I'll try to keep it short and on point:

- 12 hours in-game, didn't find bugs or glitches or other game-breaking issues.
- Plays very nicely on a keyboard, possibly even better with a controller, if it's your thing
- Decently difficult, unless the player is a) new to metroidvania-like games (in which case it could be quite hard) b) a veteran of the genre (in which case it might not be as challenging)
- vibrant and colourful visuals
- a pretty good OST
- a fairly interesting upgrade system
- a large enough pool of secondary weapons

- the weapon collection is decent, but could use a little more variety in techniques
- the starting special skills are vastly better than the unlockable ones due to the startup time (as opposed to instant startup of the starting ones)
- could use a little more conversation between Erza and her companion devil, the bits already present are quite amusing, a shame there's not more.

All in all, an 8.6/10

Not a bad rogue-lite but it has plenty of issues. The combat and map design seem very inspired by Igavania/Bloodstained games although it's not a Metroidvania but a randomized, level-based rogue-lite dungeon. There is some minor exploration within each level but once you leave a level, you can't return. The rogue-lite progression comes in the form of crystals that you collect and can use to upgrade your stats. Also, the music is pretty jammin'.

Some of the negative points include a translation on par with Google Translate. In fact, it probably is Google Translate. Not that there's a lot of story but some of the item descriptions can be confusing if you don't think on them for a bit. Also, just general indie game jank. If you're expecting Castlevania, you will be disappointed. Everything works, it's just not quite as polished.

Overall, set your expectations low and it's not bad but I can't highly recommend it.

Pros:
+ Playable with a controller.
+ Character customization.

Cons:
- Few bugs that may affect the experience.


Plot
This is the story of a sword maiden cursed with a contract between her and a demon that allows her to repeat the same day with the disadvantage of provoking her memory loss, in order to keep her training day after day.

The task that she must do is to defeat all the enemies she finds in a mysterious tower that one day appeared in the middle of nowhere, waiting for someone to discover what is inside. So far a lot of warriors have tried to conquer the tower without any success; here, is where Erza needs to prove that they are all wrong.

Gameplay
As a Metroidvania, you won't be told where to go, so you will have to explore everything till you find your way to the next place. Now, there is no backtracking, meaning that you will have to start from the beginning if you want to explore a new area with a recently unlocked ability. On the other hand, sometimes, you will have two ways to access the same places, both of them require a certain skill. This can be useful when you only have one of them, or you do want to save what it costs to use that path.

Several zones on the map will be revealed as the character explores the entire dungeon. This way, she can keep track of places she hasn't been and those she hasn't yet for reasons like taking other paths; this map will be cleared if Erza enters the tower again.

To save or not to save
The basics of this genre have always been about dying and starting from the beginning. This can be very frustrating when you are fighting the last boss, and you accidentally die and have to start from the first ladder; A save point will be implemented in the future, so users can choose where they want to start.

A lot of people would like it old school but on the other hand, the other lot wouldn't mind getting a save point sometimes.

As the genre suggests, you can find secret passages all over the map; those won't hide anything new but extra enemies to fight against and chests to open (mostly if we have the right keys for each door). It took me time till I discovered how these hidden passages looked-like and in the end, the reward wasn't good enough, so there is no encouragement on searching for those at the moment.

Cores and chips
One of the little main sources to obtain power and get stronger the more you progress through the dungeon, there are five magic cores every level, that will allow us to increase our stats vastly (getting all of them, we could triple our original health and defense), motivating the player to explore every corner of the dungeon in order to last a bit longer.

On the other hand, we have chips. Those almost work exactly the well-known Nier: Automata game, being able to equip a certain amount that can be upgraded the more you play. Depending on your playstyle you will find a way to fit all chips on your limited space or not. The bad side of this is that you will lose all cores and parts of your chips after death.

Content and price
In this Early Access, there are only three bosses, and I managed to speedrun all of them in less than 45 minutes, this was made with conventional equipment and experience with combos. It took me around seven hours to gather all of this, so for three bosses, it is not bad at all.

