YMMV / Tower of Fantasy

• Adorkable:
  • Tian Lang's trailer establishes him as a massive dork; he comically argues with a monster trying to get a plant sample, then pulls off a magnificent JoJo face before fighting an enemy.
  • Meryl looks like a cool, distant, and unapproachable woman, but her simulacrum messages show that she's actually so shy that she has a hard time even communicating by e-mail, quickly logging out when the player character teases her once.
  • Saki Fuwa, the Security Chief of Mirroria, acts very formally while on the job and takes defending the city's peace pretty seriously. The CN trailers also show that, while off the job, she can be pretty adorable, fawning over the game's mascot or going the extra mile to get her hands on limited-edition superhero merchandise.
  • Liu Huo's entire trailer has her showing off (and failing) to impress her brother Rong Jing with her calligraphy, and the latter spends the entire time trolling his sister until she loses her cool.
• Awesome Music:
  • "Drifting Away", a calm, melancholic, peaceful song that eases your mind.
  • The game's theme, "Meant to Be", is a beautiful vocal piece that stands out from the rest of the soundtrack. You hear it during the fireworks shows at Cetus Island, and an instrumental version of it plays while you're at the top of the Tower of Fantasy overlooking the Aesperia continent.
  • Lin's and Ruby's combined Simulacrum side story culminates in a live concert with the assistance of Huma, Meryl, Samir, Saki Fuwa, and Nemesis. The whole musical sequence gets its own cutscene and has also been dubbed in Japanese and English.
  • The official Vera theme, "New World" takes a sample from one of Mirroria's background themes and mixes it to a song that perfectly captures Vera's cyberpunk feel.
  • The 2.2 trailer theme "Cyber Town" is a catchy song that pairs well with the trailer showing off Mirroria's best attractions.
  • As the resident DJ in Mirroria, Fenrir has some tracks that show her talent as an idol:
    • The Oasis Club mix that plays during the first 15 minutes of every hour is a banger that makes one feel that they're in an actual club and makes players dance to the beat.
    • Her single, called "Chocolate", is another hit that shows off her singing skills while making you want to dance on the floor. The instrumental version plays in the Oasis Club and a snippet of it plays whenever activating Fenrir's Skill. It's also dubbed in English, Japanese, and Korean.
    • Her other single, With U, is a really boppy song that will make you stay on the float for the entire parade.
  • Go, Chaser is the game's anniversary song that perfectly encapsulates the feeling and tone of rising up from so many challenges one has faced.
• Cheese Strategy:
  • Most enemies instantly die when they encounter the quicksand pits in South Vera desert. This can even take out overworld minibosses that are otherwise very difficult to fight alone.
  • Likewise, it's also easy to solo some Confounding Abyss and Domain 9 minibosses by standing near the edge of a cliff or platform and jumping as they charge to the player, letting them fall to their deaths.
  • In Miasmic Swamp, some mini and egg bosses are located near pools of water, so it's possible to instantly kill them by waiting for the rain to flood the area and then luring the enemies to those areas.
• Common Knowledge: Contrary to popular belief amidst various controversies, the game never marketed itself as a "Genshin Killer" and all "evidence" pointing to it are mistranslations^note The famous screenshot that detractors commonly use as proof didn't say as such, but it translates as "VGA nominee?" or deliberate misinformation spread by a content creator (who lost the defamation lawsuit against Tencent) in an attempt to slander the game's reputation due to Fandom Rivalry. Tencent themselves may be aware of the consequences of the game being labeled as such, as they have released official statements trying to dissuade the rumors, to no avail.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Samir and Tsubasa's traits are recommended traits to use, as they buff attack power when other traits are either situational or have non-combative effects. Even if traits starting from Alyss became generally better due to power creep, both traits are still recommended for new players until they acquire limited weapons and their traits.
  • When rolling for gear stats, many players would focus on crit for gloves, boots, and eyepieces. These are the only equipment pieces that can potentially increase that stat, and when the players' attack stat growth tapers off in the late game, critical rate and critical damage are the next steps in increasing damage output.
  • Due to Power Creep in the game, the players' recommendations for team-building are "pick an element, get the latest Limited banner characters matching that element, and skip all banners corresponding to all other elements (unless it's Altered)." SR-rarity weapons are hardly discussed as they cannot match up with SSR ones. Deviation and experimentation are largely discouraged due to the lack of good sources of dark crystals or red nuclei for pulls without spending real-world money.
  • In PVP Mode, expect to see players with the same few weapon sets with most of them consisting of limited-run weapons as their core.
  • Fiona offers so much utility between her six possible skills that she complements nearly any loadout, even if her weapon is classified as a "healer" weapon. The fact that her dash and discharge also help remove the deadly Graying Bite debuff adds to her value.
  • The two-piece Samir/Crow/Shiro matrix combinations are the most commonly used setups for nearly all weapons since they boost a weapon's general damage, unlike most other SSR matrix sets that are more specialized for the matching weapon. They're also easier for players to obtain than the limited ones, which are only available on their weapon's banner run, because both can be obtained in the standard matrix banner or in other ways, such as how Samir's matrices can be obtained in the gachapon using Mira coins and Shiro on leveling up the suppressor.
  • As of the 2.4 update, Scylla and Haboela are both coveted World Boss matrices, as their set bonuses includes a universal boost to damage (Haboela) or crit damage and shatter (Scylla) which anyone can make use of. They are also really accessible since Mirroria holds a few gachapon machines that yield the whole set, and daily completion of Joint Operations also yield matrix shards that contribute to creating one of your choice.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Infernal Steel Lizards, Predators, and other similar creatures in Bygone Phantasm are the bane of players on higher floors. They have huge health pools combined with harder-to-shatter shields than most mobs and Predators can even stun or freeze in quick succession, turning players into sitting ducks for enemies to wail on and wasting precious seconds. They're considered by players as the DPS chokepoints and are noted to be even harder to kill than the actual bosses.
