I love tower defense games, and I have a self-admitted weakness for gacha when it's done right, so of course Watcher of Realms was going to appeal to me! In this title, each of my towers was represented in the form of a character I could pull from the gacha and power up individually through leveling, equipping gear, and so on. It's sort of like Defense Derby, but with a more traditional (read: boring) high fantasy visual style. One important thing that Watcher of Realms gets right is the tower defense core of the game. Maps are relatively small, but as I worked through early chapters of the campaign, they quickly became more complex. Ranged heroes are placed as towers alongside the path, but melee heroes can actually be put into the path of enemies directly, serving as a roadblock stopping them from progressing toward the crystals I was tasked with protecting.
Since both melee and ranged heroes can take damage, I also had to mix healers into my party make-up. Beyond that, later levels challenged me to carefully choose which characters I placed and in what order. In some cases I needed to immediately block a foot path with a tank, but in others I had to set down archers or magic users first to blast flying units out of the air, lest they fly right over my melee troops and straight toward my precious crystals.
I've been casually enjoying Watcher of Realms over the last week, and for now, at least, the gacha pulls are coming fast enough that going free-to-play doesn't seem totally insurmountable. I'm worried I'll hit a wall sooner or later, though, and either have to pay up or spend a lifetime grinding. Until that happens, Watcher of Realms is at least worth giving a shot if you also enjoy tower defense and gacha on their own; just be prepared to jump if things take a turn for the worse.