All the available content can extend the gameplay to 15-17 hours of duration, meaning that on this point you will have everything upgraded and ready for new updates.

Now, this is a combination really worth the actual price(€13) since there is not a great amount of competition, at least in steam. The price will increase when Early Access ends for this game, that's another reason.

Achievements
On this early access, you will have some achievements that will encourage you to speedrun the game (to finish the three bosses in a certain reduced amount of time). Along with that, in order to obtain the current 100%, you will be asked to fully upgrade your character and kill an insane number of enemies. All content will be expanded after Early access so completing this will give us a very big advantage when we have full access to the rest of the dungeons.

I actually managed to get all current story related achievements after my first attempt to speedrun the dungeons, all of this with decent chips and equipment.

Bugs
Some chests won't be able to be opened, making us miss some important equipment.

On the other hand, some enemies and animations are loud as hell, so I recommend not playing at full volume yet. There were a little bit more bugs that I could count, but all of those have been fixed in weekly updates, so these should disappear sooner as well.

One of the things I would like to have since the beginning would be able to choose a difficulty level, there is none and when you are already overpowered it doesn't feel challenging enough.

Definitely a pick for those who like to move around any of these two genres( Rogue-like and Metroidvania), which has a lot of updates to come. All I suggest is to get the game on Early Access in order to support the developers, so they can expand the content of the game. On the other hand, this is a good Metroidvania for those who don't know much about the genre, since it gives an attractive and modern design. This genre is not my cup of tea but the way the game has been developed made me stay and play till the end.

Dead cells with anime girls

7 things;

- Attractive

- Sends you right back to the start to grind more out of the levels

- Inappropriately pervy in what is otherwise quite an innocent setting

- Slightly too expensive (on sale, go for it)

- Surprisingly deep customisation and buffs

- Appalling English

- Sequel on the way

Scored Summary[metroidvaniareview.com] | | Subscribe to our Curator

How Metroidvania is it?
Low Fit – Tower Hunter: Erza’s Trial does not have Ability Gating, and its progression is linear, however each level rewards you for exploring - and you'll probably die if you don't.

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The Review Code for Tower Hunter: Erza’s Trial was provided by the developer through Curator Connect.

Tower Hunter: Erza’s Trial (Which I’m just going to call Erza’s Trial from here on out) is another interpretation of the ever expanding “Roguevania” genre. I don’t really like making an entire review about comparing a game to other games, but I really can’t talk about Erza’s Trial without bringing up Dead Cells. If you’ve played Dead Cells, you’ll know exactly what to expect here. You start at stage one, and gradually traverse through maze-like stages – with regular boss fights – until you reach your final destination. If you die, you start all over from the very beginning and lose some of what you’ve gained. The biggest difference between Erza’s Trial and Dead Cells is that Erza’s Trial is much easier. Part of this is an emphasis on leveling up instead of skill-based “git gud”, but also because the battle system and boss design just isn’t as finely tuned here.

Erza’s Trial gives you plenty of opportunities to make your character more powerful. In each level there’s a midway checkpoint allowing you to refill your potions and spend your collected crystals. Right from the start you’re given access to everything you need to overpower yourself, and while there are a lot of choices, most of them equate to either “Kill things faster” or “Survive a little longer”. The most important level-up item is expanding the quantity of “Chips” you can equip, which also provide stat bonuses. While the crystal-based stat system is pretty static, all of the factors that make Roguelite games appealing are also here. Thanks to the genre’s random nature, each run forces you to try a new approach to play, and you have to make creative choices on the fly. Within variety, it’s fun to power up and finally destroy your foes.

Tying much of your power to the level-up system could potentially be frustrating if you’ve lost all the chips that make up your chosen build, but “breaking the system” isn’t too hard to do. Every character feature uses the same cost structure, so early level-ups are always going to be cheap. Ironically, the way these level-ups are scaled, many of them represent a double dose of power on that first level up. On my final run of the game I had (randomly) collected a pile of “Critical Hit” chips, and was able to double my critical hit chance for a paltry sum of crystals. After that, everything kind of just exploded in front of me, one-punch man style. There’s some novelty in that feeling that you’re somehow subverting the system, but of course that novelty wears off once you realize there’s not much left to the game after that.

