Pandora's Tower is finished, time for final thoughts (spoilers below)

Pandora's Tower came to North America thanks largely to Operation Rainfall. This fan initiative also helped to encourage Nintendo to bring The Last Story and Xenoblade Chronicles to North America. These last two games are dyed in the wool J-RPGs (with some variations).

But Pandora's Tower is the odd one out.

It's more of an RPG in the same way that Zelda games are sometimes considered RPGs.

You're given a big world (or a lot of dungeons) and get to explore, upgrade equipment, find new items, and mostly have bits of the story revealed as you do those first three things.

A stronger case can be made for Pandora's Tower being an RPG since it also involves an experience and levelling system, as well as character stats that determine the player's defence, attack, and stamina/health.

But Pandora's Tower also brings something else from the genre of the J-RPG into an action game framework.

The amount of HP of the game's final boss.

Seriously, with the boss' six weak spots each having their own screen-wide health bar, this battle can take a very long time. Since I didn't have any power-ups with me, it took me approximately 35 minutes to finish off the final Master, Zeron.

As such, it's definitely fair to say that the final battle is more a test of endurance than of skill. And that's fine, except that the quality of your ending isn't really based on your skill. 

It doesn't matter if you've finished the game without dying, or if you've somehow 100%-ed the game on your first play through. Instead, which of the game's endings you get depends on your affinity with Elena. Unless your relationship is ranked between eight and ten on a ten point scale, the ending is a let down in one way or another.

If your relationship is fairly strong (between six and eight on said scale) both Elena and Aeron hop off the top of the towers to rid the world of the bit of Zeron that lives inside of her. Also, the the Scar (a massive chasm over which the Towers are perched) is sealed.

If your relationship is middling on the game's scale, then only Elena jumps. Once again, in this ending, the Scar is sealed.

If your relationship is just okay, then Elena winds up trapped in the monster Zeron and Aeron uses her to bring a swift end to the world's ongoing war.

And, if your relationship is poor, then you wind up having to kill Elena.

Alternately, the game's best ending sees the curse lifted from Elena, the Scar healed, and the two living happily ever after in her village while the war comes to a close. But you only see that if you nurse your affinity with Elena to the full.

I suppose this affinity mechanic also links Pandora's Tower more strongly to J-RPGs, since there are a few that lock their best endings behind seemingly superficial sidequests.

All of this business of bosses and endings aside, I put 36.5 hours into this game. But it feels like I put in far more.

I think I'm left with this feeling because each play session engrossed me. Partially because Pandora's Tower is overtly darker than most of the games I play and because there's nothing to the game except the game.

There are no characters to interact with aside from Mavda and Elena. There are no oversized fields to roam in which things are cleverly hidden. There aren't even mini-games, unless you count inventory/equipment management and relationship tending.

So, what's my conclusion about Pandora's Tower, having finished it?

That it's an intense game. I always had a sense that every fight was for high stakes (because of the ever shortening curse gauge, and because monsters could often send you sprawling and sometimes surround you). The Masters offer some epic battles. The game's generally drab colour palette sets a remorseful, Gothic atmosphere. And the game's operatic score makes everything in it seem larger than life.

A final boss with six, full-length HP bars, as cumbersome a fight as it can be, is right at home here and to be expected.

Though making the entire game this intense would be too much, the Zelda development team working away on Zelda Wii U could definitely learn a thing or two from Pandora's Tower. (Just so long as it's not that the best ending should reflect the players' skill in only one of the game's mechanics/aspects.)

Two Masters, two bits of Flesh, heading to one ending (spoilers below)

My heart is still racing. The battle against the final two Masters was about as intense as I expected, but delivered in a much different way.

First Aeron gets a free attack on each of them. These attacks pull them out of the wall they were attached to and leads to its crumbling. Bringing down this wall opens the room up to the size of the game's usual boss chambers and also joins the Dawn Tower to the Dusk Tower (or vice-versa). But then the real fight begins.

Each Master has its own attack (a light beam for the one of Dawn and a homing shadow ball for the one of Dusk) along with a secondary attack that leaves a sword-like thing sticking out of the ground.

So long as Aeron steps out of that secondary attack's way.

Dodging isn't particularly difficult, though at times one or the other of the Masters will trap Aeron in the luminescent moss that's all over the interior of these two Towers.

