Although I don't see how it's particularly retro (aside from being for Nintendo's last gen console), Pandora's Tower is Nintendo World Report's current Retroactive title.
For readers unfamiliar with the podcast (and the sprawling news/opinion/review/information website of the same name), every few months Nintendo World Report will have its listeners cum forum members vote on a game to play more or less simultaneously so that it can be discussed. The highlights of this discussion are then featured on the podcast in a session that runs an hour or longer.
I've decided to buck the order of my games list a bit and add it in while the retroactive is on so that I don't get spoiled while listening to the podcast, but also because it's a game I've wanted to play for a while. Not to mention, it's one of the original three games that Operation Rainfall rallied together to bring over to North America. So I don't mind jumping it up the list a bit.
Getting to the game itself, after playing what is essentially the tutorial I have to say that it feels like it'll be a grandiose game. Maybe not in actual scale, since you're limited to a home base sort of place, and the thirteen towers (the game's interconnected dungeons), with no world between them, but definitely in scope. And in architecture. During the fly around in one of the opening cutscenes, it looked like one of the towers was inspired by Paris' Notre Dame cathedral.
There's a marked difference between said cutscenes and actual in game graphics, but over all it's a pretty thing to look at. Much in the same way that Twilight Princess is, in fact.
Actually, the first beast that you defeat for flesh (to give your cursed girlfriend Elena to reverse her curse - of course), even looks like one of the Shadow Beasts. Sans fancy steel disk mask, though.
It's too bad that the game's combat doesn't take similar cues from the Zelda series, though. Fighting is simple enough (hit "A" when there's an enemy nearby to attack, hit "Z" to block), but using the game's super important "Oraclos Chain" almost requires you to have a manual on hand.
First you need to point the Wiimote at what you want to hit, bind, stab, or yank out with the chain, then you have to hit "B" to acquire the target, and finish it all off with a shake of the Wiimote. If you happen to miss at any point along that sequence, you can start the whole thing over, but you'll need to hit "-" to pull back the chain, first.
I can appreciate the complexity that Ganbarion (the game's developer) is trying to bring in with the chain, but it clashes with the mild hurry that the game forces you into. Because, you see, between meals of beast flesh Elena reverts back to her cursedly beastly self and if you're too long away the curse will become irreversible. Early as I am in the game, there's probably very little risk of this happening. Also, being able to build the affinity between Elena and your character Aeron probably has some sort of delaying effect on Elena's reversion.
All of that said, though, when things progress beyond the first tower, you'll probably wind up ganged up on while using your chain. Even if it's not possible for monsters to smack you around while trying to use it, no doubt they'll queue up and wait patiently for their turn to bite or whack or clobber once you've put your chain away.
Hopefully, though, there's enough time to turn its use into an art form before any of that happens. Using the chain is clunky, but a welcome reprieve from button mashing, and a welcome challenge.
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