If you hadn’t known in advance that you would play TOWA and Guardians of the Sacred Tree on your play day last weekend, you might have overlooked its trailer during the summer game fest. The announcement itself was less than two minutes and most of what we saw looked like Hades, but there was a choice of characters. However, after playing the 15 minutes of game on play day, I’m much more interested in it than I expected Towa to take the genre of Logelite at first…but it should take more than 15 minutes.
Toi and the guardian of the sacred tree make Toi, the guardian of the new village and the son of God, turn to a star. As the Dark God begins to consume the land around the newcomer along with the evil Miasma, Towa gathers eight villagers to fight back. These “prayer children” head towards the field two at a time to fight the dark minions.
At the start of each run, select which of the eight characters you need for each role. In the preview, I chose Solumn Rekka as my sword. He attacks with short, quick slashes and prolonged spin attacks. My staff were carp-inspired fish figures who could summon lightning bolts to surround the player and fire waves of water in any direction.
Soon, I had a bit of a struggle to adapt to twin stick controls. Nishiki automatically tracked Rekka. Rekka controlled with the left stick, but it was clear that for optimal play, he would have to run him with the right stick at the same time when he broke Nishikika and fought the enemy. It’s easier than I say. I think this is a really interesting twist on what I was used to top-down games. The world ends so you can control two characters on two different screens. But I think it takes over 15 minutes to get used to it. Apparently one person controls each character, so you can also play Towa in a cooperative. That’s also an attractive outlook.
The second unique element I really wanted to have time to master more was the quick draw. In Towa, sword equipment carry not one but two swords, but only one at a time. Each sword has a different abilities, with Rekka having a short slash on one side and a rechargeable spin attack on the other. Using one sword will start to dull until it is no longer usable. You will need to replace it with the other side using the quick draw function so that the first sword can be charged. The successful battles in TOWA revolve around a smooth exchange between two swords, so you won’t get caught up in situations where one attack is required, but it has a dull blade and is plagued by inefficient abilities. It’s a cool system in principle, and certainly a unique system, and I’m curious about how it unfolds at a higher skill level.
Everything else I’ve seen on TOWA is familiar to your average Hades lover. You can clear all the monsters in the room and select “Great.” Blessing enhances your power in all sorts of ways, from increasing straight power to changing how different abilities work and interact with each other. The door to the next room may indicate an enemy, shopkeeper, or other room type. Smash things down to collect currency to upgrade with shops and special minerals that can boost your character’s abilities when you return to the village.
My time at Towa became shorter when I entered the boss fight, so unfortunately I can’t talk about how it unfolded. However, this preview was absolutely successful in making me want to play more. I’d like to trouble the composition of the various characters and see what other upgrades are available. And I would like to practice the twin stick game so that staff users don’t die in me before pressing Halfway Point (OOPS). I don’t know if Tois and the Guardian of the Sacred Tree can withstand Hades’s lofty heritage, but I think it could open up spaces in the genre of Logelite into their own spaces.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter at Passthecontroller. You can find her posts at Bluesky @Duckvalentine.bsky.social. Do you have any tips for the story? Send to [email protected].
