| Tower of Fantasy | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Tower of Fantasy: Warp Server Review Overview
What is Tower of Fantasy: Warp Server?
Tower of Fantasy is an open-world action RPG with MMO elements, created by Hotta Studio and initially released on August 10, 2022, across PC, PlayStation consoles, and mobile platforms. It later released a dedicated MMO server called the Warp Server on November 25, 2025.
Set on the far-flung world of Aida, the game follows the Wanderer, an amnesiac protagonist, who becomes entangled in the planet’s growing crisis. It’s up to the player to unravel the mysteries of this new home and confront the threat facing humanity.
Tower of Fantasy: Warp Server features:
⚫︎ Action RPG gameplay
⚫︎ Crew (guild) features
⚫︎ Dozens of collectible weapons (characters)
⚫︎ Working in-game commodity market
⚫︎ World Bosses and Raids
⚫︎ Regular events and seasons
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Tower of Fantasy: Warp Server’s gameplay and story.
| Digital Storefronts | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 Steam |
 Playstation |
 Google Play |
 App Store |
| Free | |||
Tower of Fantasy: Warp Server Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 All Weapons are Obtainable for Free Market System is Fun to Mess With Combat is Quite Good Loads of Content |
Very Flat Audio First Region Mostly Skipped Makes for a Bad Prologue Rather Empty Maps Still Very Janky and Buggy Heavily Filtered Chat |
Tower of Fantasy: Warp Server Story - 6/10
Nothing has really changed between the original gacha release and the new MMO servers in terms of story content. However, the game forces you to skip half of it just to fast-track you into the portion where most features unlock; an "innovation" that didn’t age well at all and makes for a jarring narrative. The plot itself is fine; nothing groundbreaking, reasonably charming, and Shirli is a genuinely great companion. But, if you’re a new player hoping to get into Tower of Fantasy for the story, it’s going to be a messy and confusing experience.
Tower of Fantasy: Warp Server Gameplay - 7/10
It’s hard to find a mobile game with highs and lows as far apart as Tower of Fantasy’s. On one hand, the core gameplay is perfectly serviceable and even genuinely fun at times. On the other, it has some of the most frustrating controller support I’ve ever experienced. Then you have the new market system, destined to spark equal parts triumphant shouting and soul-crushing despair. And somehow, amidst all that, they managed to turn the simple act of chatting, an essential feature of MMOs, into a bullet-hell minigame where you dodge censorship filters instead of projectiles.
Tower of Fantasy: Warp Server Visuals - 8/10
Look, Tower of Fantasy doesn’t have the prettiest textures or the most detailed doodads; its UI is ugly as hell, and it’s carried hard almost entirely by its very pretty character models and designs. But for a game that has struggled with so many things over the years, there’s one thing it has never failed at: its absolutely gorgeous landscapes and cityscapes, which players can freely explore, and its fully animated cutscenes that somehow don’t look too shabby at all.
Tower of Fantasy: Warp Server Audio - 6/10
If you’re looking for an action RPG that delivers the bare minimum immersion that the genre demands; one that treats your ears to an audio experience best described as “it’s okay”; look no further than Tower of Fantasy. It has everything from occasionally effective but mostly forgettable background music, to intuitive yet painfully flat sound effects, to voice acting whose quality varies entirely depending on which language you pick.
Tower of Fantasy: Warp Server Value for Money - 8/10
Tower of Fantasy’s Warp Server delivers a free-to-play MMO experience that rarely asks you to spend money unless you really want a new pair of pants or feel like rolling for a new character. Yes, you read that right: Tower of Fantasy did remove character gacha… by implementing character gacha. Truly, the developers are on to something. That aside, spending money mostly just accelerates your progress in a way that doesn’t feel like you’re cheating anyone, making it a surprisingly fair deal for anyone regardless of how much free time they have.
