I recently started playing Pandora's Tower through Dolphin. I have actually played this before, since I have the Wii version digitally on Wii U. I bounced off it before though, since it felt so clunky, and the resolution was so bad I could hardly make anything out. Didn't care for the voice acting either. Playing through emulation however allows the resolution issue to be fixed, and I'm enjoying it much more. It's still a pretty clunky game, and the voice acting is rather... unrefined. But I think playing through the Drakengard games has done something to my brain, and I now have a much higher tolerance for jank.
It a strange game though. It's an action RPG which takes place within a collection of towers that act as dungeons, where you have a time limit for how long you can be out dungeon crawling. You have a home base area too, and there you have a companion character who is the reason for the time limit. She is inflicted with a curse that gradually turns her in to a horrible slimy tentacle monster if she goes too long without eating flesh from other monsters. So you need to take flesh from the enemies you defeat and bring them back to her every so often to avoid her turning in to some disgusting squid thing. And the sequence they show of her eating the flesh makes it look very unpleasant too. So the game has this strange tone to it where you feel the pressure to make sure you're keeping her healthy and avoid her from suffering, but at the same time feeling a bit guilty having to put her through the experience of eating the horrible looking meat over and over.
Gameplay is somewhat interesting. It has a few neat ideas, but I'm not sure how well it actually pulls them off. You have some basic sword attacks and stuff, but a lot of the combat also focuses around a chain weapon that you have. You can use it to bind enemies to stop them moving, and it has a different effect depending on what part of their body you tie up. You can also build up tension in the chain and rip it out for a big chunk of damage, as well as tie enemies together, or throw lighter ones around, stuff like that. So far the bosses have focused almost entirely around this chain rather than the more traditional attacks, as you have to use it to hurt their one weak spot. So bosses are less about a straight up fight and more avoiding attacks while optimising when you decide to use these chain pull attacks. But to aim all these chain mechanics, the game uses an on-screen cursor. The game clearly expects you to be using a Wiimote, although it does have support for normal controllers too. Although I have heard it's pretty easy to set up a Wiimote with Dolphin, I've just been using my usual Xbox One controller. It makes aiming a bit fiddly, but it seems to be doable so far.
