In an era where developers are endlessly chasing From Software’s “Souls” formula, it’s also clear we’ve entered the age of developers chasing the rogue-like. It feels like every month brings another new entry in the genre, or a game adds a rogue-like or lite mode as DLC. These games are a hot commodity now, and into this increasingly crowded space steps Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree, from Bandai-Namco and developer Brownies, best known for Doraemon Story of Seasons.
Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree debuted during Summer Game Fest 2025 and immediately gave off Hades-lite energy, with an anime aesthetic wrapped around its rogue-like dungeon-running. It was easy to dismiss as a clone at first glance, but beneath its familiar surface lies a clever twist on the genre’s formula. One built on sacrifice, synergy, and loss.
The Sacred Tree
The story of Towa is simple and familiar: you play as Towa, a priestess bonded to the Sacred Tree, the spiritual core of her village and the world’s balance. When a god of corruption, named Magatsu, spreads his influence and warps the land, Towa and a team of eight Guardians set out to purify it by slaying his twisted creations, the Magaori, from the different infected areas surrounding your village and the Sacred Tree.
If you’ve played even a handful of JRPGs, you’ve likely seen this arc before. “Heroes gather to fight against an evil god and save the world” is a premise that’s been done to death. Despite the banality of its tried and true premise, the overarching plot isn’t what sets Towa apart. It’s the structural consequences of the rogue-lite design that give the story more of an emotional weight. What begins as a standard “gather heroes and save the world” tale becomes more personal, more brutal, and more strategic as you begin making irreversible sacrifices.
Twisting the Knife
Structurally, Towa plays how you’d expect a top-down rogue-lite to go. You pick a pair of characters, a Tsurugi (main attacker) and Kagura (support), and fight through procedurally generated rooms filled with enemies, traps, and mini-bosses. After clearing a room, you choose your next path based on the potential upgrades you might find, getting closer toward the area’s boss. If you fail? It’s back to the village hub to regroup, upgrade, and try again.
Where Towa sets itself apart is in the duo system: each run lets you pick two Guardians, and the pairing you choose dramatically alters how you play. One character wields swords and aggressive attacks while the other casts support spells or buffs, and you can choose to control them together or separately. It’s easy to underestimate how much variety lives in these combinations until you start experimenting.
At first, combat can feel one note and shallow. But once you try different combinations with the capabilities of your main attacker and the support character, the mechanical depth becomes clear. Finding that synergy between characters, forged weapons, Graces (this game’s version of buffs), and food becomes the core of your success.
And just when you’re getting attached to a pairing… the game pulls the rug out.
Permanent Sacrifice
Here’s Towa’s real twist: you often have to permanently sacrifice your support Guardian at the end of a chapter. And once they’re gone, they’re fully gone. Their upgrades, your investment, the dynamics between your chosen pair, all of it. The more you bond with your characters, through combat, upgrades, and lighthearted dialogue back at the hub — the harder it becomes to say goodbye. During my run, I leaned heavily on Nishiki, the beefy fish Guardian. But when his offensive limitations caught up with me, I swapped him to support… and then had to sacrifice him. I felt that decision. It really stung.
These moments are where Towa shines. It’s not the overarching “save-the-world” narrative that sticks with you, it’s more the choice: who are you willing to lose?
Towa also borrows the Hades model of having a dynamic, evolving hub. Back at the Sacred Tree village, you can interact with the townsfolk, upgrade stats, forge new weapons with different properties (like sacrificing durability for damage), cook food for buffs, and unlock Graces, powerful passives that define your playstyle.
The blacksmithing system is especially rich. You can choose blade types, tweak stats, and tailor your tools to your characters and their synergy. Weapons degrade over time, forcing you to think beyond just DPS. Combined with food bonuses and character affinity growth, the hub becomes more than downtime; it’s the key to your long-term success in each run.
And while the story beats at the hub may be thin, the interpersonal moments between the characters bring just enough charm to keep you engaged between runs. These characters have warmth and quirks that slowly emerge the more you interact with them in between runs, which makes each time you go back after a failed attempt not feel like a waste of time.
Visually, Towa can be quite striking, at least in concept. The watercolor aesthetic and Japanese folklore vibe give it a distinct style, and Brownies brings its signature character art to the forefront. The top-down environments are colorful, layered, and readable. That said, the PS5 version suffers from low internal resolution. On a large 4K screen, details often look smeared or muddy, which undercuts the game’s strongest asset. Thankfully, performance is rock solid at 60fps.
Musically, the game is blessed by Hitoshi Sakimoto (Final Fantasy Tactics, FFXII), whose whimsical and orchestral style suits the game’s balance of tension and tranquility. It’s the kind of soundtrack that gently carries the tone.
To the Great Beyond
Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree won’t dethrone Hades, nor does it try. Instead, it delivers a rogue-lite that stands on its own through the consequences of its mechanics, not narrative twists or flashy action. The slow-burn loop of sacrifice, synergy, and strategy builds into something that feels earned, even if the first few hours feel flat.
If you’re willing to embrace experimentation, accept loss, and invest in characters you may not get to keep, Towa offers something unique beneath its genre trappings.
Thank you to Bandai-Namco and our PR partners for providing review access to Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree. You can find Seasoned Gaming’s review policy here.