Tower of Fantasy: Warp Server Overall - 70/100
At this point, I’m obligated to call Tower of Fantasy an anomaly among its peers. Beyond its perfectly average music, the developers, through what I can only assume is either mad creativity or blind faith in a Magic 8 Ball, keep steering the game in directions so strange you can’t help but wonder if any of it was intentional. And just because they released
the Warp Servers, that doesn't mean it became something new. It's still Tower of Fantasy, for better or worse; a game that must overcome years of decline and reinvent itself in order to experience a true revival.
Tower of Fantasy Warp Server Review: More Like Tower of Janky Deja Vu
Tower of Cautious Optimism
It almost feels like a lifetime ago now, but when Tower of Fantasy (ToF) launched globally in August 2022, it was probably the most fun I’d had with an online game up to that point. Exploring Asperia, jetpacking across mountains, messing around with my crew, testing the limits of its unhinged chat filters, and watching fireworks go off at Cetus Island every night to the tune of “Meant to Be.” Those were the moments that really stuck with my young(er) gamer brain.
“Wow. This is gaming,” I remember thinking as I looked forward to Vera; the gleaming desert metropolis with flying taxis, neon-lit streets, and fancy trains. The future felt bright, stylish, and full of possibility.
And then… nothing. For reasons I couldn’t fully articulate at the time, I just stopped playing after the Vera update. All that remained was a vague sense of wistful regret and the knowledge that Tower of Fantasy and I quietly drifted apart over the next three years.
Fast forward to 2025. I was spending my morning watching vtubers play Battlefield 6 (I was totally working at that time) when I stumbled across an announcement: “Warp Server Launch.” I blinked. Tower of Fantasy is still alive? I thought it died ages ago.
Lo and behold, on release, it turns out ToF was still the janky, lovable mess I’d fallen for back then. Despite all the controversies and all the doubt, it simply refused to die, and the Warp Server is just the latest attempt by the mad scientists at Hotta Studio to keep that cold, tortured heart beating.
Will they succeed this time? Probably not — not when the mass deletion of accounts due to the change in publishers killed off half the reason why old players would return, anyway. But I do admire what they did here, regardless.
Tower of MMO
So, what exactly is Tower of Fantasy’s Warp Server? Put simply, it’s the base game stripped of gacha, but stuffed with more grind, deeper Crew activity, and a somewhat functional in-game economy, among other things. “It’s a revolution in the game,” Hotta said in their launch FAQ, which was probably the closest thing to marketing I ever saw as a returning player. That’s quite telling of how everything about this arrived.
At its core, Tower of Fantasy’s original version is an action-RPG MMO with so many genre- and platform-appropriate systems jammed into it that giving each one proper attention would turn this review into a textbook. To name just a few of the fringe features, we have mounts (which inevitably lead to racing events) and various mobility gadgets (which inevitably lead to platforming events.
…Combat-focused events? Ironically enough, those were surprisingly rare, especially during the game’s first year.
Tower of Fantasy’s Warp Server, meanwhile, addressed some of the issues related to progression. Worried you’ll get bored at endgame? The Season System resets content, and even your weapon and equipment stats, while helping balance the economy. Thought the original game’s Crews were just alternative friend lists? Now you have things like Fluffy Gift, Dreamy Disco, and Guild vs. Guild modes to give both new and returning players actual things to do together.
Aspiring in-game entrepreneurs can also finally indulge in their aspirations of earning (in-game) money. Players can now produce, harvest, and trade cosmetics, materials, and other mutually needed goods through a global marketplace; an economy that is surprisingly… not on fire. Yet… unless I have something to do about it.
Now, put all of that on top of the classic Tower of Fantasy formula and you get…! Well, still mostly the same old Tower of Fantasy. The only real difference now is that it finally leans into being the MMO it promised to be back in 2022. In many ways, though, it feels like a copy-paste of the game with things slapped on top of it with duct tape and dreams.
Tower of A Little Gacha
The most well-known feature of Tower of Fantasy’s Warp Server is the “absence” of gacha. All weapons and characters (Simulacra), which were once locked behind banners, plus a bunch of cosmetics, are now supposedly unlockable purely through gameplay. So how did Hotta Studio pull off this miraculous no-gacha system?
By adding gacha, of course.
