Games

So, I played and finished Pandora's Tower (Wii). I think I started in January, then Tokyo Mirage Sessions came out and distracted me for like two months. I don't have a picture to share because, I don't know, the Wii doesn't have a screenshot function like the Switch. I do know the Wii takes pictures of certain screens with a completion thing, like for Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Mario Kart Wii.

Anyway, onto the review.

So the story is, Elena is cursed because... I'm not going to spoil it. I think the story is a little interesting. The reason why she's cursed might make you cry, or something.

There's 13 (12?) towers to explore in this game. The towers are like the dungeons in The Legend of Zelda games, just a giant 3D puzzle to figure out to get to the boss room. What do you have to do to get to the boss room? Break a number of chains holding the boss door shut. Where do you break these chains? In certain rooms of the tower. How do you get to these rooms? Exploring. See, just like Zelda.

... Are you ready for the rant part?

The first 5 towers are all different. You know, you got your wood/greenish tower, a rocky earth tower, a wet water tower, a flaming fire tower, and a metal tower.
Okay, so what's the problem? The next 5 towers, towers 6 - 10 are just repeats! The same exact scenery, just different things in different areas of the tower, maybe a slight hue change, and maybe a bit more difficult. It just feels like they got lazy coming up with 5 more original towers...

So that takes care of the first 10 towers. What about towers 11 and 12?
You know how The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes has that whole light world and dark world thing? Yeah, that. EXCEPT IT CAUSES YOUR CONSOLE TO FREEZE WHEN YOU'RE TRYING TO LOAD THE TOWERS IF YOU'RE PLAYING THE NORTH AMERICAN VERSION OF THE GAME! The European and Japanese version of the game doesn't have this bug, so wtf? But there is a work around that someone discovered that doesn't freeze the game. First, you have to go to a certain tower, then go back to the observatory (the home area of this game), wait a while for the game to load stuff, and then finally you can go to tower 12 without triggering this accursed freeze bug. It has to be tower 12 from what I've read.

Onto the bosses...
The bosses are absolute hell to fight. Just like the towers, some bosses are like puzzles, I mean, I guess like in The Legend of Zelda games too. But why are they hell to fight? Because of the bad controls. So Aeron has this chain he has to use in order to damage the bosses and yank their master flesh out (their heart?). How does the chain work? You have to point the Wii remote at the screen to aim where you want the chain to go. There is a slow motion effect when holding down a button (I don't remember which button), so it isn't that bad. But what makes these boss fights so difficult is how easily the bosses try to break out of the chain's grasp. Maybe it's just me and I'm not doing something right, but damn, these boss fights can take up to 10, even 20 minutes long.

Another problem I had with this game was, trying to figure out what parts of the towers I could grapple on. I was seriously stuck trying to get to one of the chain rooms in tower 11. Tried going to tower 12, going to different routes, going back to tower 11, exploring every damn place I had access to, tried everything. But then I saw it... This little piece of rock sticking out of the wall, able to grapple onto, which I couldn't tell because everything blends into the background and area and shit!
If they ever decide to port this game to the Switch, I hope to frig they make the grapple points more visible. You know, like what Castlevania: Lords of Shadow did, make the grapple points shimmer/glow. Man, that pissed me the hell off.

In the end, I finished with 75% completion rate. I seem to have missed one of Aeron's weapons. I'm not really sure if that's like a New Game + thing or new scenario thing or what. I seriously don't want to play this game anymore. I am done.

TL;DR : Interesting story, bad controls, freeze bug for North American version of the game, and frustration because of old graphics.

I think I'll play The Last Story next. Hopefully, it's better...