  • Stalkers in Grayspace not only trigger a Phantasia that freezes you in time when you dodge their attacks, but they can also generate larger time-freezing bubbles that can interrupt your attacks even when you're deliberately avoiding the other ability. They also pack a punch, which makes your inability to defend yourself that much more painful.
  • Umbra Whales are some of the toughest regular enemies you can fight in the Innars region, as they can take a lot of punishment and have a tough-to-avoid attack that deals a load of damage. It's not unusual to find players asking for help on the World Chat because they had the misfortune of being given a daily bounty mission that wants them to hunt one.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • When the player is far behind the level cap, the game tends to give a large experience boost to get them to catch up with the existing player base, causing their level growth to outstrip their gear strength growth, the latter of which has a bigger impact on combat strength. Since enemy strength scales to the player's Level, many new players suddenly find it difficult to kill even normal mobs once they reach high levels because their gear is far too low, compared to people who started earlier and had a more natural gear progression. These players will also feel way out of their depth if they were to attempt group content when their Combat Score is ill-suited for their level.
    
    The enemy scaling mechanic has since been addressed in the 2.5 update — now the player can manually adjust the overworld difficulty to suit their current strength, and the game gives CS recommendations to keep the player from biting off more than they can chew. Increasing the overworld difficulty is now incentivized with packages of resources for raising the difficulty level and with better chest drops, and deliberately decreasing the difficulty so that you can curb-stomp minibosses is discouraged with a Dark Crystal cost and disqualification from certain achievements.
  • Between Joint Operation difficulties 7 and 8, there is no great difference in the possible equipment rewards, but the enemies in difficulty 8 have much more HP. Players attempting difficulty 8 are advised to find a full well-coordinated team rather than take their chances with random players through matchmaking, since a single underperforming player there can turn into The Load.
  • Aesperia overworld minibosses are slightly tougher than most mobs but are otherwise a pushover if your equipment is up to scratch. Vera's overworld minibosses, on the other hand, deal so much damage and have so much health that even a max-level player may need a small party at minimum to defeat them.
  • The mechanics of the world bosses in Vera are more difficult than those in Aesperia, but they can be defeated in a matter of minutes with an 8-man team. The ones in Confounding Abyss, before the nerfs, were Damage Sponge Bosses took at least half an hour to go down even with the entire channel pumping damage into them.
  • Domain 9 mobs are so tough that fighting them normally takes a lot of effort and time. However, the region's exploration rewards are focused on unlocking and upgrading various statues which offer a Field Power Effect that tip the playing field in the player's favor, provided they're fighting within range of the Statues or any Astral Monuments that extend those buffs.
  • The new raids released after 3.0 are often tricker than past raids. These raids rely on shattering the boss' shield and executing the mechanics perfectly rather than whittling the boss down by combat as the boss' HP goes up to billions. This prevents players from overpowering the boss and makes the DPS resonance useless, so players will need good teamwork and to use the Fortitude/Healer resonances for shield shattering as failing to shatter shields or missing one mechanic will instantly lead to a wipe.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Shelly captured the entire playerbase's attention with her sweet and Adorkable personality during the Vera Storyline. Her popularity grew in subsequent appearances as she showed more personality while also becoming the Butt-Monkey and Plucky Comic Relief.
  • Kanro immediately became so popular in his first appearance that many players begged for him to be a playable character.
  • Rong Jin's appearance and Cool Big Bro attitude immediately garnered him many fans, and many players were disappointed that he's not a playable character even though he was shown fighting alongside the ones released during the early patches of Domain 9.
  • Many players are instantly captivated by Huang's assistant Fu Li for being a Mr. Fanservice from his first appearance in Huang's trailer which is why, just like Kanro, many are wishing for him to be playable or be available as a simulacra.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Genshin Impact, another Chinese gacha fantasy game, though Tower of Fantasy is a (semi) MMORPG with a massive character editing option while Genshin is a single-player RPG with multiplayer elements. By itself, it would have garnered friendly competition, but various controversies in Tower of Fantasy revolving around the game apparently stealing assets from Genshin, Honkai Impact 3rd, and other games (and non-interactive media as well) created a rift between the two fandoms. Ironically and strangely enough, when Tower of Fantasy was released worldwide, a significant chunk of the playerbase consisted of former Genshin players who were either burnt out or were waiting for the Sumeru patch to be released.
  • Defenders of Tower of Fantasy often cited the more compact and denser world, smaller upgrade requirements, seamless player-to-player interaction (instead of reloading the world to play co-op), greater ease of exploration and maneuvering, and lighter (although not without optimization issues) system requirements as a plus.
  • Detractors point out the weakness of the first story arc (basically it has less likeable characters by the time the first story arc hits Cetus), the amount of padding and sidetracking the plot undergoes before the player character gets back to their original objective of tracking down Zeke and Shirli, and the numerous bugs and issues that could interfere with gameplay.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Many players would usually refer to the SSR and SR weapons as their character names for simplicity's sake (For example, calling Tsubasa's Icewind Arrow as simply Tsubasa).
  • "Diluc/Diluc's brother" - Due to similarities in appearance with Genshin's Diluc, fans joke that KING is either Diluc who traveled to Aida or his long-lost brother.
  • "Sephiroth" - KING's alternate skin is affectionately called this for looking like a certain antagonist from Final Fantasy VII.
  • "Samircopter" - Samir's jump attack (generally the best bit of her moveset) has her spinning fast on top of enemies while raining bullets below, hence the name.
