It's Thursday : App Review of the Week 02, Tower of Saviors

Welcome to our second In Depth Review of the week : Tower of Saviors (Free)


Introduction

It is a strategic puzzle card game created by the Hong Kong Studio, Madhead. It is massively inspired by the Japanese game Puzzle and Dragons, but it is only available to North America and Japan.

There is a possibility to link your account to your Facebook one or Twitter which will save your progression in the cloud. So you can resume your game while changing devices (Smartphone to Tablet) or when upgrading your latest Smartphone.

The game is a massive hit and just reached 7M of downloads and just hired Taiwanese actress, Michelle Chen to represent the game.

Basics

The game world is divided between 7 worlds and there are 5 elements with a paper/scissor/rock logic :
- Fire beats Nature
- Nature beats Ice
- Ice beats Fire
- Dark beats Light
- Light beats Dark

There is one territory dedicated to each element plus a special challenging area (various challenges changing everyday) and the main tower which concludes each chapter.

Among the different possibilities of the game, you will be able to change your team composition :

Every 10 levels, you will be afforded a second team composition, so you can adapt depending on your opponent.

In your inventory, you can choose how you arrange your cards (HP, attack, etc...). You can also check each cards' profiles and then level them up or make them evolve after reaching the max level.

Game Mechanics

Before each game, you need to choose an ally to complete your team. So you will be controlling 6 cards instead of 5 and it will act as if it was part of your team.
More often than not, you will be offered to partner up with very powerful allies and after a while (~ 5 hours), you won't be able to win fights (unless you're grinding) without such allies.
At the end of each stage, you will be able to make a friend request if the chosen ally wasn't one.
Each successful completed stage will award you 10 Friend Points if your partner is a friend and 5 otherwise.

Battles consist in aligning 3 blocks of the same color. There are 5 different colors representing each elements plus Heart stones which allow you to heal yourself if you sustained damage.
Each turn, you can choose one block and drag it on an unlimited distance but in a limited time frame (somewhat around 5 seconds or less). While moving your stone, you will move others as well and making combos : aligning several 3 blocks or more. The more you make combos, the more damage you will inflict on your opponent.
If you align 5 stones or more of the same color, you will be awarded a super stone on your next turn.

At the end of each stage (from 3 to 7 battles), you will be awarded new cards and experience.

In order to participate to a stage, you will need to invest Stamina Points. When you level up, all you Stamina Points will be restored.
At the beginning and even after a while (~ 10 hours), you won't need to spend money in order to restore your Stamina Points.


Game Store

The game currency is Diamond except for Friends Points which can give your a card for every 200 Friend Points.
1 Diamong will be awarded to you when you complete a full level consisting on defeating 5 stages and the main tower. So far, I have spent 5 free Diamonds to extend my inventory and the need to pay hasn't manifest itself yet.
The friend list is limited to 50 but I haven't reach the limit yet either.

Those are the prices of the Diamonds :

Verdict

This is must have for every strategic puzzle game fan. It is a complete free game and it will be a while before paying for anything especially if you're not a ultra heavy gamer. I play around 30 to 60 minutes everyday which is already quite something and I have not spent a single penny so far.
On top of that, the game is Adsfree.