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Home»News»Entertainment News»Anime & Animation News»Anime Expo 2025»AX2025 Preview: Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree Is Anime Hades

AX2025 Preview: Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree Is Anime Hades

By Cody PerezJuly 8, 2025
Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree AX2025 Preview

While at Anime Expo 2025, Bandai Namco provided me with the chance to get a hands-on preview of Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree. This fascinating upcoming roguelike is essentially Hades, but with an anime flair.

The beginning of the timed demo saw me pick between two main characters as the person to play as primarily for the upcoming dungeon run. There were only two party members to choose from in this preview, but there will apparently be eight in the full release.

Two-Character Gameplay in Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree

Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree AX2025 Preview

Unlike Hades and other similar roguelikes, Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree has you play as two different characters essentially at the same time. You pick your primary character, which is your Tsurugi, and your secondary character, known as the Kagura.

I could pick between either character, so I picked the voluptuous lady as my primary character in the town and put Nishiki, the hilarious fish guy, as my Kagura. In this initial town area, it plays out as a hub location for you to chat with characters and learn more about the world.

While there wasn’t much plot at all in this demo, I did get to see glimpses of the witty writing that will be much more prevalent in the full game. Once I was ready, I entered a portal and stepped into a randomized dungeon for me to conquer.

As mentioned, if you are a Hades fan, you will know exactly how the progression works in these dungeon runs. You will find yourself in a randomized arena room that could have enemies, treasure, and the like. You need to clear out this room of all enemies before you can move to the next one.

Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree AX2025 Preview

Oftentimes, there are multiple options for the next arena to go to, such as one with a shop or one with more powerful enemies to take on. You can even get upgrades in certain rooms that will make your run much more doable.

Of course, being able to obtain those upgrades means being able to master the intense, high-octane action gameplay to defeat all of the foes in front of you. Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree is a relentlessly fast-moving experience that will take time to master, but if you have experience with other similar roguelikes, you will likely have an edge.

You start out with two dashes you can use at any point by pressing L1 on the controller, each with a brief cooldown. These dashes are how you zip around the arena and dodge the countless, easily telegraphed area attacks that enemies will unleash against you.

Then you use R1 to unleash your basic attack, depending on the weapon you are currently wielding. Beyond that, you have a couple of skills you can also use that your Kagura, or secondary party member, will unleash, each with its own cooldown.

Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree AX2025 Preview

At a glance, you really have four main inputs you have to worry about: your dash button, your basic attack, and the two skills you can use. However, this is only the start, and it gets deeper and much more complicated from here.

For one, you have not one but two weapons equipped at the same time. You can switch between them anytime with Triangle, which is necessary since your weapon will degrade if you use it too much and become ineffective. Switching allows that weapon to recharge and be usable again. This system is intriguing and does require you to switch often.

However, what I dislike about this system is the other weapon I had as the female playable character. Her initial sword is unbelievably powerful at close range, but her secondary weapon attacked a short distance from her. This allows you to get free backstabs on foes, but the timing of it has to be precise or it is almost useless. As such, I very much disliked being forced to switch to that weapon in order to make the much better one viable again in battle.

What is also quite odd about how Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree plays is the secondary party member you have. For some odd reason, you and your Kagura share a health bar with one another. I actually didn’t even realize this was the case until I got to the final boss battle at the end of my run.

Thankfully, I built such an overpowered build that the normal enemies barely had the chance to swipe at me before I took them down. That said, it became clear in the final boss of the run that the shared health bar is more of a factor than it initially seems.

Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree AX2025 Preview

What this shared HP means is that if your secondary character is hit by an attack, your HP will go down for the whole team. This is a huge problem since you now don’t just have to worry about your own character dodging and being hit by attacks, but the Kagura, too.

The benefit is you are able to manually move your secondary character if you want. However, this isn’t the most intuitive, and it takes away from the focus of the actual fights. It is for this reason that I didn’t even bother with it, as it would’ve made me less effective at dodging attacks with my main character and fighting.

Thankfully, it wasn’t an issue for the entire run until the boss battle came around. Because of the strong attacks of the boss, it meant that my HP bar was suddenly dropping wildly, unlike before, because I wasn’t moving my secondary character around.

This is a bit of a frustrating gameplay choice that makes the roguelike much more challenging than it needs to be in an arguably unfair manner. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to finish the boss battle—even though it looked like I might squeak out a victory on my first try—since the timer ran out on the preview demo.

How Upgrades and Builds Work

Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree AX2025 Preview

My victory wasn’t necessarily due to my skill, either, but the overpowered build that I was able to make during my run. This was one of the most thrilling parts of Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree. Similar to other games, you will get upgrades as you progress throughout a run.

You usually get to pick between a few different upgrades each time you find one or buy it from the in-dungeon shop. These upgrades are generally randomized, though you are able to pick the element of the upgrade if you are purchasing it.

For example, you might have an upgrade that purely boosts your stats, like increasing the attack power of a particular weapon or improving your defense. But another upgrade might make one of your skills more powerful. Some upgrades can even change how a skill works, such as adding a knockback effect.

That knockback effect is how I was able to build an overpowered setup where my main sword was extremely powerful, knocked enemies backward to make them vulnerable, and allowed me to lay down more attacks and easily wipe them out.

The gameplay in Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree is stellar and made me feel right at home, even though I haven’t played a game like Hades in years.

Rough Around the Edges

Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree AX2025 Preview

That said, the actual presentation of the experience is where I am uncertain. The world oftentimes features gorgeous 2D art in the background that makes it appealing to look at.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the characters. They each have 2D portraits, and the resolution—perhaps due to the TV or the build—was low, so they looked pixelated and messy, but not in a good way. In addition, the 3D models were a bit lackluster and left something to be desired.

The one bright side of the presentation was the music. From the piano tracks to the bombastic moments, the soundtrack is pleasing to listen to, and I hope to hear more from it—and the story—in the future. Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree is rough around the edges, at least based on this preview build, but I’m still interested to see more upon its full release, thanks to the exceptional Hades-like gameplay it offers.

Anime Expo 2025 Bandai-Namco Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree
Cody Perez
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Cody is a freelancer who loves to review games for places like The Outerhaven. He started his love for gaming at a young age when he received a Sega Genesis and Game Boy Color as a hand-me-down from his older siblings. Cody took that passion and turned it into a career writing, editing, and creating content about games. He also does a bit of PR and consultation for game devs on the side, and was previously a tester for the Call of Duty franchise.

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