  • As Magma is basically a recolor of Sobek, many players like to call him "Sobek 2.0". Meanwhile, Abyssant: Haboela is either called "fire Sobek" or "underwater Sobek".
  • Due to a mistranslation of Crow's name in the simulacrum tab, a few players jokingly call him "Cuervo."
  • Jetpack Crow - referring to the bug where Crow deals insane damage when using the jetpack relic before doing a dive attack.
  • Physical Crow - The Combat Blade, one of the earliest weapons given to players, shares the same moveset and skill animations as Crow's Thunderblades but is a physical weapon instead of volt. It's also possible to do the Jetpack bug with it as the devs didn't touch the weapon, hence the nickname.
  • Lyra's huge robotic arms remind players of Stands and her attacks consist of Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs with said arms that many players call her the "Ora-Ora nun"
  • After seeing her true form as a giant humanoid woman wearing a dress and hat, players immediately called Abyssant:Jörmungandr as Lady Dimitrescu.
  • Many fans like to call Rubilia as "Boobilia" due to her simulacrum outfit emphasizing her boobs.
  • Seeing Yulan's twin hair buns, outfit, and brawler playstyle have many players affectionately calling her "Chun Li".
  • After Ming Jing's appearance and weapon were revealed, players immediately called him "Cloud Strife".
• Game-Breaker:
  • Altered element weapons are usually head-and-shoulders stronger than the traditional elemental weaponry and are flexible to fit into many other weapon sets, making them highly desirable. Not helping is their limited availability and the fact that they will never enter the standard banner.
    • Lin's weapon skill changes properties to suit the player's loadout. For PVP players, she lets you spend a lot of time in the air where most other players struggle to reach you. Her weapon skill also enables extra double-jumps to navigate the sheer verticality in Vera's maps. Lin's ability to benefit many different builds gets her touted as the character to save for in the earlier builds of the game, though she would only obsoleted by the other Altered-element characters.
    • Fiona's weapon holds six possible skills and two skill slots; the first skill is tied to the normal weapon skill, while the second can be triggered independently even while wielding another weapon. This means you can customize it to suit different playstyles, even though her weapon's designated as a "healer" weapon. Also, if you've pushed it to 3 stars or higher, she can deliver a One-Hit Kill to any enemy at low HP, even bosses, to shorten tough fights.
  • Fenrir's Gleipnir weapon, at its first advancement, has a devastating wide-range skill that lets you bypass enemy defense stats. You also generate a spirit that tanks a lot of damage for you. Its passives also stack notes on the target which synergize with all its other attacks for even more damage. On top of that, Gleipnir passively benefits builds with three different elemental weapons equipped, meaning it supports a very wide variety of builds — far more than Lin's Shadowweave does. Gleipnir is a glaring point of Power Creep (despite the Global release downplaying this trope) and Fenrir "rainbow" builds have been known to match or even outdo builds that focus on a single element.
  • While the 3.0 characters are good in their own right, Zeke's Onyx tortoise stands out with its changes in the Global version, giving it Physical and Flame resonance. Its first advancement applies a small instance of Devouring damage with every Grievous application, with the Flame teams also capable of proccing it. One of its passives allows it to work with its fellow 3.0 weapons, opening up more "rainbow" team compositions alongside Fiona. It also has a hidden trait that raises Physical Attack to the highest value out of elemental attack values, similar to Altered Weapons that it can be a good substitute weapon for Fiona's weapon. As a bonus, his Execute mechanic kills all non-boss enemies, making it the perfect weapon to use for solo instances like Bygone and Sequential Phantasm.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Sandworms aren't that hard to beat, but the problem is that they tend to stay underground most of the time before popping out to knock unaware players down, making it hard to retaliate if players can't time their dodges. They're usually located near chests or other points of interest so it's easy to be caught off-guard while waiting for chests to open up. They're only located in a few parts of Aesperia, but they are plentiful in the deserts of Vera, making it annoying to explore that part without attracting a huge horde. Vera even has miniboss-tier sandworms that are way tankier and take much longer to defeat.
  • Weavers can never proc your Phantasia which would otherwise make fighting them less tedious. Some Weavers in Grayspace also inflict a debuff that prevents you from attacking, wasting your limited Grayspace time.
• Goddamned Boss:
  • Pallas is a very mobile boss who is a pain in the neck to fight, especially in the higher Joint Operation difficulties. His hammer attacks have a wide attack range that can hit even ranged players if the aggro holder isn't too far from them. He also zooms around while throwing bombs everywhere, and will summon explosive Jack-in-the-box to disorient inattentive players. Players must also either trap or chase after him during his shield phase as he tends to run away, and failing to break it will make him zoom around the arena so fast while the aggro holder must guide a bomb to him, which is easier said than done as he will also throw explosives to block the attempt.
  • The Interdimensional Frostfire Dragon is an airborne boss in a game where you have limited ranged weaponry. It speaks volumes when players end up using Hilda's Terminator for the sole purpose of shattering its shield. It also is prone to glitching with its movement, and at times has "reset" its HP in the middle of the fight simply because the player that has its aggro left its range.
  • The Devourer Abyssant has only one attack, but it's an airborne boss that makes it infamously hard to hit without ranged weapons, and even so, the Grayspace mobs on the ground can harass you and interrupt your attacks. As it's a Grayspace boss, the Devourer Abyssant can only be fought alone unlike the Dragon, and the 8 minutes you get for each Grayspace session become a lot more precious when trying to slowly chip down this leviathan's colossal HP bar.
