REVIEW: The action roguelike's new era is marked by games like Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree

The modern gaming era is defined by trends and developers chasing after them. It spawns new genres every week. "Friendslop," "Souls-like," "Survivors." The roguelite boom itself was born out of the industry's fascination with these games that consume players with their innate replayability.

One that I'm shocked hasn't kicked off fully in recent years is the Hades-like: games that try to replicate the pure satisfaction and finely tuned roguelike perfection that was Supergiant's Hades. There have certainly been attempts at replicating the formula, but most fall to the wayside. To genuinely pull it off requires some work, and developer Brownies Inc. may have been the ones to get closest to doing it with Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree.

​Just the Facts

Developer: Brownies Inc.

Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment

​Platform(s): PC*, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S and X, Nintendo Switch *denotes platform reviewed

​Price: $29.99

Release Date: September 18, 2025

Review key provided by publisher.

Brownies Inc. is the studio of longtime Mana series contributor and artist Shinichi Kameoka, best known for their work on the EGGLIA series on mobile and Switch that emulated the vibes of the classic Mana games. Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree seems to be their biggest game yet, as evidenced by their partnership with Bandai Namco, who have put a lot of their strength behind the project.

In Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree, demons are on the rise. After an era of peace, a god-appointed guardian named Towa is put to the test when the rise of the villainous Magatsu brings demons to Shinju Village's doorstep. Assembling a team of Prayer Children, Towa brings together eight warriors from all walks of life who attain powers to help push back against the evil.

An encounter with Magatsu ends with a failed attempt to seal him away and Towa separated from her guardians. Sent to the end of time, to a world where Magatsu has won, the Prayer Children work together to go out on runs to destroy Magatsu's own guardians, sending mana back through time to Towa as she gathers strength to put Magatsu away for good and save the village.

As we highlighted in our video preview, Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree's greatest strength is in the relationships between its characters. The core conflict is a bit generic, the big bad is too amorphous to have anything resembling a personality, and the world is beautiful but barely connected. But the guardians, Towa, and the villagers of Shinju are all brought to life by an impressive voice cast full of familiar folks from across the industry — and all full of fascinating stories and bits of growth that you'll witness piecemeal as you go through your runs. That's what you'll take away from your time with the game.

For each run, or "journey," you'll pair up two guardians to go out on demon slaying expeditions together. One takes the lead as the Tsurugi, the sword wielding attacker, while the other will support with magical abilities as the Kagura. Each partnership you assemble comes with its own backstory and context, and you'll learn about both parties whenever they have a moment of rest during your runs.

That all serves to make it harder when you do eventually succeed in any of the game's journeys, when the duo wipes out one of Magatsu's minions and performs the sacred rite needed to send their mana back to Towa. Because this rite requires you to sacrifice one of the duo — and, one by one, you'll see your cohort of Prayer Children whittled down. It has a powerful impact each and every time and reframes the run-based format as it changes success into something to dread, just as much as it's something to celebrate.

There are other ways you'll witness these changes and relationship-building moments, both in the town and with Towa herself, that I dare not spoil for their surprising power. But needless to say, character relationships are the anchor of Towa's narrative power, and some of the stories told between friends over a campfire hold some genuinely emotional and enjoyable moments.

Those relationships also highlight the best part of Towa's gameplay, as the partnerships you build are at the center of its brand of action roguelike. Every single one of the guardians comes equipped with their own stats, which you can modify with RPG-style level-ups, gemstone modifiers that are acquired through resources you gain on your various journeys, and unique swords that you can smith yourself via a fun minigame that imbues them with skill modifiers that directly coincide with the upgrades you can get once you're out on a run.

There are a ton of systems at work here that can create fascinating combinations and satisfy the min-maxing tinkerers out there — but it can also be a bit overwhelming for most others. There's a satisfaction in seeing your investments in the town and in specific characters pay off, but... it's a lot to maintain. There's a weird amount of menu-ing to do in between runs, enough that I almost entirely forgot about leveling up my guardians for a handful of runs in the middle of my time with the game. But if you want to beat the game, you'll have to engage with all of it to even stand a chance.

Character relationships are the anchor of Towa's narrative power, and some of the stories told between friends over a campfire hold some genuinely emotional and enjoyable moments.

