, the game’s overall charm and characters are appealing in their unique ways. For instance, Culkin with his cheesy jokes, Ajit who passes on all tasks to you while claiming credit, or the woman who blesses everything with “Shimu Shima.” Even your character, without a voice or face, exudes charm through animations alone. Although some facial expressions might remind you of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” (not the pleasant kind), the cutscenes propel the otherwise slow-moving storyline forward.
It’s unfortunate that the game Towers of Aghasba didn’t explore various possibilities in its plot and design, opting instead for a repetitive task system. At first glance, these tasks might appear harmless, serving as introductions to diverse gameplay elements such as farming, construction, cooking, and so forth. However, upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that they have transformed into an endless checklist, your permanent duty within the game world.
I could tolerate the repetition in this game if it weren’t for the inconsistent scarcity of resources in Towers of Aghasba. It’s frustrating that you can’t collect any resource freely – instead, you have to seek out particular nodes marked with small blue markers.
Additionally, there’s a system where you plant Giant Trees and carry out tasks for the woodland sprite, Sparkle, such as providing food to nearby creatures, cultivating particular seed varieties, and offering materials like Manure. As the trees grow, they attract even bigger animals that can be recognized based on their dietary preferences and spawning new types of seeds for plants yielding various resources. All these beneficial actions accumulate Gratitude, a constant energy source in the plant and animal life across the cosmos. This energy is utilized to cultivate more Giant Trees, improve existing ones, and even activate portals scattered throughout Aghasba.
The problem is that mining, hunting, and resource gathering all deplete Amity. They’re mandatory, though, so you have to, but such is the balance of nature or something. Fortunately, if you want specific materials like hides, meat, and fur, you can hunt the animals that have gathered around those Colossal Trees you’ve planted.
In this scenario, I’ll focus on the ethical aspects, but there are no gameplay or narrative consequences beyond losing Amity. Interestingly, not even Sprite, who shares prejudice against humans due to their destructive tendencies, seems bothered or upset, despite your ruthless killing of animals and felling trees in his presence.
Additionally, you can eliminate Overgrown Hives scattered across the game world, these areas frequently regenerate, and earn Goodwill by doing so. Although living in harmony with nature is a key concept, it seems underdeveloped beyond ticking off tasks on a list. Unfortunately, even if you plant numerous seeds, creating a thriving ecosystem still requires restoring multiple sanctuaries found on the map – you can anticipate more checkpoints ahead.
If the game Towers of Aghasba weren’t so capricious about distributing materials, I wouldn’t mind the repetition as much. However, instead of allowing me to collect resources from any plant or mine any rock, it only lets me gather them from certain nodes marked with little blue indicators. These often yield a single piece of the material you need, making it difficult to find what you’re looking for. Larger plants and specific trees provide more resources, but when you first arrive at Aghasba and have to start from scratch in Midhaven with barely anything around, it can be quite frustrating.
“There are difficulties such as not being able to easily switch between different tools, weapons, and resources for tasks like combat, gathering resources, or even healing during a battle by consuming food. This makes these actions much more complicated.
Even simple things like cooking food feel unnecessarily complicated and irritating. Do you have dozens of meats but no mushroom caps because you couldn’t find any plants? Forget making any meat skewers. There’s no simple grilling of the meats to provide health, which can be boosted with other ingredients for additional bonuses like, oh, I don’t know, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, one of the game’s main inspirations? Not that it matters since you can endlessly consume these raw meats without any ill effects, and no amount of healing will help when facing some of the tougher foes.
In the game Towers of Aghasba, it’s quite evident that certain survival aspects are not fully developed. However, this is just one of the challenges you may encounter. For instance, during battles, your health bar vanishes, making it unclear if healing is necessary. Prior to the latest update, I was unable to craft a spear or prepare meals in the initial stages. Consequently, without gathering enough berries or roots, death could come prematurely.
It’s particularly challenging that creating a basic bow seems almost unattainable. The robust Withered enemies and certain wild animals deal excessive damage, making it simple for them to knock you out with one or two hits at close range, even after acquiring an entire armor set. If you don’t possess a bow and are prepared for hand-to-hand combat, get ready to frequently respawn.
The advancement is frustratingly gradual – even though materials such as iron have been found, it will take a considerable amount of time before you can create effective weapons, and creating anything notable in terms of armor remains distant. Initially, the two armor sets that become accessible after constructing the tailor provide identical bonuses when equipped with three pieces. The difference in their appearance is the only benefit at this stage, assuming funeral rituals are introduced in the future.
