Agnates said:

Agnates said:

Famitsu information translated by andriasang.

Famitsu reveals the game's main character to be named "Ende," and the heroine "Ceres." Voice actor information is not provided.

As suggested by the trailer, the game is heavy on action. Its genre is action RPG. Your primary "weapon" is a chain, which you use to capture enemies and swing to grab items and trigger various gimmicks. The game makes use of a simple control scheme.

The story centers on a curse that's been placed on Ceres. The only way to clear that curse is with the flesh of beasts. Ende must gather beast flesh and take it back to Ceres.

Developed by Ganbarion (Jump Super Stars, One Piece Unlimited Cruise), Pandora's Tower is due for release on May 26, priced at ¥6,800. We'll likely get an official online look at the game later this week.

And some more.

The setting of the game is the Graecia continent, where in the kingdom of Elysium the harvest festival has begun. Ceres has been chosen to sing at the event, but as she takes the podium, beasts appear in the area.

In the ensuing confusion, Ende manages to find Ceres, but she's unconscious. She's about to be taken into custody by the army as a witness to the beast appearance. With the help of a merchant named Graiai, the two manage to escape to an isolated tower.

Ceres ends up being cursed following the beast attack. Ende learns that to clear the curse he must gather the flesh of beasts that live within the tower. He decides to try his hand at the tower.

The three principle characters introduced in the magazine are:

Ceres

15 years old. She was selected from a large number of girls to sing at the harvest festival. She's a devout believer of the Eos religion.

Ende

The game's 22-year-old main character. He was a former soldier of Athens during a war with Elysium. He's a man of few words.

Graiai

The merchant who helps Ceres and Ende. He appears to be of the dwarf race. He gives you the Orichalcum Chain, which lets its possessor know Ceres' state.

The Orichalcum Chain that Graiai gives you is the central gameplay element in the game. As mentioned above, it allows you to know Ceres' state. As you play, you'll see a timer in the lower left of the screen. This timer is an indication of how far Ceres' curse has progressed. When it reaches zero, the game ends.

You'll also use the chain to restrain the servant beasts you encounter in the towers and tear their flesh off for delivery to Ceres, and also to clear the various gimmicks that you encounter in the tower.

The tower is actually not just one tower -- there are twelve, of varying size. Each tower has a different theme. For example, there's the Red Flame Tower, which blocks your progress with fire.

If you reach the deepest point in each tower, Ende will encounter a boss. The flesh of the bosses of all the towers is required to completely clear Ceres of her curse. The flesh of the servant beasts can only temporarily halt the curse's progress.

Interesting. So Pandora's Tower is an action RPG. And the towers sound like Zelda dungeons. There will probably be a overworld and a town I think.

Oh that is the sequel, I thought you were just discovering the first game Leo. I guess i need to play both then.

BTW SOCOM 4 Beta is available, anyone going to try it?

It sounds like the time limit will be like a decreasing life bar. Only be constantly killing beast you can keep it from reaching zero. Hopefully you will not have to return to the girl and feed her the flesh, because that could be tedious.

edgecrusher said:

I'm honestly surprised Sony is even going to try with another handheld. The 3DS has way too much positive buzz, they're going to get obliterated regardless of whether it has better tech or not.

Beating the competitior is not the point -- making money is, and on that level the PSP has been a successful product.  Didn;t outsell all other consoles in Japan in 2010?

After reading the description of Pandora's Tower and watching the trailer again it becomes much clearer.

First you see a town that is attacked. Okay they mention this in the desription, the beasts attack and that is probably the intro.

The description says:

" With the help of a merchant named Graiai, the two manage to escape to an isolated tower. "

You see a trailer with a small tower with chains attached to it (I counted 10 chains). That is probably that tower. This will probably serve as your hub. Where you can speak with the girl and buy supplies from that merchant. The tower also shows and arrow. Probably this is how you select the towers. You turn the to towards a chain and that chain would lead to another tower.