Most of Towa's action gameplay is fairly straight forward. Your Tsurugi has two attacks, tied to each of the two blades you can equip them with, and each guardian has entirely unique attacks to make your gameplay varied as you go. Each of your swords has its own durability, which can only be restored either with a powerful Fatal Blow move that uses up stored mana to do big damage and reset your blade, or by switching between them to incentivize using your guardian's full move set.

Koro, the village elder, was one of my favorites with his one-two punch of a rapid long-range stabbing attack as his main and an area of effect charge attack that surrounds your player with damage zones that persist as new enemies spawn in. A close second was Bampuku, a giant fluffy dog person who spins into enemies and bounces off of them like a pinball with his main attack and a giant AoE slam as his secondary.

It's fun to be forced to engage with all these different playstyles and to find one that works for your particular action gaming sensibilities. You do eventually reach a point where you're best off just sticking with one guardian to carry you through, but the early game experimentation is gratifying.

As you clear rooms of wave after wave of enemies, you'll be blessed with a grace from the gods, amplifying your various attacks with some unique modifier. Grace of the Merciful comes with moves that help restore health lost; Grace of the Lucid amplifies your critical hit rate and damage; Grace of the Explorer focuses on your sword's durability; and so on. These Graces define how each of your hour-long journeys will play out.

There's no worrying about elemental resistance or anything even near as complex as that though — it's just kill or be killed. So, it's kind of baffling how suddenly difficult Towa's late game is, considering how straightforward the rest is.

I'm normally not much of a difficulty stickler. But the balance between how the game plays in the beginning and at the very end is so drastic, and so frustrating in how it approaches the shift in difficulty, that it really hindered my enjoyment in the end. Brownies' approach to difficulty very quickly becomes clear as you start up the game's final few journeys. You're facing a lot of the same enemy types in a lot of the same room layouts you've seen before: They just hit ten times harder and take ten times longer to kill. This was particularly true of bosses — which, again, are simply spongier and heavier-hitting versions of the game's various past journey-ending bosses.

The final journey was probably the biggest pain point for me, featuring six of the game's hardest bosses as midbosses and ending with a gauntlet of three very difficult bosses in a row, with only one heal in between them. Any one mistake against even some of the most basic enemies spelled doom for the run. Even with all relevant stats nearly maxed out and my build optimized for max damage and damage resistance, this took me hours. My total playthrough took just under 40 hours, going for as close to full completion as possible without trying to see all of the game's scenes that came with each unique pairing. A a solid quarter of that might have been just trying to finish out Towa's late game.

It's especially frustrating when the rest of the game was so fun. It didn't ruin the experience by any stretch, and I'm aware that as a reviewer I was under unique circumstances with a deadline to meet, while any casual player can just stop and take a break to approach it with fresh eyes later. But the mere fact that I was clearing rooms in under a minute and beating bosses in under two minutes, just for my run to end at the final stretch because I didn't have enough health or mis-timed a dodge... it didn't feel right.

You do eventually reach a point where you're best off just sticking with one guardian to carry you through, but the early game experimentation is gratifying.

But to shift back into the pluses before I wrap up, Brownies' artists really outdid themselves in developing Towa's world: The Japanese mythology-inspired setting and character design was genuinely beautiful, despite it not feeling totally cohesive at times. The soundtrack's shifts between calming woodwinds and exciting electronica always met the tone of each stressful encounter. And the team of voice actors truly does some extraordinary work bringing such a large cast to life. I want to especially shout out Shigin's voice actor in the English dub, Aleks Le, who channeled some heart-wrenching deliveries for some of the late game scenes that really endeared me to him.

Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree is a game with a lot of moving parts. With so many different combinations of characters, and players being able to witness any given scene at any given time, you almost expect them not to account for it all, but Brownies does here in a truly impressive way. From the writing, to the performances, to the gameplay, it holds together nicely from start to finish.

Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree isn't perfect, but it is one of the closest representations of what the action roguelike genre can achieve that I've seen since the likes of Hades. A few pain points aside, what Brownies accomplished here is impressive, dense, and above all, fun.

If you like deep character bonds, snappy action gameplay, and chasing that "one more run" mentality, Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree just might be for you.

Video Games Are Good and Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree is . . . GOOD. (7.5/10)

+ a narrative focused on character relationships above all else, snappy action gameplay with lots of tinkering to be done, astoundingly dense experience

- strange approach to difficulty makes for an unfun late game, the tinkering can be overwhelming for those looking to hop right into the action, non-relationship-focused story bits come across as a bit generic

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