To get them to expose their succulent Master Flesh Aeron needs to grab one of the swords with  the chain and then throw it at the opposite Master. Light swords go to the Dusk Tower's Master and shadow swords go to the Dawn Tower's Master. It's pretty simple.

Now, I had been forewarned in the guide I was following to get through these last two Towers that these Masters need to be finished off at relatively the same time. Otherwise the one that Aeron vanquishes first might revive while he deals with the other. So I winnowed each one's health down fairly consistently. But I was not expecting the little cutscene that followed the fight in which Aeron goes for the Master Flesh but both Masters also chase down their essential bits.

Luckily, after having wielded it for so long, Aeron's proficient enough with the chain to snag both chunks of Flesh and pin them to a pillar, well out of reach.

It's a very engrossing boss fight. And all the more so when your sensor bar is at just the right distance to pick up your Wiimote's signal. Whenever one of the Master's Flesh was exposed but the pointer for the chain disappeared I waggled all the harder until it came back on the screen.

Also from that guide that I had used I learned that if you're bound for the worst ending, the final boss is fought on the lawn of The Observatory.

Having stepped outside after Elena ate the Flesh, had her vision (which I think confirmed that the couple that's starred in them all were the last two Masters or are the game's final boss), and then rested up, I can say with confidence that I did not get the worst ending.

Since I cultivated a decent relationship with Elena, I'll probably get the game's standard ending. But I'm not expecting the "best" one, whatever that might entail. Though I won't know for sure until my next session.

The trouble with invisible portals

Maybe I've been working at this, Pandora's Tower's final major dungeon, for too long, or playing with the lights off increased my focus on the screen, but tonight's session was really immersive. Powering down my Wii and switching to my netbook to write this post made me feel as if I were coming back from some place far away.

But while in that place I broke the last of the Dawn and Dusk Towers' chains.

In the end, I did have to use a guide, but it was worth it. Since the game had resorted to invisible portals near the Towers' end I would've taken even longer to finish them without any sort of assistance. But that's not what bothers me. Pandora's Tower involves a great deal of lore that's learned through the various books that you find and texts that Elena translates.

However, in the single book about the Dawn and Dusk Towers and their portals that I've come across there's no mention of or hint towards any sort of invisible portals.

There are very subtle clues about such portals near the top of each of the Towers, sure. But to me these clues come across more as puzzles than clues And the sort of puzzles you try to solve, fail to solve, walk away from frustrated, and then return to and almost immediately realize the answer to rather than a more direct hint. An additional clue about the existence of these invisible portals in one of the game's many books would have been much appreciated.

I suppose that every adventure game's last proper dungeon does need to have some ultimate challenge, though. Hopefully those invisible portals (and not the Towers' twin Masters) are just that.

Dawn and Dusk nearing their ends

My trudge through the endgame of Pandora's Tower is one step closer to being finished. Both the Dawn and Dusk Towers now have but one chain anchor left to break in them.

Yet I can't help but wonder if I really only need to break one more anchor in either of them to get into the Masters' room.

I mean, that is where the two towers connect, and it wouldn't make much sense if you had to unlock both doors just to get in through one of them. But we'll see.

The trick now, though, is climbing up to the fifth floor in the Dawn Tower and then descending in the Dusk. Why? Because the last chain anchor in the Dusk Tower is somewhere between the fifth and third floors. Alternatively, I could just try to figure out the portal puzzle that stands between me and the last chain in the Dawn Tower.

This final dungeon — there's just no end to its generosity.

The Dawn and Dusk Towers, one Gordian Knot

I've finally set up my Wii in my new place and so I've finally returned to playing Pandora's Tower. Normally time away from a game in which I'm stuck helps me to work through whatever Gordian Knot I'm trying to undo. However, such wasn't the case with the Dawn and Dusk Towers.

It's not that these towers, which I hope and believe are the final two in the game, are particularly difficult. Really, they're among the more straightforward of the towers as far as actual in-tower mechanics go. What's giving me so much trouble in them is that they're too similar.

Warping between the Dusk and Dawn Towers is necessary to get around debris in the one or to access a higher floor in the other. But this warping is only viable because the two towers have nearly identical floor plans. Often in tonight's play session (hunting for those last few chains that need breaking), I found myself going through familiar doors over and over again. In different towers. Or I stumbled into one or the other of the towers' slightly different rooms.

