I got a chance to preview a full four hours of Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree, and it has made me look at the game in a much better light. I had time to play it at Summer Game Fest, but I only discussed it rather than wrote an article on it. Only having a single 30-minute run at Summer Games Fest was not enough time to fully explore the mechanics at work. Honestly, even with 4 hours, I barely got past the point we were told to stop at.
The Secret Of The Guardians
Bandai Namco has been hiding a secret of the progression of this game til just right now, and that makes a huge difference in how you play this game from now on. That change is after each dungeon is finished, and you beat the boss of that level, one of your units is gone and is unplayable. That means you can’t get too cozy with a single duo set up as one of that duo gets axed to return mana to the village.
Let’s step back and go over the gameplay loop. You play as Towa as she wants to return the land to how it was before it was decimated by Magatsu. As Towa and the prayer children get to the edge to stop Magatsu, the God sends all the prayer children into a void that spouts them out at the very end of time. Towa is unaffected, and so is Shinju village. Unfortunately, Shinju village is stuck in time. Everywhere else has time flowing normally as Magatsu fills the land with miasma, but Shinju is stuck in time. Towa can see the end of time and helps the prayer children to disperse the miasma and return mana to Shinju Village.
Towa is out of commission, but she helps the prayer children with creating stronger swords to strengthen the power of the Sword of Absolution and posting inscriptions on the staff of Divination to strengthen it. With these two artifacts, the prayer children can journey into the miasma safely and defeat the Magatsu-hi, the strong enemies that hold the mana of the land hostage.
Gameplay consists of you choosing two of the prayer children to play as. One is the Tsurugi, or the one that wields melee weapons, and the other is the Kagura, or the one that wields magic. Each character has a different way they play each role, but they all can play both roles.
Runs in a dungeon is in a roguelite setting. You start with your base stats of both party members and go through rooms, grabbing Graces. These Graces give you passives for your units. You can also grab resources like ore, stones, and other items that will help you strengthen your characters before a run. You can finish a dungeon by getting to the boss, or you die trying. When you die trying, your units go back to the beginning right before Shinju Village, but you keep the resources you found. Your Graces get thrown away, as you will need to grab new ones in a new run.
The ritual to return mana to the land requires the one holding the Sword of Absolution to slice down the one who holds the Staff of Divination. So your Tsurugi will have to return your Kagura to dust. Be careful who you choose to go out as you will have to be okay with one of them being unplayable afterwards.
Shinju Village
Towa is stuck in Shinju Village, but she still has access to the residents who live there as well. These NPCs will give you help in training the prayer children or strengthening the weapons you have access to. You can even get access to a Blacksmithing mini-game to have Towa create a new sword to give to the wielder of the Sword of Absolution. They give an in-depth customization system for these swords, where you can change parts of the sword to be different lengths with different curvatures. You can make swords like Sephiroth or even make the sword look like a dagger by making the length of every part of the sword tiny.
You can also go to Shinju Shrine to buy inscriptions from Raylee to put on the Staff of Divination and increase the base stats of the characters who are near your Kagura. There is probably a lot more you can do to increase your stats in this village, but honestly, I did my best to rush through the dungeons so I could get to the stopping point. A lot of the combat in the game is described in our preview from Anime Expo.
There are a lot of layers to this game and how you build your team. My favorite team I built was my second dungeon run with Akazu as my Kagura and Shigin as my Tsurugi. Shigin has a lot of ranged attacks, even though he is on the front lines. So as long as you dodge well, you are generally constantly dishing out damage.
Defeating Magatsu
Overall, Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree is a much deeper roguelite than I initially expected. It required me to have my hands on the game for longer than 30 minutes, but there is a lot this game has to offer. I am much more excited for this game to come out.
Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree will be released on September 19th, 2025, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