“Breaking the system” also doesn’t really matter if the bosses are pretty bland and pretty easy to predict anyway. Each boss starts out slow and gradually gets faster (similar to Dead Cells), but the patterns never hit a point where they’re particularly threatening. Some bosses don’t even seem like they’re aiming at you; they just shoot at some corner because the gods of coding are dictating their fate. When they do have a pattern that could be dangerous, the i-frames from your dodge button will give you plenty of time to find their blind spots. Granted, if you’re not building enough defense, you’ll probably be one or two shot if you make a mistake, but if you go into Erza’s Trial knowing anything about Roguelikes, there’s actually a decent chance you’ll beat it on the first go.

The ease of the bosses is juxtaposed against some wonky level difficulty. The fourth area is a tremendous step up in environmental hazards and big tough foes, which is odd because the curve snaps back like a rubber band in the last area. Regardless of this weirdness, the level design for most of the stages is as basic as it gets. Each level has, effectively, the same environmental assets just color coded to whatever the area’s theme is. Walls are placed down like how a randomized maze would look from the top down rather than how an actual place would be, with only the occasional background decoration to mix it up. It leads to some really dull level structures that, while reminiscent of the original rogue games, doesn’t make for terribly interesting Metroidvania exploration. Some of your most important power increases come from items hidden within the level, so it’s rewarding to check every nook and cranny before moving on, but I was very grateful that there are teleporters scattered in the levels to reduce the amount of time this takes. The final area is perhaps the best when it comes to being an interesting place to explore, so the game does end on a good note in regards to visual variety at least.

I have to briefly touch on the story, even though I always say that it’s not a major sticking point when it comes to these kinds of action games. As a native English speaker, Erza’s Trial has some very amusing localization quirks. Some sentences seem very childish for the adult NPCs that are supposed to be speaking them, and some of the grammar comes off as something that came from Google Translate. There are a lot of fourth wall breaks in the dialog though, so the language issues only add to the goofiness of the presentation, almost as if the Engrish is intentional. I personally found it humorous and thus more entertaining as a result, but I know some people may just find it annoying. If you go into the game invested in the plot at all, you’ll probably be disappointed. Erza’s goal in becoming a warrior is to avoid marrying some slimy Otaku. There’s some not-so-subtle symbolism in the final level about fighting against the typical expectations of women, which as a total literary analysis nerd I had some fun with, but the ending plays too quickly. It’s possibly a symptom of the other localization problems, but as a result the game doesn’t really finish off in a satisfying way. Set your expectations accordingly and you can still enjoy the gameplay for what it is.

Erza’s Trial is flawed in many ways, but it is a pretty fun time waster. If you found Dead Cells too frustrating, but liked the idea of it, then what Erza’s Trial offers might be something you like more. If you’re looking for a good challenging game with high amounts of variety though, I would argue that Dead Cells is the better competitor between the two. Neither of them are very “Metroidvania”, with Erza’s Trial being even less so since it doesn’t have any choices on routes you take to the end, but that isn’t to say you shouldn’t still check them out as a fan. If you enjoy leveling up and overpowering yourself, Erza’s Trial is bound to give you 3-5 hours of enjoyment, but don’t be too surprised if you get bored with its replay value past that point.

2.5 out of 5

I only gave a positive review because I bought this game at a big discount, which means it's an enjoyable cheap game. Indeed, as many people have said, the game needs to be more polished.

For me, the game has so many interesting things but they do not work in practice because of the easiness of the game. The game is super easy (seems to be made for kids) which means that it is not necessary to perform any combos or use any skills, you can just simply keep hitting your enemies until they are defeated.

To clarify, you can hit stop most enemies with a simple hit; only some bosses will have a stage where they won't be affected by hit stop. At this point, performing any combos or using any skills is for the sake of enjoying their animations as it does not "distinctly" deal more damage.