What makes my situation still worse is that the guides that I've found for the game describe these towers in a very linear fashion. Shy of working through those guides from their beginnings, they won't be of much help. Nonetheless, doing so is probably the fastest way for me to clear these towers and finally move on in the game.

And that state of affairs in itself is proof of the difficulty that adding a timer to dungeons offers. Were it not for Elena's imminent transformation (and for enemies respawning after you leave their rooms), getting through the Dawn and Dusk Towers would just be a matter of brute forcing my way through with relentless exploration. In other words, I could just chop this Gordian knot in two.

Starting to see light in the Dawn and Dusk Towers

My progress through the interconnected Dawn and Dusk Towers continues to be slow. But, with all of the beasts that Aeron's been thrashing and the "Skill Band" he has equipped he's building levels quite quickly. Level 40 should be sufficient for the games' final few Masters, but we'll see.

Actually, I'm feeling better about my struggles with this game's final two towers.

Perhaps it's that quickly rising level of my player character.

Or, maybe knowing how tightly linked these Towers are has forced me to see them less as two distinct towers and more as one singular construct. Not to mention their chains are usually paired together. So the anchor for a chain in the Dusk Tower is usually just a teleport away from an anchor in the Dawn Tower. I have just one more to break in that Tower and two more in the Dusk Tower.

Nonetheless, from a gameplay perspective it still feels like a hassle to get through Dawn and Dusk.

Yet, at the same time, forcing the player to finished two dungeons in tandem so that they become one dungeon seems to be the only clear way to advance the difficulty of a dungeon to what's necessary for a game's final bit. Outside of simply making a longer dungeon (which combining two is a form of, but still).

With my continuing level-grinding, though, I'm feeling certain that whatever the Masters of these two towers are, they'll be pushovers. And, that the game's final boss will probably be a step down from them in difficulty.

Feeling the need for an overworld in Pandora's Tower

Pandora's Tower is starting to feel a bit over long. Admittedly, it might be the way that I'm playing it in bits every four days. But it's starting to feel tedious.

Play style aside, the game itself is lacking something that any action/adventure/RPG game featuring mazes and puzzles requires: Distractions.

Aside from getting pre-set numbers of the varying grades of beast flesh in different towers the game offers no sidequests.

There's no marble maze type game that rewards wins with a monetary prize or a piece of heart, either. Nor can you get a fishing rod and cast into wells scattered across the land. There aren't any minigames.

And there's nowhere to go to just fool around because the game's only areas are the Towers, the Observatory, and the generally event-less stretch of grass in between.

This isolation from non-essential story-driven game standbys definitely generates a strong sense of loneliness. There is no comic relief character, no underdog to root for, no brooding swordmaster with a mysterious past. Just Aeron (you), Elena, and, when you call her up, the witch merchant Mavda. That's it.

Out of everything that Pandora's Tower is designed without, though, I definitely miss the presence of an overworld the most. In most games this area might be nothing more than big empty space intended to pad out average play time. But I think such open spaces serve another purpose.

Overworlds offer players a place of respite. They're areas where you can feel a definite sense of being in transit, of being between plot points. As such, overworlds tend not to be stressful places in video games. Enemies will likely hang out on the overworld, sure, but if you don't want to fight, you can run away. And actually escape. Unlike when you're cooped up in a tower.

In a game that's almost entirely dungeons with very little in between in the way of low pressure exploration, I think some sort of overworld in Pandora's Tower would be a welcome resting place.

I've been playing Pandora's Tower for 32 1/2 hours. Translated into in-game time, that's roughly a few months. Strange as it sounds, after feeling isolated right alongside Aeron for so long, I'm about ready
to have this game done. There're just another five chains to break in the Dawn and Dusk Tower. Just five more.

Dawn and Dusk linked and locked

It's become completely clear to me now. Pandora's Tower's Dawn and Dusk towers need to be finished in tandem. Teleporting between the two is essential for getting around either. But what I don't understand is how I can progress beyond the weird Möbius strip-like section of the two towers that I've seen so far.

Rubble on the stairs keeps me from getting to another teleport point. Rubble in a room keeps me from getting to what looks like another door. And so on.