  • The Puppet Singer is even more infuriating to fight than Pallas. While its attack patterns are somewhat predictable, its wide-range sweeping attacks hit extremely hard and fast that it can kill a player in just a few attacks. It also has a tendency to float up before swooping down on the tank and sometimes vanishes before reappearing somewhere else on the stage, especially during its shield phase, forcing melee players to chase it while trying to break its shield. Failing to break it will cause it to open portals to vanish into before popping out in the air to chase the tank with devastating sweeping attacks nearly impossible to dodge and can kill even geared players.
  • The Grayspace Abyssant Ripper_G-042 is a boss that pounces all over the arena and even climbs on walls or any other structure in the arena while it slowly fills up its Volt gauge. Its animations are designed for its story-based boss fight, where it has plenty of pillars to crawl onto, but when it appears in Void Abyss, its behavior has not changed for the new arena, so it will climb on air to execute its attacks. Once the Volt gauge is full it will repeatedly pounce at the tank until the gauge empties. This gives melee players only a few precious seconds to do damage unless the tank can perfectly dodge its attacks to activate Phantasia and keep it on the ground as long as possible.
  • The raid version of Zhuyan has defenses so high it takes negligible damage from your weapons. The only way to actually damage it is to shatter its shield, which means the general raid combat loop is stalling until it throws up its shield, after which everyone puts their all into shattering it. The problem is that it likes to take its time to re-raise its shields, and triggering Phantasia when it's not vulnerable only serves to waste your limited time, especially on Challenge difficulty when you have only 10 minutes to defeat it.
  • The Puppet Singer meets its match with Abysssant:Jörmungandr, especially in Void Abyss. Nearly all of its attacks have it jumping or teleporting away from the tank before rushing back to attack, making it necessary to chase it from time to time. In its shield phase, it will continuously teleport, reappear, and dash across the arena and the targeted player must Dodge/Phantasia to break its shield, which is easier said than done as its dashes are fast and it won't stay at a spot if Phantasia is on cooldown.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • There's a trick where players can climb walls without using up stamina, allowing access to high areas without the fear of falling, dubbed the "Infinite Stamina" wall climb. This can be done by letting go of the wall, quickly doing a double jump then pressing forward to latch to the wall again.
  • There's a bug where using the jetpack relic and quickly using Crow's dive attack afterward will deal massive damage to enemies. This was quickly patched during the Global Release, though this wasn't fixed on the CN servers for a long time. The bug is still doable with the use of the Combat Blades, although it cannot reach the absurd damage scaling that Crow's weapon can do due to its stats.
  • Many players discovered ways to clip through the Joint Operation dungeons, making it possible to head straight to the last boss and skip all the trash mobs.
  • It's possible to ace the Laser Corridor minigame by pressing the Vehicle and Interact keys at the same time, allowing the vehicle (preferably the Cube) to be summoned on the corridor. The player cannot be detected by the lasers due to the vehicle hitbox blocking them, so players can just idle until the game ends. The trade-off is that players will need to use the unstuck command afterward if their weapon slots are still glitched.
  • Before being patched out, if you've used the Cybernetic Arm and change your Relics mid-flight, your tether gets disconnected but you maintain the same mid-air momentum. Players have used this to cover great distances when colliding with walls at the correct angles to ease exploration and get a leg up in the Mirroria City Tour race event.
  • Players have discovered ways to edit the json files for player characters, allowing people to edit the RGB values of clothes to look like neon colors. There's no hard limit to the value so a few players created and shared a few presets that made characters shine so bright that they are walking Blinding Camera Flashes or black holes.
  • One content creator discovered that it is possible to instantly kill Abyssal Harrah by pushing it out of its arena with a purchasable mount.
  • This will require many people to cooperate, but there is a trick to slowly move Harrah by placing the pillar beside her and using Shiro's skill on top of the pillar. This will place Harrah in the middle of Shiro's skill, making it possible to slowly drag her off to the edge of the arena until she falls, instantly killing her. This was quickly patched in the 2.2 update.
  • In the 2.2 update, players found a bug where quickly swapping two equipment sets with any elemental attack in its stats will artificially inflate the CS score little by little, allowing them to unlock all suppressor levels. This was also quickly patched a few days after the discovery.
  • There's a bug in the simulacrum page where selecting a female simulacrum and then quickly switching to another simulacrum in the same gender will have the currently selected one perform the previous one's animations.
  • By attacking twice with Claudia's Lotus Blade and quickly activating and deactivating the jetpack, it causes a bug where the player character will quickly be propelled forward, making it easier to traverse long distances in the air. A similar bug happens with Yulan's Unity, with some minor differences in input.
• Growing the Beard: The second major arc of the story, where the cast travels to Vera, is accompanied by major revisions to gameplay and writing that do away with a lot of the Early Instalment Weirdness from the Aesperia arc, and many long-time players who stuck through its rough beginnings agree this is where the game improved dramatically.
• Hype Backlash: A victim of a variety of factors like Fandom Rivalry and Christmas Rushed. The pre-release period was hyped up to unrealistic levels due to the comparisons between Genshin and the "Genshin Killer" moniker, leading to many players trying out the game with the wrong expectations ^note Casual gacha players expecting Genshin-like content, difficulty, and story would be met with MMORPG tropes, while people who were expecting a full MMORPG game were turned off by the mobile and gacha aspects. Those who were aware of the game being a casual gacha MMO were presented with a game full of bugs, controversies, expensive microtransactions, and rushed banners, fully souring many people's opinions of the game.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Cobalt-B's weapon in the Global version gets criticized as it requires a lot of duplicates to truly shine. Not helping matters is that Ruby's weapon, which is also a fire-damage ranged weapon that also grants Flame Resonance, was available in the next immediate Limited Banner and is a lot stronger without demanding as much.