Also the trailer shows purple beast flesh. And the girl shows to be craving it. She probably is slowly corrupted by it. Probably no overword and towns in that game it seems. Of course this is judging from a 50 seconds trailer.

Dvader said:

Just finished the ME2 "expansion" The Arrival which is an hour and half long. Its basically just one small mission. Plus it has no teamates, probably cause they didn't want to hire the voice actors, only three characters speak in the whole story and none are your crew. You go on the mission alone so gunfights are very simple, with only basic enemies. There are two trophies tied to skill which can make replaying the mission more interesting. While its a very basic mission it does cover a major plot point but done so in a very sped up manner. In ME2 I am used to talking to my teamates about major decisions like this one (well you cant make the decision, the game forces you to do a certain action), and I normally see reaction for many different points of view. Here its just Sheppard talking to himself and in the end you get a debreif from some old ME1 character. Major plot point but handled poorly.

Not the best but its still ME2 so its fun as hell. Running around the base with excellent heart pumping music playing while a countdown to oblivion is going on is still exciting stuff.

I still need to play this add-on. So its not as deep as the Shadow Broker then.

BTW, I just read that thread in the Ring of Fire about Crysis 2, where all you guys pretty much dismissed it over the lame multi-player demo. Dude believe me this game crushes most other FPS out there as a campaign based game. And the graphics are not disappointing at all, it looks pretty damn impressive. Multi-player wise it seems they did borrow a lot of the stuff from COD and Halo, but I honestly didn't play much multi-player from the 1st game...this is thankfully a more campaign based series just as Far Cry was. As I said the other day, its not as good as Crysis 1, but still smokes the competition.

Why is Nintendo bringing all the JRPGs at this late stage in Wii's life?

So that's Last Story, Xenoblade, DQ10 and Pandora's Tower.

I wish they would bring us more action adventure games other than Zelda. I don't know what they will be doing now, focusing on 3DS games, making new Wii games or prepping for a new home console and its games.

NGamer magazine's 'Zelda explosion' hits newsstands today, with a preview double-bill picking apart upcoming adventure blockbusters Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D and Skyward Sword for Wii.


On top of that, readers can expect reviews of 3DS games including Ghost Recon, Steel Diver, Ridge Racer and Professor Layton And The Mask Of Miracle, plus a feature in which the staff eat Pokémon. Pokemon-branded food, anyway.



Finally, NGamer 61 boasts a monster feature listing 221 cool things to do with your Nintendo 3DS, a dress down of the latest Wii 2 rumours and 99 free Miis for your handheld.


Nintendo fans can pick up NGamer 61 online now and have it delivered to their doors.

"Besides that, companies are more aggressive than ever in trying to get gamers to hold onto their games instead of trading them in at GameStop (or opting to rent them in the first place rather than buying them). Downloadable content aside, including a multiplayer mode is a way to keep players busy with their games -- and out of the hands of the second-hand market."

Call me crazy, but I think a better way to save (and make) more money, is to lower the insane prices on brand new games from $50 or $60 dollars, instead of forcing in a crappy multi-player mode-- that costs money to develop-- that most people aren't going to play anyway, because the people who want those modes are too busy playing Halo or Call Of Duty to notice anyway.

http://www.1up.com/news/publishers-wrong-shoehorn-multiplayer-games

edgecrusher said:

I think the Wii is definitely on its last legs software-wise. And like Robio said, they have likely exhausted most of the casual market at this point so they may as well see if they can get some sales out of the RPG crowd. Its much too late to try and compete in the shooter, racing, and action/adventure categories, but RPG's of this kind have been few and far between this generation. Really, there has been a serious lack of Japanese style RPG's over the past 5 years. Square has been busy making money off old games, The Persona team hasn't done shit since PS2 died out, The Shadow Hearts series is dead.....I mean WTF.

I do think Nintendo waited WAY too long to release these games though. I hope on their next machine they get off to a faster start with ALL kinds of software.

I really want them to either stake a claim to Wii's future with some amazing looking new games for this year and next, or tell us that they have a new console and start making games for it now.