Also, all available chains have been broken and each tower still has three remaining.

Though, being stuck once again at least means that Aeron will see a few more level-ups. Possibly enough to expand the equip grid.

At any rate, tying two towers together as Ganbarion has here makes for an ingenious final puzzle.

Not just because it's a puzzle bigger than a single room or floor, but because it's also a puzzle that calls on what I'd consider the hardest skill to master in any game: Keeping two separate maps straight in your head while also overlaying them. Without drawing out these maps or going to GameFAQs (which could still happen), I'm nearly stumped. This is definitely Pandora's Tower's greatest challenge.

Not even some sort of multi-form final Master could top it, or so it seems right now.

Finding the connection between Dawn and Dusk

The final two towers of the thirteen in Pandora's Tower are made available as a pair for a reason. As one represents light and the other darkness, one dawn and one dusk, one male and one female, the two towers are connected.

Yes. Connected. But not through those mysterious locked doors that I keep coming across.

Instead of standard issue doors, the towers of dawn and dusk are connected by vortexes. Holes in the floor surrounded by an aura the colour of the Tower that you're teleporting into (purple for dusk, yellow for dawn). These connections are essential since the two towers share a design but have fallen apart in different ways. It's a neat mechanic for a pair of dungeons to use.

And it makes me feel quite uneasy.

Since you can close and open portals with stones that you find in these two towers, I'm dreading an intricate teleportation puzzle.

Something complex would be out of step with the rest of the game's focus on combat, though. But combat is kind of scant in the Dawn Tower. There are some servant beasts wandering around all kitted out, but they're no major threat any more. Even taking on two such beasts at once doesn't present much danger.

So far one chain in the Dawn Tower is broken, leaving three to find. As much potential as warping between the Dawn and Dusk towers has for making progressing complicated I'm hopeful that I'll be facing the Master just a couple of play sessions from now.

Truegold cracked, two Towers to go (spoilers below)

Two more towers. There are still two more towers to go.

I knew that Truegold Tower wasn't the end of the game. I know that there are twelve laws of Aios. I no know that there is supposed to be a Master for each of these laws, since they were made to embody the laws.

But I had thought that the last two Masters would be mini-bosses in some final tower/dungeon. Possibly in a two-on-one match.

That's not the case though. There are still two more towers to go.

At the very least, after finishing Truegold I was rewarded with one of the longest of Elena's dream sequences yet. The quasi-occult diagram of elements represented as body parts that's shown is definitely a nice touch. Especially since the dream itself states outright that humans are vessels for the Masters, for the gods of Aios. Plus, after this dream sequence Mavda reveals that the masters are creatures from The Scar (the bottomless chasm below the Thirteen Towers) that have traded places with the human vessels on offer. And, that the curse is the mark that these creatures' vessels bear.

With that revelation, the first thing that comes to mind is the plain and simple fact that there are some totally whack creatures in the Scar. Not just because they're made of metal, but because some of them are fixed into place. Kind of like the Master of Truegold Tower. Though she can jump.

Actually the fight with Truegold's Master should have made it obvious that there's still more game to go before the true final dungeon opens up. It's not that it was an easy fight. Rather, it was a strangely frantic, almost puzzle-based, fight.

Instead of hacking away at this or that or tricking the Master into letting you on its back or anything like that, you have to align the master flesh in the Master's inner ring with the opening in its outer ring. A process that sounds similar to cracking a primitive safe. And that would be perfectly appropriate since a safe is a fine place for gold.

But is Truegold a fine place for a safe?

Not so much.

Although I needed to check a guide to discover that you can move both the inner and outer rings of the Master to line up the flesh with the opening (a necessary manoeuvre in the Master's second half), there really wasn't much to the fight itself. It was a lot like the previous Master in that you needed to juggle using the chain and dodging the Master's strangely slow-moving attacks.

Hopefully a humanoid mech-type creature is one of the next Masters. Though, given the maniacal scream laughter Truegold's Master let loose it wouldn't surprise me if the towers representing man and woman were a little more on the nose about the distinguishing features of the two in their Master design.

Breaking chain no. 2 and breaking fast

Truegold Tower's second chain is as straightforward as the first. There are some more servant beasts in the way and a platforming puzzle to solve, but otherwise it's a very quick thing to take out the second chain. Probably because it's meant to be the first one you go for. After all, you reach it by going through the otherwise unused half of the first real room. Ah well.

