Oh dear. This game left me very frustrated and bewildered at some of the gameplay designs it incorporates. There are barriers placed within the game that won't let you pass unless you're at a certain level. You might think that's fine, nothing wrong with that! But you're very, very wrong. The game involves you climbing a tower with around a dozen floors, and you encounter the first barrier on the second floor. You can't pass unless you're at level 15. You're seriously expected to run around the second floor and grind until you hit level 15! It's absolutely bewildering why this barrier was placed on the second floor. Couldn't you at least place it on the third or fourth floor? Better yet, why even incorporate it? If it's to assure a player is of a high enough level to survive the latter floors then you shouldn't underestimate the player; it's easy to notice if you've progressed too far when the enemies are too strong for you.
There are, of course, more of these barriers. But the ones you encounter later are placed on far more reasonable floors. But there's still more to complain about! The game features a dubious choice at the start that determines which ending you get. I'll spoil the choice for you; you have to decide whether or not you have a third party member or not. Being the responsible idiot I am I replayed the game twice so you don't have to and found out that it only pushes one minor scene from the start of the game to the very end of it, and it changes a few lines of dialogue during the ending. But you won't even need a third party member, ever! Why? Because the tower is littered with salesmen who insist on selling you stat boosters for 200 gold a pop! Nothing wrong with that, you say? You're -wrong-. This is reaching out more broadly than it should, but GIAW games really need to put more effort into customizing the database or at least think about what their shops are selling.
The problem is, the default database is absolutely terrible. The best weapon by default raises your attack power by 128 and sells for 30,000 coins. Whatever, that's fine. I wonder how many attack boosters I can buy with 30,000 coins, though? ... 150, that's how many! These boosters raise your attack power by 3 a piece, so if I use them all on one character I'll be a whopping 450 points stronger! There were other games in this competition that overlooked this but none of those games had as lucrative an economy as this game. You're gaining money behind every corner and the monsters drop a pretty penny though (and after all that forced-grinding you'll be practically swimming in money anyway!) so the intelligent player will stock up on these attack boosters. It doesn't help that you're given a free 600,000 coins before the final boss.
I wish that was all there is to say, but it's not. There are wandering creatures roaming the tower that instantly teleport you to the first floor. They serve as nothing except a major annoyance since you're guarranteed to lose at least some progress while you're at a high floor. They serve no purpose, the player will simply save more often and get more and more mad at the game for the kick in the balls they dish out. Also, after you reach Chapter 2 and you're before the final boss there's a nondescript crystal that looks incredibly inviting. Guess what it does! It teleports you back a few floors! No big deal, you can run back in a few minutes. Except the game hangs when it tries to push you back into chapter 2 again. Hope you didn't save!
Being that this game offers no difficulty or interesting mechanics whatsoever I am compelled to give it the worst score possible in this category. My justification? Chakra may have not been playable by any means but at least it offered challenge! The challenge was half-assed and bad, sure, but it was just right to push you and make you want to keep on trucking through the game. The Hallowed Tower will make you yawn, bore you and then frustrate you to the point where you'll never want to play anything like it again.