Pandora’s Tower’s chain weapon is the only part that still holds up

Pandora’s Tower asks you to save a dying woman by feeding her the flesh of monsters. That premise, ugly and tender at once, is the whole game. It arrived on the Wii in Japan in May 2011, in PAL territories in April 2012, and in North America only in April 2013, when Xseed Games finally picked up a title Nintendo had never planned to bring over. Ganbarion built it. Nintendo published it. It plays like a game made by people who cared more about a feeling than a market.

Trailer, via IGN.

Aeron and the Oraclos Chain

You are Aeron, a former soldier from the kingdom of Athos. Three years before the game opens, a wounded Aeron was sheltered by Elena, an Elyrian, even though their countries were at war. They became lovers. Now a curse is turning Elena into a monster, and Mavda, a woman of the nomadic Vestra tribe, leads them to the Thirteen Towers and hands Aeron the Oraclos Chain.

That chain is the best thing in Pandora’s Tower. It ties up enemies. It binds two enemies together so damage to one passes to the other. It swings them around Aeron to deal damage. It rips armor and materials off their bodies. Its attack power grows the longer it is pulled while attached, which turns every fight into a small negotiation about patience.

Aeron also gets a basic melee attack and a charged attack that triggers extra hits if you time a button press to a targeting ring. Subweapons, a sword among them, fill in the gaps. The chain does the rest.

Thirteen Towers Above the Scar

The setting is the Okanos region, where a fortress called the Thirteen Towers hangs over a chasm called the Scar, held by thirteen giant chains said to keep the Scar from growing. The Towers were built five centuries ago. A magical experiment went wrong and infested them with monsters. Fifty years before the game, another experiment created the Scar itself.

You explore from the Observatory, a building on the edge of the Scar, where you save, talk to Elena, and deal with the merchant Mavda. Then you go up. Each tower ends in a locked room holding a Master, a powerful monster that serves as the boss. You solve puzzles to open the door: levers and switches, moving platforms, mechanisms unique to each tower, climbing along walls and beams.

A Meter That Will Not Wait

The curse runs on a clock. Elena’s transformation is tracked as a meter on your screen, and you have only so long inside a tower before it worsens and the game forces you out. You leave, you feed her flesh, you go back. The flesh of certain monsters reverses the curse temporarily. Only the Master Flesh from each tower’s boss breaks it for good.

That timer is not decoration. It changes how you move. You take shortcuts to the top, and you take shortcuts back down. A game about killing monsters becomes a game about routing, about knowing when to abandon a fight because the meter is climbing and Elena is waiting at the Observatory.

Imperia, Aios, and the War of Unification

The world behind the towers is thinner than it should be. Imperia was once ten kingdoms. The Vestra tribe lost theirs and now wander. The dominant religion, Aios, worships nature through twelve deities. The War of Unification began the Unified Era, and later three kingdoms tried to break free of Elyria. By the game’s present the war has ended, but tensions remain.

Elena eats Master Flesh and sees visions of how the Towers were made. Five hundred years ago, Elyria and the Vestra tried to end the War of Unification by embodying the twelve deities in physical vessels, the Masters, with a thirteenth vessel to balance them. The project was called Experiment Zero. A husband and wife who had lost their son in the war offered themselves as raw material.

Multiple Endings, One Relationship

Depending on the strength of Aeron’s relationship with Elena, you can reach multiple endings. That mechanic caused recurring problems during development. Ganbarion began work in 2006 after finishing Jump Ultimate Stars, as its first original title. The concept came from a wish to build a scenario around purification and love. Character numbers and plot twists were kept low on purpose, to keep attention on Elena’s plight.

The Wii’s controls and the relationship system both caused recurring problems, and the game went through an extended development period. You can feel the seams. The graphics were dated even at release, and the character development outside the central pair is thin.

What Pandora’s Tower Gets Right

The combat holds up. The chain is a genuine idea, not a gimmick, and the charged attack rewards attention without demanding mastery. The story, for all its thin worldbuilding, has a real engine: a man killing gods to keep a woman human, and a woman who has to eat what he brings back.

Praise for Pandora’s Tower went to the story and elements of combat. The graphics and character development were faulted. That split is fair. The game’s commercial success was modest, which is its own kind of verdict on a Wii release that never got a North American announcement from Nintendo and had to be rescued by Xseed.

The list of what works is short and specific:

• The Oraclos Chain, used for combat, binding, swinging, and tearing materials off enemies.
• The Master Flesh loop, which ties every boss kill to Elena’s survival.
• The curse meter, which turns exploration into a timed route.
• The Thirteen Towers and the Observatory, a clean two-part structure of danger and respite.
• Multiple endings that hinge on how well Aeron has tended the relationship.

The list of what does not work is just as specific. The graphics are flat. The supporting cast barely exists. The relationship mechanic that decides your ending is underfed, which is a strange failure in a game whose entire premise is devotion.

What the Curse Meter Decides

Pandora’s Tower is a 7.3 out of 10. It is not a hidden masterpiece and it is not a curiosity to file away. It is a good game with one excellent weapon and one excellent idea, and it trusts both further than most games would dare.

The timer is what decides whether you will love it. If you resent being pushed out of a tower before you are finished, the game will read as a chore. If you accept that Elena’s curse is the actual antagonist, the meter becomes the most honest thing in the design. It makes you choose between the fight in front of you and the person waiting at the Observatory, over and over, until the choice stops being mechanical.

The dated graphics matter less now than they did at release. The thin worldbuilding matters more. Aios, Imperia, the War of Unification, the ten kingdoms: none of it sticks the way the Scar does, because the Scar is a place you look at and the politics are a paragraph you read. Ganbarion kept the cast small on purpose, and that choice pays off with Elena and Aeron while leaving everything around them hollow.

What lasts is the loop. Kill a Master. Carry its flesh back. Watch Elena eat. Go up again. The game never lets you forget what the flesh is for, and it never lets you enjoy the killing without the cost of the clock. That is a harder trick than it sounds, and Pandora’s Tower pulls it off.

action RPG · game review · Ganbarion · Pandora's Tower · Wii · Xseed Games