But it looks like that's the end of Truegold's handouts. Especially since the monsters that show up aren't just random but also appear to be time-sensitive.

My first venture into the tower took place at night. So the monsters were predominantly sword-wielding servant beasts. During my second visit, a day-time visit, one of the armoured and spear-handed servant beasts showed up. Though the military scythe made short work of it.

And that was it for the tower in tonight's session. The other fifteen minutes of thirty were spent exploring Elena's life at the Observatory. Though, only incidentally, since I really just wanted to see if Aeron gets any more dreams at this point in the game. Maybe four hour blocks of sleep aren't enough to trigger his REM sleep, but they are enough to observe Elena's various activities.

At 7pm she's found sowing. At 11pm she's standing by her bed. At 3am she's willing to chat. At 7am she's whipping up breakfast. Apparently a breakfast of...well...maybe thoroughly mixed bibimbap?

It's a big bowl of something that looks like a cross between spaghetti sauce and shredded wheat, at any rate. What's stranger is that her cooking is apparently improving as the game progresses. There's no benefit to you as a player because of this, it just is.

Now that might sound like a pointless element to include in a game. But it's neat to see that the people at Ganbarion put such detail (going so far as to give Elena a whole routine!) into the Observatory side of the game. Though that is a side that, except for when the towers are quickly worked through, is likely to be overlooked.

Testing Truegold Tower

In a place called "Truegold" I was expecting more fire. I had figured that this would be a tower were gold was smelted, tested, and then shipped out to be used in Aios' armaments. Instead, it's another weapon manufacturing-type tower, where there are a ton of giant hammerheads slamming into the walls.

Giant hammerheads that you can jump onto and use to get to different areas. That is, from which you can, as they say, "platform." To use the non-performative form of "platformer," of course.

But being true to its nigh-on last dungeon status, Truegold Tower doesn't just offer up four-chains' worth of platforming. The place is also teeming with servant beasts that come equipped with swords that are a cross between great swords and Cloud's Buster Sword. These gents seem to attack in pairs, as well.

This combination of platforming and combat makes this is a very fitting "final" dungeon (quotation marks included, since there are still those locked doors in every tower).

In any case, one chain of this tower's four has been taken out already, but judging from what I've seen it looks like this tower might take a while to clear.

A gimmicky Master in the Blazing Citadel

The Master of the Blazing Citadel was definitely the toughest boss yet in Pandora's Tower. However, I feel like part of its difficulty is artificial.

Another mech-type monster (so far as I could tell from its design and its appearance after the fire wreathing it about had died down), this Master makes insistent use of shields. Arranged around it in a half-circle, it will either bring them out one by one to attack or spin them around it in a move that blends offense and defense. But should you try to strike its entirely exposed Master Flesh while even one of these shields is around your attempt will be blocked.

So I spent much of the fight dealing with these shields, using either the chain or the scythe. And that, I feel, is what's artificial about the difficulty of this Master.

Taken alone, it would be a push over (even if it does have one, nearly unavoidable, massive attack), but because of its shields it takes quite a while to finish off. Especially since, once again, you don't get much opportunity to power up the chain. In almost every instance of connecting with the Master Flesh, I tightened the chain until its indicator stopped flashed red and then pulled. Had I tried for more the connection probably would have been (and often was) snapped.

Nonetheless, this fight reminded me of my favourite bout from No More Heroes: the fight with Bad Girl.

That fight is also against a boss with very tight defense. But in the fight with Bad Girl it's very easy to feel like Travis (the player character) and Bad Girl are physical equals. Plus, the way that you wind up circling each other, looking for a weak spot in her defense or blocking her attacks, really ratchets up the tension.

The latest Master in Pandora's Tower, doesn't offer any sense of being Aeron's equal. At one point it was definitely human, but certainly isn't any more. Even so, its regular scream is eerily human-like. It definitely adds a certain chill to the fight, but those shields really slow down the pace and axe any feeling of being on an equal footing.

At any rate, what follows the boss fight is a series of scenes that hints at what's really been happening with the curse and that shows just how close Elena is coming to losing herself to it.