  • Rubilia's Lost Art brought out complaints that pulling her would be a downgrade (unless one is pulling for aesthetics or for her utility alone) when players learned that it needs to be paired with an A3 Fenrir weapon (which most free-to-play players won't have without luck or saving for it) to bring out its full potential and surpass Tian Lang's Thunderbreaker. Huang/Mimi's release solved a few of her problems, but she still needs a lot of duplicates to truly shine and keep up with the meta.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Wait for 2.0"^ExplanationThe 2.0 update that introduces the Vera region also brings with it much better writing and several Anti-Frustration Features; essentially the point where the game improves in quality. This, however, didn't excuse the inconveniences the player base experienced for the first two months of the game. Numerous content creators urge the playerbase to hold out and save resources for 2.0 where the game "gets good", but neglect to give advice on how to use those resources to enhance immediate enjoyment, which would encourage one to continue playing.
    
    When the 2.0 update arrived, it did bring several quality-of-life changes to improve gameplay... but also brought along a slew of glitches and issues that made the game nearly unplayable for some players and required multiple hotfixes to correct. Disgruntled players then began mocking the expectations that were being drummed up from before, and were quick to mock anyone who tried to express hope for improvements in future major updates.
  • [Unit] is nerfed to the ground, [insert your element] is dead.^Explanation Many doomposters would start badmouthing a new Simulacrum after seeing their leaked reworked stats before its release in the global version, even when others would counteract that this is better for the game to prevent dramatic powercreeps that happened in the CN version of the game. This would usually be Hilarious in Hindsight as the released units tend to still overpower the older ones even with the "nerfs" that a few players joke that it's a guarantee the weapon is a must-pull if people are saying the opposite.
  • Dead game ^ExplanationThe game has quite a number of vocal haters who try to paint it in a bad light against its competitors. Their doomsaying often claims the game is dead or dying, even if player numbers would indicate otherwise. The playerbase would mock it by sarcastically claiming "dead game" at the slightest inconvenience.
  • "This will get fixed by [version]"^ExplanationExtending from the "wait for 2.0" meme, subsequent updates after the Vera update added more features and fixed some bugs but also introduced more bugs, some of which also needed hotfixes lest the game become unplayable for unlucky players. Players have become wary that the gameplay will likely never reach a perfectly polished state, and some take to mocking how the hopeful members of the community keep saying that "the next update" will be where things finally get good.
  • Tower of ____^ExplanationIt's easy to meme the game's title by changing the word "Fantasy" to whatever topic the game is mentioned.
    • Tower of Controversy/Drama^ExplanationMany people, especially those only aware of the controversies, call the game this due to its unfortunate tendency to stir up all kinds of controversies in and out of its player base ever since its creation.
    • Tower of Bugs ^Explanation The game was released in an unpolished state with tons of bugs popping up every day, especially during updates.
    • Tower of Theft^Explanation Refers to the early days when the developers were caught stealing assets from other games.
    • Tower of Frost^ExplanationWhat players call the game due to the developer's apparent bias towards the frost element. Compared to the other elements where there is one factor crippling their usability like how volt and physical elements both require high investment to be viable and two flame weapons were badly nerfed in Global, frost weapons are the least affected by the Competitive Balance in Global, and have really good synergy with other frost weapons. It also has the largest weapon count in the game, and even then, only needs low investments to be viable, making it the best element free-to-play players can invest in.
    • Tower of Booba/Waifus^ExplanationPlayers have noted that a majority of gacha-earned weapons are tied to female characters, and the female Executor gets better outfits than her male counterpart. It's no mystery as to why, but those who do enjoy playing as a male character can't help but feel shafted.
  • The "Genshin Killer"^ExplanationDuring the game's global launch, the (now confirmed) misinformation that the game was marketed as the next "Genshin Killer" spread like wildfire. This prompted many content creators and gamers looking for a competitor to Genshin to hype the game as such even if there was no concrete proof of Hotta or Tencent marketing the game as this. While the nickname later became synonymous with the game, it is now mockingly used whenever a whole lot of bugs, glitches, or controversies pop up in every update.
  • Pac-man simulator^ExplanationMost of Domain 9's exploration rewards come in the form of field energy used to upgrade the towers in each region. In addition to puzzles that you find in the overworld, you can also grab 10-point orbs scattered across the map. Because there are so many of them cluttering the minimap, with several trails of orbs arranged to lead a player to a point of interest, players jokingly compare this task to playing Pac-man.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Hotta and Level Infinite (which extends to Tencent Games as well) have managed to shoot themselves in the foot many times after:
  • Blatantly stealing assets many times from other games like Genshin Impact, Honkai Impact 3rd, Fate/Grand Order, and even copying a promotional video that the creators called them out for this. It even earned the nickname "Tower of Theft" from Chinese players.
  • The marketing allegedly calling the game the "Genshin Killer" attracted unwarranted ire from Genshin Fans and even game journalists who began aggressively comparing the two. On top of that, a content creator uncovered a discord server distributing Chinese IDs without permission and even using identities of missing or dead persons to create accounts for Russian Bots. It was eventually discovered that all this was deliberate misinformation spread by a Genshin player, but by the time everything has been cleared up (and the instigator losing a lawsuit to Tencent) the damage is done, and the game is likely to Never Live It Down.
  • Copypasting Genshin reviews using a bot to their own app store review with the word "Genshin" erased, and quickly being found out by Chinese players as they did not even bother to proofread the reviews.
  • Enlisting the help of beta players to refine the translation and localization without properly compensating those volunteers. On top of that, the translation is still highly flawed, and the devs are still reaching out to hire volunteers as "localization specialists" as opposed to hiring professional translators.
  • Offering significantly worse deals for Tanium in the Global release compared to the Chinese version has made spending players feel cheated.
