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1UP Reblog: Four Reasons to be Excited for Pandora’s Tower

Pandora’s Tower was released in the US a couple of weeks ago. Just as I suspected, It didn’t make a lot of noise.

But If you own a Wii (or a WiiU) that’s just sitting there collecting dust, stop complaining and get it. It’s really good. If I had to review it, I’d give it a 7.5/10. A real 7.5/10, not a fake one that you give games nowadays to say they’re bad without saying it.

Anyway, here’s a thingy I wrote for 1Up a year ago. I thought editing it a bit and reblogging it would have been a nice idea. I hope it gets you interested in the game.

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The Last Story is about to thunder across the U.S. skies; the beautiful Xenoblade Chronicles has struck. While the incredible community effort of Operation Rainfall probably isn’t entirely to credit for the U.S. release of these games, it certainly didn’t hurt. Operation Rainfall comprised three games, and unlike the first two the third – as yet unannounced for American audiences – has met with a tepid reception in Europe: Pandora’s Tower. The Last Story and Xenoblade came from established creators Hironobu Sakaguchi and Tetsuya Takahashi, men who built their reputations with titles like Final Fantasy and Xenosaga. Next to such legacies, Pandora’s Tower seems comparatively diminished and unattractive – and its clearly limited budget certainly doesn’t help.

But beneath Pandora’s Tower modest looks beats the heart of a great game.

The Scar

The game’s plot revolves around two lovers, Aeron and Elena. The former is a deserter, running from the horrors of war. The latter is a kind girl who has been struck by a horrible curse that transforms her into a beast that feeds on human flesh and is thus wanted by the Elyrian Kingdom army.

For an action RPG, Pandora’s Tower has quite an immense and detailed world… one that you won’t visit but throgh well written dialogues and forgotten documents retrieved during your adventures that will certainly tickle your imagination, making the tale’s setting unbelievably genuine.

The game takes place entirely in a very small environment, a complex called “The 13 Towers”: A forgotten fortress held afloat by 12 chains pierced into the surrounding cliffs. These chains prevent a huge chasm that scars the land of Elyria from widening and opening a path to the netherworld.

The tale starts when the two fugitives find refuge in a observatory used in ancient times to monitor the arcane experiments taking place in The 13 Towers. Little do they know that their escape has kindled the flame of war across the entire continent. And even if these events are nothing but a distant echo, the story will change significantly according to the couple’s actions, leading to multiple unpredictable endings that will not only affect the fate of the main characters, but also the balance of the entire world.

The Hunger Game

Pandora’s Tower is a very delicate game, but it can also be brutal. It knows how to reward the player, but at the same time knows how to punish mercilessly, and Aeron and Elena are the ones who pay for your mistakes.

The cursed mark on Elena’s back slowly sends her through a horrible transformation that seems to have come straight out of David Cronenberg’s nightmares. When she mutates, even the plants alongside her suffer, becoming grey and sickly. To keep his beloved sane and stop her metamorphosis , Aeron has to explore the tower and obtain monster flesh to feed her. The detail that went into creating realistic pieces of dripping monstrous meat and the cutscenes that show Elena consuming them are hands down the most disturbing thing that you’ll ever see in a video game. Some are so horrible I had to skip lunch while playing – and meatballs, my favorite food, were served that day.

What’s worse is that, as the game progresses, the heroine begins to enjoy her meals, leading to sickening moments that almost outdo the famous scene from eXistenZ in which Pikul enjoys his Chinese “special.” According to Toru Haga, the game’s director, this idea came while eating lunch on a train to work. Eating is, after all, such a normal action, part of everyone’s daily routine, and transforming it into a disturbing, painful experience is a smart way to both impress the players and help them empathize with Elena.

The game is a love triangle with death.

Aeron can interact with his belle in a variety of ways reminiscent of dating simulations, but Elena is not the typical damsel in distress, and does her best to fight her disease, while hiding the anguish of being in such a state to avoid burdening Aeron further. She even has a central role in the gameplay. Give her presents, and instead of just greedily accepting them, she will convert them into useful items: She can cook, sew bigger inventory bags, even translate documents from unknown languages.

Elena is a vivid character, beautifully portrayed by the numerous cutscenes…and these change depending on how your bond with her develops. It’s hard not to care about her, and developer Ganbarion succeeded in transferring the drama of the couple onto the player’s shoulders. You will want to make sure she’s okay.

But make her unhappy and… Well, you don’t wanna end up devoured in the name of love, right?

The Silent Protagonist

Aeron is a man of few words. His actions speak for his heart and cut through his silence. His feelings are always clear thanks to his body language, and particularly his deep, expressive eyes: Note his kind love and determination with each intense stare at the suffering elena, or the modesty that surfaces when he looks away away shyly when she is happy and grateful.

And yet, Aeron is as lethal as he is sweet. He can cut a path through horders of enemies using a variety of weapons with exquisite expertise - from swords to scythes, each with a distinct move set and stats that can be improved via forging.

The gameplay is simple; you can combine basic attacks together or unleash a number of special charge moves that differ from arm to arm. But what makes it fresh and original is the Vestran chain, a sub-weapon capable of interacting with enemies in a crazy amount of ways. You can bind monsters’ legs to make them fall, then drag them or strangle them; you can tie them to pillars to stop them from advancing, or even steal their weapons and lash back.

The game gives its best in the battles against the tower masters, often peaceful Shadow of the Colossus-like creatures – have fun with the moral implications – with interesting patterns to learn to expose their weak points via chain interaction.

Exploration is equally inspired, and the game doesn’t handhold the player, but lets him free to explore the environments and solve Zelda-flavored puzzles, often forcing him to rely on mere observation to understand the level layout and how to proceed. It makes Pandora’s Tower harder, but also gives the player the thrill of understanding every riddle on his own. If Castlevania’s developers would try this game and see how Gambarion made wise use of the Vestrian chain’s whip-like gimmick, they’d finally get an idea how to create a 3D title worthy of the series’ name.

Pandora’s Tower is a game with a lot of heart, and it makes up for its limitations with inspired art direction, a superb story, and pristine level design. Let’s hope that Nintendo presents the game at E3 so everyone can give it the chance it deserves.

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Of course, last E3 is long gone. But the game is out, why haven’t you bought it yet!?