So, it's great that the battles are continuing to get more challenging and that the story behind the curse is slowly being revealed. But I really hope that Truegold Tower's Master doesn't hide behind some kind of gimmick.

Jumping when the time is right

Pandora's Tower's automatic jumping is terrible. I'm finding that more and more often when I run to the edge of a ledge to jump, Aeron just drops down hangs from the edge instead.

This disparity in expectations and actual happenings is starting to show me the game's stitches. It's starting to look like you can only jump when the game lets you jump. That is, when you're directly across from something to which you can jump.

Hemming players in like this makes the game feel restrictive. Not because there are platforms from which you'd want to jump where you simply can't, but because the game's jumping mechanic takes away your freedom to consider that option.

And yet, having Aeron jump automatically only when two edges are aligned across a gap has saved me from certain doom in a few instances. Especially in the Blazing Citadel's puzzle room.

In said room you're not just jumping between lowering and raising platforms, you also need to watch for lava (molten ore?) falling from above. Whenever I've not met the game's standards for precision in jumping, Aeron's defaulting to hang from the edge of platforms when pushed over their edge has kept him off of the lava covered.

Nonetheless, tying the game's autojump to a player controlled action (let's say rolling or running off of an edge) would give players more control over Aeron's jumps. Doing so would also inject the game with a bit more of a sense of discovery. Even if that sense of discovery tingled when a player simply found a better part of a ledge to jump from to another ledge.

Combat-focused and flesh-crazed

Well, the Blazing Citadel certainly appears to be much more combat-focused than Torrent Peak. Though, there aren't many encounters with cursed servant beasts.

Instead there are plenty of flying enemies. No doubt, the game's designers figured that players would be pretty adept at fighting fellow bipeds by this point in the game. Better to mix things up with flocks of flying enemies.

Also driving me to consider this tower more combat-focused is the placement of the three chains.

One is accessible from the corner of a large dark room early on.

The other two, at least from what I've seen, are behind doors that share a room. Mind, those doors are behind walls of fire that seem to be controlled by one central timed switch. So there are some puzzle elements at play.

Outside of the towers, I've confirmed that Elena is starting to truly enjoy the flesh. Aeron even had a dream in which she snatches a hunk away from him, eats it in just a few mouthfuls and then licks her fingers clean. After all of that she turns to Aeron and apologizes as the camera focuses on her arm, down which blood runs.

The game's equip capacity mechanic is also becoming more intense. Since I'm nearly through the game, I can craft some powerful accessories. Getting them all to fit simultaneously isn't possible just yet, though. Yet.

Into the Blazing Citadel

Aside from running into a small game crashing bug, tonight's Pandora's Tower session went smoothly. That is, except for the revelation that the next tower, the Blazing Citadel, is yet another puzzle-filled dungeon.

However, rather than Torrent Peak's concentrated space and minimal number of rooms, the Blazing Citadel is expansive. So much so that in my searching for ways to get to either or both of the first two chains I found my way up to the master's door. The reason that this discovery strikes me as strange is that most of the previous Towers have sort of guided you along from chain to chain. They aren't entirely streamlined, but the Blazing Citadel seems to have more branching paths than most of the other towers.

Also, as Torrent Peak is to Wellspring Steeple, Blazing Citadel feels like an upgrade of the Crimson Keep. Maybe the dungeon designers just got a little lazy, or the sensation of these towers being improvements on their earlier elemental counterparts is intentional. The last tower is the Truegold Tower, after all.

Anyway, what the Blazing Citadel does lack is monsters that provide flesh. In my roving I found a single servant beast and got nothing more than mere "Beast Flesh" from it. So, much to my chagrin, I might have to head back to Torrent Peak to get the primo stuff.

Torrent Peak complete

If you were to graph out the difficulty of Torrent Peak as a whole you'd get a sine wave.

The first two chain anchors can be tricky to get to because of the water wheel puzzle. The third chain's a snap. But then the master is a brute.

Basically the lower half of a Tentacruel with shell plates over its body, this boss is nothing more than a "guess-where-the-flesh-is" minigame. At least before you pull off the first plate of armour. If you miss the master flesh and reveal a tentacle or a node, then you've just added patience into the equation. Reveal a few more non-flesh areas and you've initialized the game's "dodge-while-handling-the-chain" tutorial. It's a bit too little too late, though.