I would suggest you consider buying this game only with its big discounts. The game is good for killing time, but not that good if you want to play a game with deep systems.

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Tower Hunter: Erza's Trial is a hack-n-slash platformer rogue-lite (I'm going to use that term; it's pretty much up to interpretation between like/lite) kind of game with a lot of action and a mix of some good games I've played. The first thing I thought of was Dead Cells. There is heavy inspiration from this game, from the collect and drop into skills/abilities, to the style of gameplay, the health replenishment system, etc. I think anyone who has played and enjoyed that game will like this one a whole lot as well.

While I don't personally consider this a true metroidvania - at least not so far as I've played at the moment, I see it as instead more like a hack-n-slash experience. Finding random drop keys to open doors, opening chests, adding various ability chips along the way, and also finding random secondary attack and primary weapon drops placed in random spots on the map, or in the shop areas, which you can then purchase with your crystals (if you so choose) as currency with each and every run. These same crystals can be used to boost up your other skills with each rest spot as well, so they are useful to hang onto if possible. There are three types of main weapons as well, with different advantages and disadvantages. From there, it comes down to customized strategies with adding/equipping accordingly based on how you want to play.

The above premise is nicely executed so far. I've had some enjoyable gameplay, but I will say it can become tedious and frustrating. This is the case for me right now. I will mention the first major boss, due to it creating a sort of invincibility shield after almost every type of attack I try to use on it. Hits potentially hard, and has a lot of overall health. Getting there takes a while. The good news is that you can rest before each area, and drop off your crystals into whatever types of available upgrades you're going for. You'll lose a certain percentage of your crystals every time you die, so there isn't a lot of reason to hold onto them if you can invest them. There are shops near the rest spots that are possibly worth examining before you spend them all in each rest area as well.

Early on, you'll die much more. Takes time and is a bit grindy getting to a point where you have the ability to make real progression. Once you start to invest in leveling up some skills you want to use more, you will gradually improve your chances of survivability though.



The graphics are pretty, and movements seem nice and fluid. I like seeing the evolution of this since the beginning. The controlling kind of ties in, and now has gotten a lot tighter and more responsive, and the game feels better as it has gotten more work done on it over time.

There is an RPG element where you add your crystals to other possible augments. Whether it's equippable chips, magical abilities, weapons and secondary pickups, or your overall general abilities and skills. It gives you a goal to raise them, increasing your chances at successful progression. This is also fairly addictive to work at improving.

It's pretty action-packed and the levels feel great right off the bat. It's enjoyable and as I mentioned before, the controls got better after initial releases and some fixes.

Development has been good on getting things rolling when there have been problems. It gets better as new things get implemented. I am looking forward to seeing where and how far it will go.

The pickups are fun to collect, and the randomized nature keeps that a little more interesting. Having the two secondary attacks on trigger buttons (when using controller) is very much like Dead Cells.

Though death is death, for the most part, and you have to return to the beginning upon your health running out, there are ways to heal yourself if you are not being attacked. You can also dodge with a dash-type mechanic, and there is a shielding and invincibility pickup that can be helpful as well in a real pinch, if one wants to use one of the two slots available for such abilities.

There are also chips, which have an equip limit number or amount, as each one you add has a specified value to it. Some chips can be quite beneficial, some supporting stats, others one time uses when parameters are met once. You can mix and match as they drop, or are found or bought. As you collect more, you can add these various upgrades as long as they fall within the total capacity limit. You can also upgrade your chip system to carry more if you invest crystals in those areas; the chip equip cost is decreased, for instance. There are a decent array of types in the game right now, some being very common, and others fairly rare.

I like the map. It's pretty easy to follow. Maps are one of my favorite things in games! This one is pretty clear and straight-forward.

I'm unsure of how the hair and costume changing system will develop, but I'm glad this is added as of now, and looking forward to additional customization here.



It can feel a little bit repetitive having to start from the beginning, with some random chips equipped from the last run after each death. Same enemies, same attacks, and you rinse and repeat.

