Like a mix of Dispatch and Reigns, Sovereign Tower sees you manage your knights of the round table and make decisions about your nation(s).
Where Sovereign Tower could have been a quick, replayable little management game evolves into a fully-fledged narrative adventure where every single weapon, item, mount and character has their own unique effect on the outcome of quests. While the main story is somewhat pre-set, the journey itself is constantly engaging and reactive in a way I actually cared about — a testament to the success of the marriage between gameplay and narrative.
It wastes no time, and neither should you. You’re a nameless commoner who happens to have the keys to the kingdom, so now you’re in charge. In your new seat of power you’ll recruit knights, make decisions and pursue dialogues all for the betterment of your nation, and of yourself.
Sovereign archetypes are sometimes flat checks, sometimes sacrifices, and sometimes comparisons between the difference between two archetypes. This applies to the satisfaction of your four types of citizens too: Merchants, Scholars, Nobles and Commoners. In a similar vein to Reigns or Long Live the Queen, you are managing choices and resources and personality all at once.
You don’t know what you don’t know, do you?
The spiral staircases and intimate alleys of The Tower hold secrets, twists and player-driven discoveries. I once ascended The Tower and sat in the throne, ready to solve everyone’s problems, when I saw a character I was certain wouldn’t return to my court. I then just assumed “ah, there’s a safety-net mechanic for characters you abandon / kill / turn into a goat” but then a Steam achievement popped…
“Discover [character]s hidden ability“.
Suddenly the idea that anything in this game was “scripted”, that my journey was anything but my own, was abolished. Someone might go a playthrough never even recruiting them, and here I was a few cycles in and had shot right to the heart of their uniqueness, which only allowed me to fuel my quest-giving and decision-making prowess even more as I could consider this “hidden ability” when assigning quests.
But, should you yourself discover this ability…maybe don’t let it trigger all too often…
You need people of intelligence on this mission, quest…thing
These sorts of hidden, by-chance discoveries are fun, but the real gameplay depth comes from the secrets hidden in the quest system.
One of your key roles as The Sovereign is to recruit and disperse knights into the realm to solve various quests. Some of these are dragon-slaying deeds worthy of song, some are brokering a peace between a farmer and his prized chicken. As always with this enigma of a game, it’s what you aren’t told that makes it all so much more interesting.
Essentially quests work by adding up how much each knight contributed, and seeing how much contribution the quest needed for success. Sounds simple enough, but after the gauge is done filling in your knights’ Strength, Wits, Charisma and so on, extra points are awarded (or, indeed, deducted) for things like their mood, carried items, equipped weapons and ridden mounts. These don’t just add flat stat bonuses, they are also completely unique to every item.
For example: The Hunting Bow you can buy right away at the forge gives + 1 WIS and + 1 AGL. But, it also gives a flat 100 contribution to any “Hunt” style mission. It doesn’t tell you this, it’s a matter of observation and a little bit of intuition to work out exactly what extra additions or subtractions all the equipment and consumables may have. It’s all very well giving someone a potion to increase their Wits, but if you skip the description of what that potion actually does outside of the stat change you could be in for an embarrassing failure…
Over the unexpectedly long playthrough, you’ll see details pop up in the quest logs of your knights and slowly learn which items have these unique effects on certain quests, which then allows you to maximise your progress by having a solo knight complete a quest designed for two, for example.
All of these interlocking contribution bonuses, statlines and personalities make choosing, equipping and assigning knights a huge part of the game. Around the middle of the 45-cycle campaign you’ll have some breathing space as quests take longer and longer to complete, but then (if you’re anything like me) you’ll get your hands on every [spoiler] in the game and reduce those quest times back down to 1 cycle anyway!
Managing The Tower and its knights is such a brilliantly engaging mix of gameplay, story, mystery and whimsy.
Choice and consequence that paints a picture
The most unexpected thing about Sovereign Tower is its pacing and layout. You expect, what with all the choices and the ability to summon a demon who can rewind time (oh, did I fail to mention the demon in the basement?) that this’ll be a 2-hour playthrough that you do five times. Instead, it’s a 10 hour playthrough you do once. This has the downside that the ending, whatever it would be, will always feel a little disappointing as no game can culminate 10 hours of choices and quest outcomes into an ending. But, the journey more than outweighs the destination, and Sovereign Tower takes you on a mighty fine journey (despite being locked to its confines yourself).
There are moments in which you go past a “point of no return” for recent decisions. Basically, you can abuse the Demon Power for a series of choices, but at key milestones your outcomes are “locked in”. This doesn’t shoe-horn you in a particular direction, I think it’s just there to stop being stuck “100%-ing” all choices from the beginning of the game every time you learn anything new. It’s a good system to keep players moving, and to treat this like a proper campaign experience instead of a save-state spam visual novel.
Reactivity and the illusion of free choice, that might not be an illusion
Despite the railroad endings in the last cycle of the game, the 44 others are incredibly reactive and create the illusion of freedom at every turn. You’ll constantly get follow-up audiences and quests based on your previous efforts, and the main story quests related to recruiting countries to your aid are often intermingled with characters and nations you’ll have had some interaction with before.
As I now know, after my 10-hour playthrough, that the game is so long I am sure looking back I could identify how little difference my choices made…but at the time I was sold. The game’s writing, mechanics and pacing did their job and had me gasping at twists, assigning knights like my life depended on it and most importantly noticing the consequences of my actions through it all. It’s during the hours in the middle of the game that the illusion is most believable.
The final 5 minutes can’t ruin what is a bespoke, beautifully paced playthrough
The endings available are as strict as you might expect, never being able to live up to the huge array of choices and interactions available. I was met with the final encounter and told I was too kind, that no-one respected my rule or knights because of that kindness. Except, when I said “Yeah okay, bet” and my knights beat the final boss with a Critical Success, the ending spoke about me waging wars and being a conqueror.
I was a kind Sovereign who also had the power to one-shot [redacted] when defending myself against them, I’d have thought that deserves a more balanced ending than “Conqueror”. Nonetheless, it didn’t sour the taste of this delectable game. In time I may even replay it to see just how different things can be, and which different knights are out there waiting to be recruited. I’d love to tell you more anecdotes from my reign, but that risks spoiling your own and honestly, I don’t think I’ve played a more universally recommendable game since A Short Hike.
Sovereign Tower is available now on Steam