• Porting Disaster:
  • Judging from the graphical details, it seems that the game is developed first and foremost for the PC, as the PC version has more detailed textures and visuals than other platforms. (In contrast, its parallel game Genshin Impact has equal visual quality between all platforms.) The mobile version also proves to be very taxing on phone processors.
  • The Playstation port, which launched 1 year after Global's launch, shipped with numerous control and performance issues with poorly communicated workarounds. The developers shipped a fix for it quickly, but it's glaring oversight for a game that's been out for a year.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story:
  • At times, especially in parts where the story quality takes a nosedive (the Navia chapters of the Aesperia arc, for instance), players are keener to skip cutscenes and move things along so they can continue exploring the world around them or to get to the latest content available.
  • Enforced by the game to its detriment — it tries to skip the player forward to the Vera arc after they first arrive at Hyrkos, with an option to allow the player to double back and finish the Aesperia arc at their own leisure. This is meant to try and help new players catch up to the existing playerbase, but it leaves newcomers very confused at the large plot hole this skip creates.
• Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic: The Artificial Island Build Mode generally failed to live up to player expectations until the 2.4 update, which allowed players to visit other players' islands and added a randomly-spawning merchant who stocks rare items like Red Nuclei or equipment upgrade material. Since then, more players have begun to engage with the side mode rather than just relegating it to a weekly chore.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The level scaling mechanic was infamous for creating a Difficulty Spike that punished players for leveling up too quickly. This has since been remedied by in-game guides that offer pointers to improve one's strength, and by allowing players manual control over their Dimension Level.
  • The unexpectedly short enemy spawn time and persistence of mobs make it difficult to safely access mounts, open chests, or quick travel while out in the field, especially when the game forbids those actions while "in combat". For instance, you can be opening a chest only for a mob to jump you in the middle of the opening animation and interrupt the whole process.
  • Most enemies, if left unattended for long enough, would lose aggro and make a beeline to their spawn point and reset their health, preventing a player from wearing down a strong enemy with hit-and-run tactics. The Innars region, however, has a lot of roaming enemies that tend to "lose aggro" due to being too far from their spawn point, even when you're actively beating them up, which can needlessly drag out a skirmish with some of their tougher mobs.
  • The Vera-introduced equipment pieces were deliberately designed to be more difficult to obtain and upgrade, as the equipment shards are best obtained from either World Boss chests or Research Tasks. With World Bosses, Harrah and Culton consistently gave you Eyepiece shards and materials to advance the associated Research Task. Eva's World Boss chest, though, gave only materials for the golden Exoskeleton Research Task. This Research Task requires three different materials, and while Eva's chest does drop three materials, it yields them in a randomized combination, so you cannot always guarantee you're making a set of shards each time. This made the Exoskeleton the hardest equipment to farm from World Bosses, until other sources of Exoskeleton shards were made available.
  • In Void Rift, players can gather and redistribute buffs that are obtained throughout the stage. A "Wish" buff is enabled if a player has three or more copies of a buff on them, granting a stacking 25% attack and HP buff for the whole team — having this buff on everyone makes the boss loads easier to defeat. The problem is that the game does a poor job explaining these mechanics among other issues.^note The game's UI makes it hard to see the team's assigned role to give the correct buffs, Rage Quitters and griefers taking their buffs with them leaving the party, and the game's unintuitive design of its chat function.
  • Several outfits and cosmetics are obtained only from limited-time events, but those events are in-game gachapon machines with a limited prize pool. You are (sometimes) given five pulls for free, but you need to purchase more pulls if you want the rest of the prizes, and the odds of obtaining the outfits are so low that you basically have to exhaust the prize pool to get them. The cost to do so is a staggering 9400 to 10,610 Dark Crystals — 62 to 70 Special Order pulls' worth! Some Simulacrum skins are available this way, but unlike player outfits, you can't use the skin unless you already own the associated weapon! Given how slow the Dark Crystal income is for most players, these kinds of "events" are basically Revenue-Enhancing Devices, aiming to milk money out of high-spenders.
  • You must spend 100 Dark Crystals whenever you re-adjust your character's look. Swapping outfits is free, but you must also spend to recolor your outfit or change your accessories. Certain outfits and accessories also have hairstyle compatibility restrictions, further curbing the players' ability to express themselves.^note Most notably, the witch hat from the early 2023 Battle Pass is only compatible with one preset hairstyle. There are coupons to substitute this cost, but before the Vera update, each player only received one. Now, at least, the Mirroria gachapon machines dispense so many coupons that you would need to work to deplete them all.
  • The elemental resistances in Joint Operations, Wormhole, and Frontier Clash are not fondly looked upon as they employ Character Select Forcing and screw over most players who have only enough resources to develop a full team focused on one element. This has been addressed over time — Frontier Clash bosses nowadays are easily trounced despite their resistances due to the increasing strength of new equipment, and the Joint Operation system no longer employs elemental resistance modifiers.
  • Lin's Shadoweave has a passive that teleports the player every 10 seconds on the edge of the Moonlight Realm if hit by an enemy attack. It sounds great on paper but in reality, there's a chance it teleports the player into an enemy's One-Hit Kill attack or outside platforms where they'll usually fall to their deaths if they can't react fast enough.
  • Activating Alyss's skill obscures the player's vision after a certain distance with a snowy filter for 30 seconds. This causes problems in exploration as the effect doesn't go away after battles so players will have a hard time navigating the environment until the effect goes away. This is also addressed after a few patches by giving the player the option of turning skill effects off.
  • Aesperia exploration chests frequently award Dark Crystals to help players gather currency for gacha pulls, so when the Vera chests gave Mira and Veron instead, it was met with backlash. Some players argue that the Mira and Veron are meant to be spent on the Mirroria gachapon machines that eventually yield Dark Crystals and Nuclei, but the amount of effort needed to empty out their prize pools means that Vera exploration yields less rewards than Aesperia.