Enter the Hyper Arsenal: a banner that contains (almost) every Simulacrum ever released in Tower of Fantasy. For the first 30 days of the Warp Server’s launch, every player gets one free daily pull called a Rift Note. And once you obtain a character, they’re removed from the rotation.
Whether you are a whale, dolphin, or F2P, everyone will eventually get everything on the banner. Then Hotta will release a new batch, and the cycle repeats.
But what if you miss your free Rift Note? Or you want more pulls? That’s where the grind begins. Activities from the original game such as the World Bosses, Joint Ops, Void Rifts, Raids, and more, all reward Rift Note Shards. You can earn up to 50 shards per day, and since it takes 100 to craft a Rift Note, that's essentially one free character every two days.
If you want to speed things up (and open your wallet), however, you can also buy Rift Notes directly for 1500 Tanium, Tower of Fantasy’s paid currency.
… It’s really just gacha with less steps, huh?
Weapon progression has also been reworked so that you no longer need duplicate Simulacra to upgrade their stats. Instead, the system now resembles basic weapon progression in games like Chaos Zero Nightmare, Honkai: Star Rail, or Wuthering Waves: everything is upgraded using materials.
That said, be careful about where you invest early on. If you upgrade too many weapons at once, you can spread your resources thin enough to soft-brick your account. All it takes is pushing the story or combat content a bit too far while your gear lags behind, and suddenly every goal becomes a slog your weapons simply aren’t built to handle.
Tower of Cool Capitalism Simulator
Since the developers wanted to transform Tower of Fantasy into a full MMO, they had to redesign several systems to encourage social interaction. One of their biggest efforts is the introduction of an in-game economy; a genuine, functioning economy that, even in these early stages, actually works. Or at least, we hope it continues to function.
Players now choose two out of six Life Classes, each producing different goods that depend on the others. These items can then be listed and sold on the Trade House, forming the backbone of the market. To push engagement, a Quartermaster NPC in Hykros offers missions that reward 100 Universal Crystals (the new trade currency) in exchange for three player-produced items. Since these quests almost always request one or two items you didn’t make, you end up buying the rest from the market, creating a constant flow of supply and demand.
Players can also sell equipment and cosmetic shards, and fully crafted items, which further diversifies what circulates through the economy. So far, it works (almost too well in many cases). Heck, some markets are already in crisis; Grilled Fish and Leather prices, for example, are skyrocketing because only a handful of players picked Fishing or Beast Taming, the two most time-consuming Life Classes. Anything they list gets devoured instantly, creating a persistent shortage.
On paper, this sounds boring. In practice? Not even close.
I still remember selling 60 Altered Ores and six Gigantic Arm Shards at prices slashed in half, making every other listing look like it was chiseled in arrogance. When the money hit my account, a low buzz lit up my veins. Was this how the first merchant of Ur felt millennia ago? That clean, primal thrill of a deal well struck?
Then the buzz curdled into something hungrier. I saw visions of not just one sale, but hundreds. Thousands, even. Universal Crystals flowing like a tide I alone commanded. The greed they warn about in the Bible wasn’t a warning anymore; it was an invitation. And the whole market looked ripe, undefended, and mine for the taking.
And then I ran out of Life Class stamina.
That’s right. Every action that produces something (picking vegetables, refining materials, catching fish) consumes stamina. It’s a reasonable way to prevent market flooding… and a cruel way to stop me from becoming Bezos of Hykros.
It’s a simple economic model, but the implementation is surprisingly solid, and depending on your luck, it’s either wonderfully enjoyable or spiritually devastating. Right now, I’m speculating on Grilled Fish. I bought 40 at 7 UC each, so here’s hoping they bounce back to 10. Any day now…
Tower of Old and New Issues
Unfortunately, even with Tower of Fantasy’s earlier patches and the Warp Server’s reworked experience, the game still retains, and in some cases introduces, a whole suite of issues that even casual players will run into on practically a daily basis.
The controller support, for example, is genuinely terrible. Not only is it nearly impossible to play the entire game on a controller alone, but some of its quirks are downright baffling. Two glaring examples include key rebinding for controllers that somehow requires you to use your mouse and keyboard, and navigating menus often forces you to alternate between the D-pad and the joystick as if the game can’t decide which one should reign supreme.