However, at least in my experience, having fought all of the enemies in this tower's main room bulked up Aeron and the chain so much that a fully powered yank at the master flesh took out nearly 1/4 of the master's health bar. If it hadn't been for all the tentacles and defense-draining water orbs I'd have made squid bits of this boss in minutes. Instead Aeron died at its watery extremities before I managed to take it out.

Honestly, on reflection, this boss was once more completely new and innovative within the scope of the game itself. This game's being a continual parade of such challenges is something for which I commend the people at Ganbarion.

But, if it hadn't been for all of the stuff you need to dodge while trying to power up your chain, I never would've known about dodging while the chain is active. I'm sure this was mentioned in one of the game's early tutorials, but actually being forced to use it early on would have made it stick in my memory.

Anyway, aside from the game's generally increasing difficulty level, something else is on the rise in it. The horror factor.

Every master howls or roars once its HP reaches the halfway mark. Underneath the Torrent Peak master's howl, though you can hear a human cry of pain. A cry that sounds like it's coming from a child.

After the fight, when Aeron offered the flesh to Elena, she didn't meekly take it but pulled it from Aeron and then tore into it like a starved wolf.

Two towers remain now, and I have to say that I'm looking forward to what they have in store. Frustrations, feelings of horror/disgust, and all.

Two chains broken, one chain lost

At last, the second chain in Torrent Peak is broken. Just one more of them and then I never have to return to this dungeon again (except maybe to get through the mysterious door that needs a key).

Trouble is, I'm not exactly sure where that last chain is anchored. The first two were obvious. You can see them with ease on the second and third floor of the room with the water wheel. But the third chain is nowhere to be seen. And unless I'm misreading the map, there's nowhere left to go in the tower - except through that locked door.

But that can't be it because I haven't come across a key yet.

Yet, on close inspection of the map, there is a red mark indicating a door that I haven't passed through before. But that mark is layered underneath the marker for a chest I've already opened. It could be that there's a door somewhere around there (maybe just below it) but getting to it could be tricky.

Well, whatever I have to do, I've turned the whole too-many-monsters-in-the-main-room thing mentioned in past entries on its ear.

To keep from drawing more than one to me I've taken to using the chain to slam them into walls. They take a few more hits with this method than when they're given consecutive tastes of scythe, but seeing them crash into a wall and still come running back for more is truly satisfying.

Grinding in Torrent Peak

Perhaps an unintended side effect of the constantly respawning monsters in the main room of Torrent Peaks is fairly frequent levelling up. At this rate, I'll be pretty over powered by the time I get up to this tower's master. 

Unfortunately, why I've been grinding with these monsters is because the water wheel has me partially stumped. I need to get the pegs lined up so that they can be used to climb up from floor to floor. But while you're using the switch to move the water wheel the camera is fixed at such an angle that you can only see one side's pegs. Yet you need to align the other side's pegs with outcroppings as well. Without using a guide, I've got nothing but guesses and trial and error to go off of. 

I might be better off just hitting up GameFAQs. 

In the meantime, I've got to say that I really appreciate the ability to throw enemies. When you're being swarmed on a narrow platform it really helps to make space. But having the monsters in the main room respawn every time you wander off to a different floor really makes it a pain to leave the tower. 

Nonetheless, the game continues. Hopefully the next tower's more combat-based. 

Mobs of monsters have a purpose

Thankfully Torrent Peak isn't as unassailable as it seemed at first blush. A little guide from Gamefaqs went far in pointing me in the right direction.

Now that the tower's opened up somewhat, it's clearer why there are so many monsters in the first floor's main room. This tower's main puzzle is its water wheel. A wheel that only turns while you  are pulling on the water release switch.

So you need to line up the few pegs that are on this wheel with where you need to go.

Such a thing can be time consuming. And, as terrible about hijacking jumps or knocking you into the water as the enemies in that first main room are, they do provide a pretty steady supply of dripping flesh. So as frustrating as trying to run past these creatures can be, they do serve a purpose.

Yet, other than that single, horrible room, this tower's actually kind of dull. There's a lot of climbing, but nothing really interesting aside from the water wheel. Finally, though, finding another Large Bone let me upgrade the Military Scythe, so now, it's likely to be easy as well as dull.