• Scrappy Weapon: Meryl's weapon is a fantastic frost melee weapon and a great shield-breaker, no doubt, but its discharge skill creates a ring of ice that can block ally shots and can trap players within. Players who have a bad sense of timing earn their teammates' ire by accidentally trapping the group within the "Instant Death" Radius of a boss winding up a powerful attack. The game even has a Simulacrum side conversation where Meryl is embarrassed about her weapon trapping the team this way!
• Special Effects Failure: Your main character does not emote or move their lips during most cutscenes, detracting from some of the more emotional moments involving them.
• That One Attack:
  • Sobek and Magma are very fond of diving into the ground of their arena, evading all damage until they violently resurface. Whoever they're targeting (and anyone nearby) is almost guaranteed to take lethal damage and the respawn points are fairly distant from the boss arena. Magma takes it up a notch as it does this while it's shielded, on top of creating a sand barrier that restricts player movement and also inflicts a damage-over-time to everyone within, putting everyone in constant peril while also making it harder to break its shield and interrupt its ultimate attack. It's possible to avoid this attack by jumping into the air with the jetpack, but both are known to go underground several times in quick succession just to drag out the fight.
  • The Umbra Whale isn't really a hard hitter and only has a huge health bar, but its Homing Bubble attack is the reason why it's so hard to kill. Once it swims away from its attacker, it also launches many nearly invisible bubbles that slowly chase its target, dealing massive frost damage that guarantees a One-Hit Kill if all the bubbles hit. The only way to avoid them is to either dodge them until they pop, which is nearly impossible to do underwater, or by activating discharge attacks with I-frames and hope for the best.
  • Once Abyssant:Eva's health reaches 3X in raids, it will unleash a huge AOE attack reaching about halfway in the middle of the arena. This is an "Instant Death" Radius attack and players unable to get out of the ring before it starts attacking the area will get electrified, unable to move or do anything until their health reaches zero.
• That One Boss:
  • Frostbot is not only incredibly mobile, but it's fond of freezing you and wasting your time. If its shield isn't shattered in time, its ultimate attack freezes players and gives the survivors 5-10 seconds to attack their teammates to free them. If the frozen players aren't thawed out in time it's an instant kill. This thing is also a colossal pain to fight in Bygone Phantasm, where you're facing it alone and have 2 and a half minutes to kill it — getting frozen will waste a good portion of your limited time.
  • Valkyrie is considered an annoying boss, especially in Frontier Clash Hard. Failing to shatter her shield will result in her raining lightning strikes that's difficult to dodge if you're close to her. Her second phase will have her hover in the air, out of reach for most of the party, while swooping down after the tank, making it harder to kill her and wasting even more time if players can't find a way to keep her down. She's an infamous stopping point for Frontier Clash Hard — unprepared players will usually fail to kill her, and prepared ones (who still lack damage) can beat her but will proceed to run out of time to take out the remaining two bosses.
  • Even for a World Boss, Abyssal Harrah is very tedious, having two phases each with a mountain of health. The first phase is immobile but has devastating close-range attacks that make it very difficult to fight her with melee weapons, so most players are content to slowly chip away her health with ranged weapons. Even with at least 30 players all doing this, she's got so much HP that it takes upwards of twenty minutes to deplete all of it (before nerfs). The second phase is faster but also lacks the area denial and is easier to fight, but still has a lot of HP that will take more time to deplete. What's worse is that if you want to access the third layer of the Confounding Abyss by yourself, you will need to fight Harrah at least once since she guards the first conventional access point to that layer.
  • In Void Abyss, Abyssant:Gaia is a very challenging boss that loves to spam its fast pound attacks that deal huge fatal AOE damage, and getting caught in them will instantly deplete a player's health bar. Just like Valkyrie, it's a stopping point for unprepared players, to the point where it's recommended to, in addition to extensive party preparation, pick up physical resistance buffs specifically to survive its attacks.
  • The Eva Raid has a gimmick that can make it longer than the others — if the person that Eva is targeting gets healed, Eva will heal too. Unless you're putting out a load of damage to outpace this healing, Eva can make the fight a lot longer than it needs to be. This means you can't blindly outmuscle it — you will need a tank or two to draw her attention so that the other DPS players can get healed without triggering this gimmick. Eva also implements a few other complicated mid-level debuffs and the tooltips that explain their mechanics disappear a bit too quickly for a player to read and understand in the heat of combat. It also has a "Instant Death" Radius attack that happens when its health reaches 3 bars, so players not aware of it happening won't have a chance to escape.
  • The Chaos Armor never stops moving. Its main attack slams the ground, marking the spot where it will dash to, and charge accordingly. The ground slam and its movement deal damage, and it's prone to leaving a flaming trail that also damages you while you stand in it. Its ultimate attack causes it to rocket around the perimeter of its arena while raining rockets on you, and you have to break open a casing for a lever in order for Chaos Armor to be stopped and resume its regular attack pattern. The frequency at which it leaves behind hazardous area makes it very difficult to engage in close quarters, and it becomes deadly on a higher-difficulty Joint Operation.
• That One Component:
  • Each farmable mount has parts that are easy to acquire in exploration except for one part that is usually a Rare Random Drop. While the mobs are easy to kill, the percentage of dropping is close to 0.10-20% and rises to 0.50% after a hundred kills. It doesn't help that these mobs are far away from each other, so players have to run, kill, then teleport to the next monster for hours just to complete the mounts.