One way to rephrase that sentence could be: The process of switching between tools, weapons, and resources during combat, gathering, and healing becomes much more complex due to the lack of rapid tool swapping. Unlike most survival games launched this year (disregarding others), you need to press a button, open the shortcut menu, and select the item you want rather than simply pressing numbers on your keyboard.
To ensure the prosperity of the Towers of Aghasba, it’s crucial to reevaluate our basic principles and design choices. This need for change is particularly evident in the areas known as the Withered Zones.
As a gamer, I’ve learned the hard way that if I accidentally open my inventory during gameplay, I need to quickly press the same button to close it again because neither Esc, Tab, nor any other keys outside of Alt+F4 will do the trick. This can be a fatal mistake, especially in combat when switching from long-range to melee weapons, but it’s even more crucial during resource gathering. You see, various materials require specific tools, so you can’t just switch to a hatchet for chopping down a tree or a shovel for digging up roots. Instead, you’ll find yourself endlessly pressing R, equipping one tool after another until it breaks.
Currently, Towers of Aghasba is in an early stage of release, and certain problems, such as the mentioned soft lock when depleting stamina and falling into water, are being addressed through updates. The performance, which currently struggles without DLSS, should see improvement too. As for the climbing and movement mechanics, they’re expected to be refined and smoothed out in the future. However, it’s crucial that some fundamental aspects and design choices for Towers of Aghasba need reconsideration in order for it to truly succeed, and this is most noticeable in the Withered Zones.
In these spots, the influence of the Withered is extremely strong. As you move in and out of these areas, there’s a humorous flicker in the lighting. A debuff affects you upon entry, and if you don’t use a potion or a plant within the zone to restart the timer, your health decreases, eventually leading to your demise, forcing you to go back to the beginning.
Picture this scenario: You’re attempting to perform a task, but you’re constantly under attack by larger, Withered creatures and Withered Snags that could wipe you out. To make matters worse, the environment is tricky to navigate due to jittery movement mechanics. Furthermore, these smaller Withered can be difficult to spot because of their color scheme, which becomes even more challenging at night or in dim lighting, adding to your growing frustration.
If you lack multiple potions to reset your timer, which can be quite aggravating due to the time spent gathering resources to create them, and if you don’t manage to bypass all the enemies because combat becomes frustrating since they deal so much damage that it’s often not worth fighting, then you’re in for a very challenging playthrough.
In the game “Towers of Aghasba“, an ironic turn of events and what led to my defeat was when one of my bows snapped. To advance Midhaven to tier 2 and unlock the Blacksmith for crafting a new bow, you must complete the first Withered Expedition. Unfortunately, if you fail this quest, you can’t check off one of the tasks required for the upgrade. The odds of finding a replacement bow in the wilderness, as suggested by the game tips, are much slimmer than they seem. Meanwhile, my other iron bow, found just hours earlier, was holding up surprisingly well compared to my fraying endurance.
Currently, even though numerous other worthy survival games are in early access, playing Towers of Aghasba feels like an exhausting ordeal that asks for a lot without providing much satisfaction in return.
The towers of Aghasba exhibit certain commendable aspects, primarily its stunning visuals and artistic design. Occasionally, the passage of time may seem excessively swift, yet it remains captivating as the shadows from neighboring hills realistically shift, and the lighting transitions gracefully from twilight to dawn. The creatures and flora appear distinctive and intricate, albeit lacking animation during certain actions such as felling large trees or collapsing slain animals’ ragdoll models for unexplained reasons.
Additionally, a small measure of delight is derived from casually discovering various characters while traversing the world, such as the Snag family – colossal handless beings – who sought assistance in eradicating the Withered. This further underscores the impressive animation quality during cutscenes. At one point, even a disembodied eye requested aid to improve its vision, although this task involved simply delivering some Resin. It’s intriguing to contemplate if there could have been a mini-game or an engaging conclusion beyond the possibility of needing help again in the future.
The Towers of Aghasba initially sparked genuine enthusiasm within me upon its announcement due to its captivating setting, intriguing plotline, and blend of exploration, combat, and crafting. However, over time, my initial excitement has been systematically dampened, leaving me with minimal interest in exploring or being curious about what might be lurking around the next corner. Everything except for combat feels like a tedious task, and it seems that the balance needs to be re-evaluated because fighting enemies that easily defeat me isn’t particularly enjoyable.
If the first few hours were redesigned to be less monotonous, if resource gathering wasn’t so frustrating, if the Withered zones offered more of a challenge with potential rewards instead of being potentially dangerous without any safe options, or if many other issues are addressed, I might find enjoyment in Towers of Aghasba. At the moment, despite numerous other promising survival games in early access, playing Towers of Aghasba is currently a laborious experience that seems to give more than it takes.
This game was reviewed on PC.
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2024-11-26 22:41