Recent reviews by morph?

People probably watched the trailer for it, but Tower 57's a top-down roguelike shooter, with the story campaign focusing on playing as 3 of 6 special agents with the mission on infiltrating and shutting down a government gone corrupt by wiping out waves of mutants, soldiers, and machines throughout numerous stages on their way to Tower 57.

That's as much as I can give as far as a rundown for the face value of the game, and before I go into any super deep details, I'll start with the recommendation: yes. I'll be sure to name a gooood amount of gripes and nitpicks I have with it, but I'd say that at its base, Tower 57 has enough positives to weigh in as a solid roguelike.
Now, out of a solo experience with more than enough time to nullify any refunds, here's what I got:
Positives:
++Artwork finds its niche for me, since it almost looks like a revamped grimey DOS game with enough charm and polish to stand out in a nice way.
++Variation in terms of playable characters, weapons/tools to use, and upgrade routes is preeeetty wide. I have a teeny negative that's likely when you have a variety like this, of course, but it balances out soon enough as the game finds its pace.
++Tower 57 definitely puts thought into fleshing out what's given in the entire campaign. The main overworld you'll be returning to often actually has a lot of things to explore and do, with stores and NPCs being scattered about with a legitimate sense of character put into a hub that'd potentially be shoved off as negative space and a place to save/spend money.
+Writing in this game is subtle in terms of world building found throughout interactables and computer terminals that flesh out the world a bit more, whether it documents the government's administration or the populace dealing with it. Dialogue options when talking to characters doesn't change across the different agents and don't have different outputs in terms of changing any story elements, but it still gave me enough to read and be immersed in.
+Gameplay's enjoyable. The base mechanics with weaponry and mobility are handled fine, but environments and enemies are designed well and help to define the campaign more, although some enemies could be recycled a tiny bit less.
Ok, as a reminder, this is the good stuff about the game, and it totally balances out to be an enjoyable experience.
Now here's all the beef I have with game/ here's Negatives:
--The campaign is REALLY short. 7 unique stages in total, with 4 different bosses scattered throughout chapters and the last boss feeling forced and out of place. The game's established in this weird dystopian sci-fi setting are they seriously shoving a wizard in as the final boss with no clear story explanation did I miss sumn???? This entire game was done in less than I'd say 6 hours on Easy mode. "wow you're such a nerd, why are you playing on easy lol" 1) I'm a loser and I wanna explore on my own pace, and 2) difficulty apparently isn't super important.
--As far as it seems, difficulty (Easy/Normal/Hard) just changes how much damage you take. Enemy health, money you earn, special you earn killing enemies, and enemy/boss patterns stay the exact same. So at that point it's just a matter of dodging well and avoiding too much damage, but that itself also has some big problems.
--The body upgrade system has some gaps. Like, seriously, arms and legs are cheaper and easier to fully upgrade early game, but they barely hold a candle to the torso. Left Arm, Right Arm, and Legs are less than $1000 to upgrade, and have minor upgrades, like +20% mobility and +15% weapon damage, with the Left Arm at least offering a pretty nice 4x tool ammo. Torso as a whole costs $4750 to fully upgrade. Double health and health regen. "well it's still pricy as all hell" not if you do some fun GRINDING! But we can get to that bit later.
--Explosions are really cheap. I know this review should look at things in a more general light but nope let's just get into a pretty big nitpick. Getting hit with late game explosions almost instakills you at 200% health, and god it's not pretty. Also the visual for the radius of where an explosion lands is kinda unreliable, and my god the 3rd boss's explosion attack is BRUTAL.
--Oh yeah speaking of death we also gotta cover penalties of death. Dying as one of your three characters completely drops whatever weapons and tools they were holding, and you continue as a remaining teammate. This character can be revived later with body upgrades still intact, but unless you're able to resurrect in that same level and pick up those weapons with your once dead agent, those items are COMPLETELY lost, all their upgrades are wasted, and there's (get this) NO WAY OF REPLACING YOUR AGENT'S STARTING WEAPONS. "just backtrack the levels and try to find the weapon" No way of doin that either, since levels are just completely closed off after you finish them and go to another level. Obviously this punishes poor play and dying in a roguelike as it should, but with instagibbs being super possible and no other methods of recovery other than hard restarting a run, this type of mechanic biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiites.
-I'd say the "losing body parts" mechanic is a little underutilized, since only 5% of enemies can even pose the threat and there's usually a repair station like 5 seconds later to help negate any loss. The bleed out mechanic and actual loss of mobility or tools is a nice touch, but I have no idea why they seriously made it possible to lose your right arm, because unless you just finished a room or you can swap out to a healthier character, you're seriously just stuck in a room with no actual damage until you just die. Why is this a thing that's fully possible I have no idea but it doesn't work well when the mechanic generally doesn't do anything interesting for consistent gameplay.
-Special among 5 of 6 characters pretty much totals to a screenwipe of basic enemies/damage to bosses, which'd be lame if they didn't implement unique visuals. As mentioned in the difficulty part of the review, you gain meter at a consistent rate, and I kind of wish it didn't work that way? It feels like two rooms of enemies just automatically fills your whole meter, plus there's also a pickup that also fills out your meter, so there's no real strategy to special other than "Jeez this room is overwhelming me/I'm bored yEEEEEET"
-Money earned just killing enemies is substantial enough to upgrade a majority of your agents stats and weapons, but of course gambling and minigames are completely viable to pick up extra cash in the main overworld. There's only 4 games I can think of in the area, and the two in the bar have low rewards (nail game and darts don't provide more than 50 into 0 or 100), and the cup game needs you to be seriously keen to win double/nothing on up to $100. And then there's slots. They're not random, you just gotta line up three symbols. The speed stays completely consistent across the columns. Input's as low as $10 a try, and if you find a groove and only go for the highest value, you make out with an easy $200 every single try. If this doesn't just completely wipe out financial issues in the game and make the game tons easier, I seriously have no idea what does.
..............-oh yeah and that darts game IS RIGGED TO ALL HELL, AI JUST CASUALLY HITS 60 POINTS TWICE IN ONE ROUND HOW ARE YOU EVEN ABLE TO DO THIS TO EARN MONEY CONSISTENTLY

