Pandora's Tower preview

After The Last Story, Pandora's Tower is the next big Japanese RPG that's coming to the UK in 2012. It's an intriguing action-RPG from a studio that's known for its work with Shonen Jump series such as One Piece, Naruto and Bleach.

Rather than a coming-of-age story about a ninja in orange pyjamas, or an elasticised pirate with a penchant for straw hats, Pandora's Tower focuses on a knight named Ende who is trying to save a priestess called Ceres from an ancient curse that is slowly mutating her into a freak of Resident Evil proportions.

While the obvious answer would be to quest on over to Superdrug for a blessed balm of restoration, our hero instead has to climb 13 towers. We've already scaling the first two skyscrapers before, using Ende's chain whipping skills to dispatch packs of sinister, shadowy wolves and to put paid to some irksome wasp-spewing hives.

The combat in the towers is intersected by ascents up dizzyingly steep cliff faces, as well as swinging across a few perilous pitfalls and abusing the weak points of towering bosses.

Water World

The third vertical trek up a tower begins with the hallway that works as the opening section for all the towers and as we ventured through the solitary door at the back we were confronted by an absolutely enormous waterwheel, standing motionless in a room of criss-crossing waterways.

Then, after discovering that Ende clearly never took the trouble to earn his bronze swimming certificate as a trainee knight (we are able to glean this by virtue of how he seems to sink to the bottom of anything remotely wet) we began to swing from one piece of dry land to the next, which proved much more satisfactory. And a whole lot less drowny.

The first task on the agenda was to get the waterwheel working again, as without using it as an escalator we were bound to the lower levels of the tower. While searching for a solution, we unearthed a new weapon that replaced Ende's traditional sword with a double-dagger setup, one that enabled much faster attacks at the expense of range and raw damage.

We used these dual blades to take out an armoured ogre that had to be stripped of its plating as a precursor to dealing it some serious harm, before finally discovering a pair of switches that brought the dormant waterworks to life.

Using the trusty Orichalcum Chain, we then hitched a ride on the waterwheel and made our way up a long and winding staircase that led to a tall room with a column of rising water in the centre. Swimming in this impregnable maelstrom were a pair of shark-like creatures that kept peppering Ende with their pressure-washer projectiles, but some swift chain work enabled us to fish them out before administering some rough justice with our recently discovered double daggers.

Chain Reaction

It was also around this time that we had to venture back to the safe house to feed Ceres the monster hearts we'd collected on our quest, a task that is absolutely crucial to your overall success.