The First Time
The first time through the tower is like a tutorial and is naturally pretty easy and straightforward. The tower only has 10 floors for this run and it is basically just for setting up the story and this run is pretty fun. I really did enjoy the tutorial part and the gameplay was fun and new.
Now Do It Again
The second part of the DLC is trying to get the 30th floor of the tower. You can now buy upgrades with the prix, the goal of this part is to make it up to floor 30 with any palette. You get key for making it to and clearing the 10th, 20th, 30th floor of the tower for each palette. The keys are for opening up lockers. these lockers contain lore and more palettes with a few other things sprinkle in here and there. There are also the color chips you collect inside each run. each palette can only hold 30 for each run, and can’t be replaced when you get full. You just get Sprix from floors after you’re palette get full. You normally need 5 of one chip in a run to fully unlock the chip collection dialogue for it. There are also enemy entries that you unlock after killing a certain amount of them. Most of this time of the playthrough will just be trying to get up to the top and failing. Eventually with enough hacks unlocked, it becomes easier, and getting to the top and beating the boss happens.
Repeat, Repeat
Now comes the unfun part. To get all the lore you have to get to floor 30 with all the weapons/palettes. This get repetitive pretty fast, and you’ll get tired of the same loop over and over again. The you get to the final weapon and then realize, it’s weird. You have to choose between having hacks with only 6 color chip slots or having basically no hacks. Each hack is 6 less color chops until you get down to only six slots available. Each small upgrade counts as a hack. Like getting on more life is one hack, not just more lives in general, so 2 extra lives is 2 hacks. I decided to just keep on all the hacks and have only 6 color chips after trying with little to no hacks and getting decimated. By the end I had unlocked all the enemies entries and gotten all the keys, but I still had plenty of color chip entries to unlock. I just gave up on them because, I was just so tired of the same thing over and over again. Which is saying something, since I literally did everything possible in the single player campaign, the alternate weapons for each challenge and the super hard bonus kettle. I just couldn’t put myself through this anymore.
Conclusion
I recommend if you just want the lore and don’t like grinding away for hours in a rogue-like to watch a playthrough of it. If you do play it, the story is mostly contained in just going through the tower once. If you want to endure the pain that is going through the tower with every weapon, more power to you and may the color chip rng be in your favor.