Knocking out Metroid: Other M and Cursed Mountain got my Wii backlog under double digits, so – on a reader recommendation – I decided to pull Pandora’s Tower off the shelf to keep pushing that number down. It’s a fantasy-setting action RPG that I really only knew about because it got localized as part of “Operation Rainfall” back in the day, so I went in pretty much blind. 

This is not what I expected out of a Wii game. It’s a mash-up of Demon’s Souls and Shadow of the Colossus and Song of Saya and I don’t know what all else.  

Those are all good things, as an aside. 

I’ve only put a couple of hours in, with no complaints other than a spot of frustration related to an in-game timer – basically, you progress through a series of 12 dungeons, with a limited time before you need to either kill the boss or go back to your home base to feed an NPC, and blowing the timer means a GAME OVER with a really dark ending. 

As I found out. 

As you explore each dungeon, though, you unlock shortcuts for subsequent runs, making the timer less of an issue. I’d prefer no timer at all, but it’s a reasonable compromise. 

So far, I’m loving it. More as I get deeper in.