  • There's a Domain 9 mount that needs seven components to complete. Five of them are awarded by fully upgrading the Vermilion Statues. The remaining two are awarded for defeating a Challenge Tower miniboss within a set time limit at the maximum world level on your own. Bear in mind those mini-bosses have so much health that it takes a full team to even stand a chance of defeating them that Zeke's weapon is a must for his Execute mechanic.
• That One Disadvantage: Version 2.2 introduced the Graying Bite mechanic in certain instances, showing up as a gray bar above the player's health bars that accumulates points proportional to the damage the player receives, and is unaffected by shields, blocks, iframes, or Zero's discharge. Reaching the threshold causes an explosion that removes all timed buffs and prevents gaining buffs for 10 seconds, leaving players very vulnerable to enemies if they somehow survive the explosion. Since it only shows up in very difficult content like the Void Abyss and Sequential Phantasm, Fiona's weapon is a must as it's the only weapon that can cleanse the debuff via discharge and dodge attack.
• That One Level:
  • The Deepsea Stronghold Joint Operation has two bosses with infuriating gimmicks. The mid-boss is an airborne boss fought in a flooded area with only a few platforms that offer dry footing. The end boss is the Devourer with a unique ultimate attack that floods the arena and forces you to swim (and risk drowning) or get on your Jetboard to wait out the attack while dodging tornadoes.
  • The Grayspace area in Vera is the hardest map to do 100% Completion for one reason: the 8-minute timer that limits the exploration time. Exploration becomes hard as Spatial Rifts and Energy Points are spaced far away from others and more than half are guarded by Furioths and Weavers that must be defeated which wastes precious time. Only 6 Grayspace Fissures spawn every day at random areas while Grayspace Scriptures that open up portals anywhere are rarely given, and dying or teleporting will immediately end the timer and return the player back to Vera.
  • The underwater scenery of Innars is beautiful, but fighting in it has proven to be really clunky. A lot of weapon animations don't play nicely with how enemies can swim above or below you, and dash attacks are finicky if you end up dashing above or below your intended target. The region also has a staggering amount of space where exploration points could exist, which makes it even harder to track down that Last Lousy Point.
  • Compared to the other three regions of Domain 9, Joltville is massive and tracking down important exploration points is made tedious due to all the 10-energy orbs cluttering the map interface. Fully upgrading the Azure Statues also uses much more Field Energy than the other regions.
• That One Puzzle: The Quantum Leap puzzles scattered all over Domain 9 involve interacting with an unmarked Quantum Leap device and running to the receptacle device within 10 seconds. It used to be manageable in Ignisville, but the puzzles became more complex with the mountainous terrain of Joltville; some Quantum Leap devices were hidden on mountain cliffs unreachable by jetpack, making it hard to track the starting point and to even plan a route. Some targets are placed so far away that utility weapons like Rubilia and Alyss are required just to be able to reach the target within the allotted time. The tedium in locating the start point, never mind the effort needed to reach the receptacle in time, leaves players opting to ignore them, but fortunately completing Quantum Leap puzzles are not compulsory for 100% Completion.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Of the Mirroria weekly quests, the most tedious one is Forcefield Maintenance, which involves traveling to four consoles located in four corners of the map, each one situated extremely high up with no convenient fast travel point nearby. You're going to do a lot of climbing to reach each one, and your reward is 100 Mira and 50 Vera Coins, the same as every other possible Mirroria weekly quest. The player base's reaction to this quest was so negative that it was quietly removed after a few patches.
  • The Miasmic Swamp is host to poisonous konjac plants that spread toxic gas in a large radius around them. The poison stacks very quickly and takes a long time to wear off, leading to a lot of deaths while exploring the area. There are purifier machines that can give you temporary immunity to their poison, but if you want to permanently disable the konjac plants (which yields exploration points), you'll need to pick up Revelation Seeds nearby and then fight a tough miniboss at one of a few set locations to get the Seeds to germinate. This task involves more busywork than most other exploration points and almost mandates assistance from other players to complete.
  • A feature lasting from 24 October to 21 December 2023 was the Domain Guard Expedition, a form of daily server-wide raid. Unlike the Raid feature already present in the game, these fights are only available at a specific time of the day, and only for one hour. Since the whole channel can fight it, the boss is made a Damage-Sponge Boss. However, the game engine and server infrastructure are often ill-equipped to handle so many players in a small arena at once, leading to massive server lag that stifles the players' ability to fight. It's not unusual for a server's worth of players to spend the whole hour chipping away at the boss only to run out of time, and if they were to emerge victorious, the chest would only be present for a mere two minutes before expiring, and the rewards were often not worth all that effort. Few players missed this feature going into 2024.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Players expressed disappointment after learning of the removal of unique weapon aerial attacks released after Innars as the animations caused problems in underwater combat.
  • Many players who use Volt weapons expressed outrage after an update rolled a bug fix for Nan Ying's Volt discharge that caused it to have around higher multipliers than stated. As the Volt element is considered to be a Low-Tier Scrappy and needed the bug to keep up with the other elements, fixing this caused players to switch to other elements or advise other players to avoid the volt element altogether.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Simulacrums released before 2.0 (barring Nemesis and Ming Jing) falls into this as many never had any character focus even in their story missions, never interacted with the player character, with a few never appearing onscreen. While interacting with their AI counterparts somewhat fleshes out their personality, they still fall as Flat Characters since they are not the actual person even if their AI counterparts do have Character Development.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: When his character design was revealed, many expressed surprise that Icarus is actually a boy due to his androgynous looks. It's even clearer once one hears his voice, as it is unmistakably male.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • The underwater area of Innars is breathtaking, especially when the game shows an opportunity to take in the scenery as you ride the currents toward the underwater city.
  • Mirroria City isn't a slouch in the Visual Design department as it captures the vibrant Neon City vibes that will make you feel like being in a party club all the time.