Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree Review

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It’s great to see large publishers helping smaller development teams, especially when so many companies are focused on maximizing profits from existing franchises. Bandai Namco, a well-known company with many popular franchises and anime licenses, is doing just that with Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree, an adventurous action RPG created by Brownies.

This game is a roguelike RPG, meaning each playthrough is a unique run. You’ll choose one of eight characters, including Towa, and navigate through a series of rooms that change with each attempt. At the end of each run, you’ll face a boss. As you explore, you’ll find random power-ups called ‘Graces’ that boost your damage and add different effects to your combat. If you’re familiar with action roguelikes, you’ll quickly understand how it works.

The way the game explains its time-loop mechanic with Towa is a little confusing at first, but here’s the core idea: Towa and her allies are trying to defeat the evil god Magatsu, which has fractured the timeline around Shinju Village. To restore things, they have to defeat Magatsu’s children one by one. Each victory slowly repairs the timeline, allowing time to move forward before Towa starts another run to tackle the next challenge.

As you play through the game’s story, time will pass quickly in Shinju Village, jumping forward by decades with each completed run. While the main characters remain the same age, the villagers of Shinju live out their lives with Towa as their revered guardian spirit. Between each run, you’ll return to the village to interact with the townsfolk and rebuild it, all while strengthening your characters for the challenges ahead.

Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree is a visually and aurally pleasing game overall. While the 3D models aren’t the most detailed, the character art is fantastic, and the environments are bright and colorful. The traditional soundtrack by Hitoshi Sakimoto is also a highlight. I really appreciate how the game looks and sounds, especially considering its style. My main issue is that some of the battle areas feel a bit repetitive in their design.

Battles in Towa play out similarly to other top-down action games, but with a few interesting twists. Each character has two main attacks, and the currently equipped sword determines which attack is used. You can only have one sword equipped at a time, and using it causes its durability to temporarily decrease. This means you’ll need to switch between swords frequently to maintain their effectiveness, and also to access the different attacks each one offers.

One of the most interesting parts of Towa’s combat is its system of controlling two characters simultaneously. While playing, you’ll manage a main character, called the Tsurugi (‘sword’), who is assisted by a support character known as the Kagura (‘staff’). You can assign any of the game’s characters to either role, and you’re free to change these assignments whenever you start a new run.

I didn’t really find Towa’s combat system to work well as a whole. The Kagura character mostly just follows you around and ends up taking a lot of damage, while you’re focused on dodging attacks (clearly telegraphed with area-of-effect markers) and landing your own hits with Tsurugi. It’s a game where precise movement and control are key, and you’re constantly trying to keep both characters safe. While you *can* briefly control the Kagura directly, it breaks up the flow of combat and isn’t worth the trade-off. Plus, Kagura’s magic felt much less effective than Tsurugi’s swordplay. Instead of feeling like a strong team, it felt like you were controlling Tsurugi while dragging around a weakness.

The weapon switching system doesn’t quite feel polished. When you switch swords, the durability of the sword you put away refills instantly. This led me to repeatedly use my favorite attack, then quickly switch swords back and forth just to restore its durability. I ended up finding one character ability I liked and using it constantly, regardless of the enemy or situation. While effective, this made combat feel repetitive and predictable.

With eight playable guardians in Towa (plus Towa herself), each with a unique fighting style, it’s easy to find a favorite and stick with them. I personally preferred Shigen, a ninja-like character with strong area-of-effect attacks. The game is already quite challenging, even on the normal difficulty, so I didn’t want to bother learning new characters and fighting styles when I was doing well with one.

The characters mostly talk to each other while you’re fighting, not when you’re back at the village. I learned a lot about Shigen and Akazu – my favorite team – simply because I used them often. But that meant I didn’t get to know the other characters very well. It’s partly my fault for not switching things up, but when I was focused on winning, I stuck with the characters I felt most comfortable with.

When you are not felling Magatsu spawn during a run, you’ll be spending time at Shinju Village.

A key part of village life is crafting better swords as you find upgrade materials. This involves quick, timing-based mini-games – like hitting the hammer at the right moment and cooling the metal properly. How well you do in these mini-games directly impacts your sword’s stats and chances of gaining powerful special effects. Improving your swords permanently boosts your abilities, making each attempt at a run easier.

As you develop your characters, you’ll discover several ongoing ways to make them stronger. You can spend in-game currency at the Dojo to permanently increase stats like attack power, speed, and health. Equipping gems to your Kagura provides percentage-based boosts to stats for both characters in the pair. Building new structures in town also gives you permanent, overall stat increases. Plus, even if you don’t complete a run, the items and currency you collect can always be used to improve your characters, so you’re always making progress.

The game lets you customize how your sword looks, like the handle and sheath. But I found it odd, because you can’t actually see those details when you’re fighting – the camera angle is too far away. So I decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

The best part of playing Towa was witnessing the evolution of Shinju Village across the years as Towa tried to restore the timeline. You see heartwarming stories unfold – a dojo master training a student who eventually exceeds his skills, a cafe family perfecting a recipe passed down through generations, and a mischievous student becoming a respected teacher. Childhood friends at the blacksmith grow up together, mentoring a new generation of swordsmiths. Throughout it all, Towa acts as a constant, beloved guardian spirit, watching the town and its people change and develop around her.

The game strongly focuses on how time passes and the importance of what we leave behind. I also liked how connected everything felt to the village and its people. Towa isn’t really concerned with the bigger world; almost everything revolves around Shinju Village, the families within it, and the relationships between characters. While the fighting isn’t amazing, I always looked forward to seeing what was happening with the villagers and how their personal stories unfolded. That was definitely the best part of the game for me.

While the individual stories within Towa are good, the overall plot feels a little simple and lacks excitement. The villain, Magatsu, is particularly weak – he’s presented as just a purely evil force that needs to be defeated, without any compelling personality, understandable reasons for his actions, or interesting conflict. He’s simply evil and needs stopping. I can’t go into specifics without revealing spoilers, but the story’s conclusion was also somewhat unsatisfying.

After finishing Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree, I was a little disappointed. While I enjoyed the 25 hours I played, the game never really stood out as anything more than a decent action roguelike. Many of its interesting features in combat and gameplay felt unimportant or didn’t add much value. The game looks and feels great, and I especially liked the stories of the characters in Shinju Village. Unfortunately, repetitive combat, underdeveloped systems, and a lackluster story held it back from being truly memorable.

6

We tested Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree on PC. It’s also playable on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.

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2025-09-18 17:00