Onboarding as a “new” player is also a mess. There was a time, for instance, where I was taking the tutorial for equipping a second weapon. However, because it happens mid-combat where you’re normally not allowed to change your loadout, a minor issue with loading caused me to become unable to complete it because I was being forced to click specific prompts that aren’t popping up due to not being able to equip the second weapon.
Oh, and NPC pathfinding sometimes just breaks. Happened to me with the hover drone in the first hour and with Shirli.
And outside of tutorials, traversal issues are another pain to completely make peace with. Things like the game occasionally teleporting you around when forcefully attempting to vault surfaces, and even tiny elevation changes blocking your movement like it’s a solid 7-foot-tall brick wall aren’t entirely uncommon.
Tower of Minimal Pressure
Now, I know I mentioned that despite claiming the Warp Server has no character gacha but Hotta Studios, in their infinite brilliance, still managed to introduce character gacha. However, if you think about it, they were technically correct. That’s because you will, in the end, obtain every character from that pool. And once you do, any additional character introduced after that won’t (hopefully) require any more pulling; because what’s the use if there’s only a single character to obtain?
After that point, the immense pressure to keep playing catch-up, due to the original’s design of combining the MMO experience with gacha, is cut neatly in half. I would even argue that it was already cut, at least for the most part, to begin with. After all, do you really need to obtain every single character the game has released over the course of its two-odd years of existence within the shortest amount of time possible?
Not really, no?
What you’re left with is only the pressure of keeping up with the MMO side of the game—a far less taxing trial, considering how much easier it is to pace yourself with an MMO’s update cycle compared to a gacha. That means you can log in, do your dailies, and simply opt to engage in the extremely abundant side activities it has instead of squeezing every last piece of pull currency you can get out of your playtime.
Of course, this is only possible because of how content-rich Tower of Fantasy is outside of its gacha-enabling features. After all, despite all of its problems, you can at least praise Tower of Fantasy for being far less concerned about funneling you into its cash shop than its peers due to having to balance its MMO features as well. It’s why transitioning to a purely MMO experience isn’t much of a whiplash in terms of gameplay compared to if another game attempted it.
Is Tower of Fantasy: Warp Server Worth It?
Tower of Many Shortcomings but Definite Charm
Despite all of my complaints, Tower of Fantasy is a title that’s entirely lovable even through, and possibly even because of, all of its jank. As long as you don’t take it too seriously, you would even find that its shortcomings are just a part of its unique personality that makes for a terribly enjoyable, if somewhat frustrating game.
As it stands, though, Tower of Fantasy is still a gacha game at heart and gameplay, so it still has the residual shallowness of a medium-tier gacha game when compared to full-fledged MMORPGs. So, if Hotta Studios wants to attract new players and retain current players, it will have to work hard to not only introduce new MMO systems but also streamline existing ones.
It’s quite worth getting into the game right now, though, even if only to relive the old days for the returning players or experience the endearing jank others have for the newcomers.
| Digital Storefronts | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam |
Playstation |
Google Play |
App Store |
| Free | |||
Tower of Fantasy: Warp Server FAQ
Is progress shared between the classic and Warp servers?
No, it’s not. You will start from the beginning in the Warp servers.
Can I transfer my old account into the Warp servers?
To some extent, yes. For example, the Evangelion collaboration weapons can only be obtained in the Warp Server through transfer of data from a classic server where you already have it.
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Tower of Fantasy: Warp Server Product Information
 |
|
| Title | TOWER OF FANTASY |
|---|---|
| Release Date | August 10, 2022 (Mobile, PC, PlayStation) November 25, 2025 (Warp Servers) |
| Developer | Hotta Studio |
| Publisher | Perfect World Games |
| Supported Platforms | Mobile, PC, PlayStation 5 |
| Genre | Action, RPG, MMO, Simulation |
| Number of Players | 1-4 |
| ESRB Rating | Teen |
| Official Website | Tower of Fantasy Official Website |