I found it a bit grindy and redundant playing the beginning levels over and over for more crystals to power up things that can build up through colleting crystals.

The game is a bit frustrating for me right now, so I stopped playing. After some getting used to the game, you begin to coast through the first parts, then encounter this particular boss, and it constantly shields itself, and it's hard to get much damage in edgewise. So, as far as that goes, I'd love to have a bit more of a gradual curve in difficulty, rather than the drastic spike. It's a bit unforgiving, usually resulting in death, which means having to start back over, hammering back to my original point in the cons list. Perhaps there is some strategy I am unaware of, but I haven't really found much that's been helpful on my own. Seems a bit overpowered for now though, so it's not worth my time getting there...

There are these altar things containing chips, but it's always the same three types to choose from. I would love to see some randomized chips being able to be acquired at these stations. I usually just skip them when I see them, since I don't need them most of the time.



If this game continues down the road it's heading, and tweaks and fixes are added, I see it being a really great game. It takes some time to get your character into shape to advance, but so far the grind has mostly been fun. The graphics are nice, and it's running fairly smooth the last time I played it. Again, the balance is a bit off for me as far as the time it takes to get to the first major boss, and then restarting due to not being able to hit it for much of the fight, spending more time dodging than executing any sort of plan of attack. I am holding off playing more for now until there is some balance there. I'll check back once in a while.

Considering the genre, I think it's worth buying at full price. I'm always one for discounts, but this really offers a lot! Considering Dead Cells is almost $10 USD more, it's more than worth the cost. I'm not trying to say it's the same game, but it's quite comparable in a lot of ways. I like the positive direction it's taken so far for an Early Access title.

Only praise from me for this labor of love! A great game for those who like difficult rogue-lites!

Special thanks to Simetria League for their support!

”A potential rogue-like metroidvania where the death is learning…“

Tower Hunter: Erza’s Trial is a mixture of metroidvania and rogue-like element developed by indie IceSea Team of two people. It adapts into side-scrolling game with the influence of soul-like mainstream. Yet still have some flaws and require polishing during Early Access (currently 3 playerable levels). It’s risk-reward fun for people who seek a challenge.

Set in the hybrid fantasy world with some modern tech elements, the world design is clean, well-produced texture, and colorful. You play as a young maiden named “Erza”who specialize in close combat and ice spells. She has to prove herself by conquering mysterious tower to prove hunter’s license and get rid of wedding plan. The story is simple and straightforward, but what lies on the top of tower is quite intriguing. You spend most of time chatting with Devil companion between the levels as I hope they develop relationship through the story.

Each level has its own theme and soundtrack that gives nostalgic feeling even though it can get repetitive due to short loop. Strong sound effects and feedback during fight along with fluid Erza’s animation.

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Erza’s Trial heavy emphasizes on player’s action and adaptation to randomness of procedural-created levels. You fight through big level which has their own environment, enemy types, and traps. Using three types of base melee and powerful ice spells; you also find random chips and equipment along the journey. Chips provide different attribute added to character, they can be replaced or stacked to enhance stats. Equipment can be offensive or defensive tool from protective shield to automatic turret. Killing monster and destroy also drop blue crystal for upgrades.

However, healing is rare and limited. The design is done by intention and reward players when they can complete the level as you spend all corrected crystals to enhance skill, chip, equipment, and movement. The higher level of chip means less you usage of same chip to stack and safe for different type of chip. Unlock movement and skills to get pass through level more quickly. On the other hand, the game punishes you for good, lose everything when dead and start over from beginning. There’s no handholding and checkpoint, but the game save wherever you stay and all upgrades are permanent. It’s always rough in first few playthrough, but the goal is learning from death and mistake. Learn enemy placement, level structure, equipment, and come back with better approach along with upgrades. Adaptation and smart move is the key based on what equipment/chip you obtain. It feels like luck-based, but the difficult still require player skill and it support replayability.