I know at first glance it looks like this game's pretty bad since there's lines for positives and essays for negatives, but trust me: not only am I really not that vocal on giving a game praise, every negative doesn't stain the game bad enough to really make me want to not recommend it. At its core, the game is polished, well thought out, and fun enough to really keep me playing and ignore super big issues. Numbers are really dumb but it hits a solid 6/10. "wow isn't that low" nevermind it's magnum opus 9/10

rundown super quick: it's every roguelike on steam ever; fairly cheap + charming qualities lead you to get it and play for like 150~ hours until you get bored out of your mind and ditch it entirely. so get it I guess, ok enough experience that's worth your money, don't expect something long lasting.

pros:
nice variety of characters and they're all fairly balanced where no character feels overtly inferior or super viable
huge library of different items with varying practical uses and tiers (common/uncommon/rare)
overally good design on characters, enemies, items, and maps. except for the last example, everything has its own little story/description/entry which adds a little in terms of world building
controls are simple and easy to rebind on both kb and controller
the ost is honestly beautiful for every single area and teleporter theme, and I'm really sad that has to have a "but..." to come with it
and multiplayer can actually help to elevate a shallow roguelike like this, cooperating and going throughout the game is challenging and fun
cons:
visually minimal for the first 10 minutes of a game, and then it just turns to visual pollution when there's 50+ enemies on screen and there's colors everywhere

game literally only has one update with one extra character so bugs like falling endlessly when starting a level or getting stuck in a wall are legitimately plausible when playing this current day. also the game can just randomly crash in multiplayer games and white screen and take screen priority over EVERY OTHER APPLICATION INCLUDING TASK MANAGER.additionally the dev team's most definitely abandoned this game for their next project and god knows what they're doing with that lol

every level has two themes and they all loop when they finish, so you're undoubtedly going to get tired of the same 4 minute song. both themes for a level could've definitely been fitted with matching ambiences

singleplayer is really really drab, even with artifacts I can't see anyone willingly putting in any more than 150 hours

also multiplayer could use a little polishing up, dying early really leaves you with nothing to do but wait and item sharing could be reworked a little


it's just like any other roguelike, buy it if you want and enjoy those first hundred hours, don't look for anything deeper unless you have friends to play with

it's so far been a normal clicker game
- muted sound + music (including voices because that ♥♥♥♥ drones on and on)
- mashed
- upgraded things
- basked in glory of ez muney ez ♥♥♥♥♥♥ B)
- questioned the point of existance for my life and what I'm wasting
- softly wept while purchasing schoolgirl dlc

8.5/10 just because it ain't pay to win bull hockey
if cute girls ain't your cup of tea go drink your Team Fortress fruit punch you child
if it is well this is gonna be another clicker game with that, enjoy I guess??

geez, this game has so much potential, let's just hope it doesn't fall into dirt
Pros:
quackquackquackquack
Graphics are pleasing, simple, cute design all comes together
Different weapons that actually do something
Hats make me feel special and unique
Multiplayer settings are legit
OST is surprisingly good
Basic controls are given off the bat, THANK CHRIST.

