Pandora's Tower Review

April 19, 2012 4:37PM PDT

By Ashton Raze

Pandora's Tower is an exciting, chain-swinging race against time to save your beloved from a beastly fate.

The Video Review

What dangers lie within Pandora's Tower, and why is that girl sprouting purple tentacles? Find out in this video review.

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The Good

The chain weapon makes for some great brawling
Time-management mechanic is handled wonderfully
An endearing, emotive love story
Some terrific boss fights.

The Bad

Fixed camera angles can be awkward
Enemies lack variety.

UK REVIEW--Love endures all things. Heartache. War. Watching your soul mate devour the pulsating flesh of hideous beasts. Pandora's Tower is an action role-playing game crafted around this somewhat unusual premise. It's equal parts fairy tale and wince-worthy body horror. An original approach to combat and a clever time-management mechanic set the game apart from the usual hack-and-slash affair. Throw in some intelligent dungeon crawling, and this bloodthirsty love story makes for a refreshing change of pace.

Singer Elena is turning into a beast. The telltale signs are all there: the sense of foreboding, the cursed mark on her back, and the fact that occasionally she sprouts tentacles and excretes purple slime. Thankfully she's not alone. Protagonist Aeron is on hand to provide her with love, support, and beast flesh. The pair are guided to the Observatory, overlooking The Scar, a great rift in the earth held together by 12 chains, at the ends of which sit 12 towers. Within these towers, our hero is told, are monstrous masters who must be slain and whose flesh must be consumed by Elena so the curse may be lifted.

It's an unusual premise, albeit one reminiscent of Shadow of the Colossus with added devouring. Each of the masters resides in a tower, a self-contained dungeon that you must traverse to reach your prey. These dungeons are filled with typical puzzles, traps, and beasties, all determined to get in your way. It's not just a simple case of exploring, though. Elena's curse gradually worsens, and the only way to prevent her from beasting out is to feed her flesh. As you trek through each tower, a gauge in the bottom corner shows the progression of the curse. Should you fail to reach the tower's master in time, you need to head back to the Observatory and give Elena a gruesome, fleshy top-up.

The Oraclos chain isn't just used in battle: it's also handy for solving puzzles.

In the wrong hands, this time-management mechanic could have been a chore, an artificial lengthening of the game via backtracking and time limits. Here, though, developer Ganbarion has riffed on the time-limit mechanic masterfully. It's as much about area management as it is about time. Each tower has a bunch of shortcuts to activate, and pushing forward can often be a surefire way to find an easy way back. As you progress through the towers, looking for the chain fastenings which you're required to break to access the boss door, you're not only plotting your route forward, but memorizing your route back, pushing against the time limit until you can find a precious ladder to drop or door to unlock which provides easy passage back to Elena.

Areas are never sprawling or complex enough to cause you to get truly stuck, but they require enough pauses for thought that the time limit still feels like a constant menace. Returning to the Observatory doesn't reset the dungeon's puzzles, and the game never punishes you for returning to Elena. If the time-management mechanic had led to extensive backtracking and wasted progress, it could have been Pandora's Tower's undoing. Instead, it ends up being one of its greatest strengths.

Dungeon puzzle design may seem cursory at first; switches, levers, and locked doors must be manipulated to access further parts of the tower. However, later in the game the puzzle design really shines; you find yourself hunting sentient, color-coded roses to eradicate thorns, or tying pistons in place to act as platforms. The final two towers provide the game's most rewarding puzzles, playing around with the established structure in ways that are best discovered for yourself. Much of the puzzle solving revolves around another of the game's most interesting conceits, the Oraclos Chain.

Beast flesh is an important part of a balanced diet.

The chain was granted to Aeron by the froglike Mavda, a member of the nomadic Vestra tribe who carries a skeletal old man on her back. It is a mystical artifact that has lost much of its power, and functions as a means of solving puzzles and as a lethal weapon. It works as a grapple--a little like a lengthy version of Link's hookshot--and is used to retrieve distant items, reach grappling points, or swing from poles. An onscreen pointer lets you direct the chain, and a quick tap of the B button fires it off. It also allows you to zoom in for precision shots, slowing down time as you aim.

It's pretty handy against monsters as well. Using the chain, you can rip weapons and armor from enemies, pick up an enemy and slam it, or even spin an enemy around to send it flying. It can be used to restrict an enemy's arms, to pull it off its feet, or to restrain it and drag it around. All the while, you can charge the chain up and then yank it free with a flick of the remote, dealing massive damage to a foe. Then, after felling a monster, the barbed end can be used to tear free some precious flesh. Once you get to grips with the chain, it's immensely satisfying. Nothing beats slamming a giant hornet into an ogre-type beast and dragging the ogre off its feet, or simply using the precision aim to fire off a volley of damaging shots.

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toyo75 7 pts

One of the Wii's swan songs. If only Nintendo had concentrated on developing as much games for the Wii as it did with its handheld system. I'm gonna try this game. I haven't used my Wii in a long time.

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