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I participated on beta testing for a week and see how the game significantly improved. However, it still has many flaws as you expect from Early Access state. Enemy’s reaction and placement can sometimes be frustrated to deal without proper equipment; Enemy AI can instantly track player position after player dash through. Making dash tactic becomes less efficient when you’ve to fight group of them in very tight area or get surrounded. Few chips that provide similar effect even I upgrade to max and some are very situational. Moreover, the English translation can be very confused in description. I hope they take time from suggestion to improve translation and make some chips more viable.

Powered by Unity, I found this game runs very solid on my rigs (Core i5, 8GB RAM, GTX1050Ti) on 1080p max settings. Responsive keyboard control and ice spells are much easy to use compare to early version. There might have some technical issues depended on user. I never encounter any game-breaking bug, only frame stuttering when using some equipment or freezing multiple targets at once.

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Tower Hunter: Erza’s Trial is a game that you might experience by yourself. It’s not perfect. It’s not for everyone even you are familiar with this genre, but it has potential and hold something special for me not just satisfaction of learning process. However, it’s still long way to judge the game at current state powered by two developers. It’s your choice to hold until product becomes more polished and stable. For now, I did enjoy the direction and challenge of game and hope they constantly improve quality and new features from all players’ feedback.

Review Version: v2018.0.006

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A good game with broken mechanics.
Mostly simple, kill hordes of enemies and move forward. The game doesn't really help with any direction on things that can be done, it's mostly up to us which means a player can probably go through the entire game without knowing some very basics mechanics that can be done. There is hardly anything in the game to read or explore more on, sometimes even the minuscule help it offers will be hard to understand. One simply has to hope they understood the message it conveys.

- "Cling to Walls", the broken skill. It is basic and easily accessible, the problem - your character will now cling on to any platform horizontal/vertical alike. You'll constantly clip through platforms because your character is always trying to latch on to something, the game actually has quite a difficulty spike with each level after floor 3. This skill will make the game twice as hard with a high chance of getting sucker punch and yeah if you die, it's back from the start again and you have redo with this stupid skill. I went to floor 5-2 on my first run and gave up because of this skill, had to start anew. This is not even a skill you'll ever need for anything, it is just there to break the game.
- Another negative to add would be the cheap way to halt player by dumping in too many sub-boss level enemies in tight spots. I didn't even know which one was hitting me because of how densely packed they were. This just happens, like a trap when everything up to that point might have been easy or manageable.

A few basic tips to help without exploits -

• Chips and Weapons can be broken down to gems by holding the button used to pick.
  
• Keep an eye on the mini map to navigate, also breakable floor or wall will show up blank on main Map but not in mini.
  
• Items can be found in Vases, most of it looks like they are in the background without a clear indication.

The game has a free DLC which for some reason didn't add/download automatically with the main game, oddly the outfit that came with it felt flimsy with no weight to it. It looks great when standing still.

A good game to try, just have to know some basics which the game sorely lacks at explaining. Fighting mechanics is way too simple, doesn't need much skills. And totally avoid Cling to Walls skill, it pretty much makes current progression useless.

Edit: This is going towards more of a Mobile Game category, has needless grind to unlock upgrades. The difficulty level SS, S, A - E is just there padding game time. It doesn't add anything to the game, only difficulty above B has "chance" to drop more crystals but even that won't be enough. The actual run-time for this game is around 2-2.5 hours at best including the secret boss who has like x20 times more stats compared to every other enemies before making him difficult.
For people thinking of getting some quick achievement out of this game, not easy. Even after some 15 runs there is still lots left to unlock. This actually makes the game feel shallow, it's not like Devil May Cry which gives off a whole range of difficulty but a good fighting system + rewards. Every enemy in this game seems to have their own unique move sets and magic skills but none of it matters because they die too fast even in a new game. Making it even more boring is the roguelike mechanics which makes none of the floor select-able and you have to go through floors one at a time, it adds nothing interesting because you'll never die. They should have just let the floors select-able at least. Most of the time I just end up watching a movie or checking other game review in the background while playing this.
I quite enjoyed the game for the first few runs, but the game padding mechanics is making me want to give a neutral or even lower. The game has lived long enough to be a villain.