Pandora's Tower

[Nester the Lark]

The official release date is April 16. That means I should be playing Pandora's Tower in just about two weeks plus the time it takes to get to my mail box.

The official North American website also just launched with a new trailer, wallpapers, icons, info, cool background music, and all that usual stuff.

Suddenly I'm in the mood for some grape-flavored meat. Hmm...

[Boo Destroyer]

Well, talk about out of nowhere. (Maybe not, but even so) Looks like we've got our April showers at last. There goes Operation Rainfall now.


Now, if only Nintendo could get down to their Q2 Wii U releases any day now. In time for the May flowers.

[Nester the Lark]

Here's an extended version of the new trailer that, for some reason, is not on the official website. And it's definitely worth watching, because it's the best, most epic trailer I've seen for this game yet.



A couple of other details I neglected to mention: The MSRP is a reasonable $39.99. The ESRB rating is T (some people thought it might be M). And here's the press release that this info came from.

You know, I remember about two years ago seeing the first Japanese trailers for Pandora's Tower and thinking it looked like a pretty cool action game. I definitely would've liked to add it to my Wii library, but even then, I wasn't completely confident that the game would make it over here. Even when it was included in Operation Rainfall, even when Xenoblade was released by NoA, even when The Last Story turned out to be XSEED's best selling game ever, Pandora's Tower was always the longest shot.

And now, it's just a couple of weeks away. I've said it before, but before the whole OpRainfall thing, I wasn't that interested in Xenoblade, and only mildly interested in The Last Story. Pandora's Tower was the one that caught my eye. And here, two years later in 2013, when the plain old Wii is completely irrelevant, here it comes.

It's kind of surreal. And weird. It feels both moot and triumphant at the same time. But I'm looking forward to it. I hope it was worth two years and going through two other games to get to it.

[Nester the Lark]

It looks like the NA version of Pandora's Tower does, indeed, come with a reversible cover! (Unfortunately, we don't get the cool black case like Europe/Australia got.)

[Leon]

The game is now officially out over here. Anyone grab it? I'm still living overseas, so I won't be able to buy it until May.

[Nester the Lark]

I don't expect it to appear in my mailbox until later this week, so no launch party for me.

Still, happy Purple Meat Day, everyone!

[Nester the Lark]

Destructoid apparently found a game-freezing bug in Pandora's Tower. I'm not sure if this is only in the North American version, but I don't think it was altered from the European version, so it might apply to all versions.

Here's Destructoid's description:

THE BUG:

After Tower 13 opens, you'll be unable to return to Towers 11 or 12. When you choose either level from the stage select menu, the game will lock up at the loading screen and you will have to hold the power button on the console to force shutdown. The game will also freeze if you try to enter 11 or 12 from the side doors at the base of Tower 13 rather than from the stage select menu.

THE SOLUTION:

The game will refuse to load Towers 11 or 12 until you visit Tower 13 at least once, but as I said above, simply entering 11 or 12 via the Tower 13 base is not enough. You have to step through one of the doors leading to the Tower 13 outer wall staircase first; once outside, you can use the Shard of Divinity item to teleport back to the Observatory. Now you should be able to enter 11 or 12 from the stage select menu without locking the game.

To confirm if your visit to Tower 13 was registered, highlight its entry on the stage select menu. If a preview image of the Tower 13 environment appears, it means you've been there at least once. Conversely, if no preview image appears, it means you have not.

XSEED's Tom Lipschultz has addressed it on their message board, saying that it's not game-braking and does not affect save data. He also says it likely only affects New Game+, and most players will probably avoid it naturally.

[Da Robot]

Still don't have this game, one sad thing I'm noticed about NA reviews of PT is that the overall Metacritic rating keeps going down because of them. (it was like 78/77 and now it's gone down to 74 because of NA reviews, and it's probably going to get lower.)

[Nester the Lark]

Well, TJ from CGR Undertow has given PT a glowing review.



I've been playing it, myself, the last few days, and I'm not disappointed. It's the best combination of Zelda and Castlevania I ever could've wanted (if I'd ever thought of combining them). And as I hoped, the experimental nature of it is right up my alley! I love this game!

Unfortunately, I've already been hit with the freezing glitch. It happened twice as I tried to enter the fourth tower, but I haven't been able to replicate it since (not even on purpose), so it seems kind of random.

Shame about the technical problems. Were they also in the PAL version? I've heard conflicting things about that.

[Wildcat]

I haven't touched mine yet, but I am looking forward to it (despite the nasty glitch it has acquired).

[Nester the Lark]

The glitches are really baffling, especially for XSEED. Tom Lipschultz was saying that the glitches do not exist in the PAL version, and that the NTSC version was supposed to come from the exact same code. They've been in contact with the developers, but there are only wild guesses as to what the cause is. Maybe there are slight differences with the North American Wii, or maybe something happened during printing. In any case, he said they probably wouldn't be able to afford recalling/reprinting the game, and a downloadable patch would be their best bet. Since the game is actually a Nintendo co-production, maybe Nintendo would actually go for it. Of course, that's only if they figure out the problem in the first place.

After my aforementioned freeze with tower 4, I have not had any problems. I finally unlocked towers 11 and 12 last night, and to my relief, I had no problems entering tower 11. The glitch is probably affecting only a minority of players, but it seems worse than it is because only the people having problems are saying anything.

[Leon]

I don't think they're going make a patch for a game with so few copies sold.