Cons (UGH):
quackquackquackquackquackquackquackquackquack
Single player's mostly... empty. Multiplayer's mostly implied, but good lord...
Chat and the mere existence of the option to quack make the community overly toxic
Lag and bugs (if they're unintentional?) could ruin experience
Game doesn't really do much to help you improve when it comes to learning advanced mechanics
Community's also still pretty small, and it can be a pain to get a whole group in quick-matches.

Writing this game off for the players is pretty stupid, so looking at this game for the GAME
it's pretty great. Highly advise playing with friends, less so multiplayer with randies, MUCH less so singleplayer.

"dis game ass" - K9999
"Like a beautiful deadly baseball dance" - commentator from Combo Breaker
"Nice" - the black and white Candyman

8.8/10 PewDiePie played it

s h i tpost aside, here's pretty much the game:
boring if you plan on doing nothing but single player/challenge. seriously, don't pirate the game, it doesn't support anyone and the game is super stale; not of course adding in the ai doesn't live up to any player worth their salt.
not fun if you're casually going into qm.
alright if you plan to play casually as a couch multiplayer game (replayability's gonna be low if no one plans to learn game mechanics fully).
nice if you get involved with the community (learning or not, still good to talk to people instead of playing faceless randoms).
lovely if you plan on learning the game, getting along with community (tourneys and steam chat, dog :D), and trying to improve your playstyle.

game's palettes/character flavors/skins, stages, and music can be replaced too, so you can mix things up if it gets stale too quick.

oh just to let folks know honestly, online's pretty wonky. game might crash and an alt+F4 might be necessary (if others don't follow). still good connection and can be fun online privately.

tl;dr this game's competitve. full replayability depends on you. mod things if you hate them that much, you baby. don't like? well then I guess that's fine, go back to gmod you nerd. 9/10 please don't hate the community for trying :c

EDIT: NVM GAME SUCKS!!
-BAD MUSIC LIKE WHAT THE HECK IS THIS SKRILLEX NONSENSE
-BAD GAMEPLAY LATCH HITBOXES ARE STUPID
-BAD COMMUNITY WAIT ♥♥♥♥ I DIDN'T MEAN THAT
-BAD CONTROLS MAYBE THAT'S JUST MY KEYBOARD NVM BRB
-GOOD CONTROLS OK IT WAS THE KEYBOARD
TOTAL SCORE = 79/104 YEAH SURE IT WAS ALRIGHT

""""""""""""""Sure"""""""""""""""""

I mean I don't really need to explain the gameplay, if you've seen a playthrough of it that's the entirety of the experience

pros:
super duper enjoyable first 200 hours, discovering everything is p neat
nice presentation, pixel art and ost is aight
comfy controls for kb and controller
mods and challenges can vary experience a lil more
I mean technically the game updates like every other month/every three months so you're kinda getting new content

cons aka edmund is a hack fraud:
not really much of a learning curve it's mostly a learning wall and the wall's huge and there's no challenge past it, first 100 runs are hard and then it's a uniform run no matter what
some characters are almost comically easy and then others don't actually have a challenge they're just flatout unfair and obnoxious to play a game as
game seeeeeeeeriously needs you to rely on good luck for decent item builds so you can actually play the game and not be miserable
like the characters, some items can practically win the game for you and a fifth of all items are either mediocre or worse than superior items that are in the same tiering of power
you REALLY lose that thrill from your first couple times playing. fine if you're not gonna sink too much into the game but critical if you actually wanna have this be your main go-to game.
... the afterbirth+ updates are nothing lmfao (three items every 5 months is probably not enough to get you back into the game for any more than 30 minutes)

it's a cheap game so I guess if you're dipping your toes into roguelikes then sure, but good lord this game's flawed