Remember the Wii? Well, there are some very good games on it
that aren’t directly related to Nintendo! I know it may be hard to believe in
times like these, but there are many
fine rpg titles for the wii like Xenoblade Chronicles and… uh… Tales of
Symphonia and… well… you know… something besides this one that I am reviewing
today. I’m going to give you a view on my interpretation of Mistwalker’s latest
achievement The Last Story.
When I started playing this game, I was hooked and had a lot
of high hopes for this game. However, I started to lose interest over time. I
wanted to get into more battles because the fights were great! However, after
about two thirds of the way through the game, I lost interest. So, what
happened? I’ll start with what I liked.
What I liked:
- the battle system. To be honest, I think that the battle system is really fun and innovating. There is no wait-time and no real battle sequence. Heck, there isn’t even an attack button! You literally point the stick at the enemy and the dude starts swinging. Not only that, but you can have up to six people on your side in a fight. Six people! I haven’t seen that many people fight along side you since the Suikoden series! I mean… you had to have those kind of numbers in the Suikoden series because of so many characters, but in this game you can use everyone you know in a fight. Thankfully, there are varying roles with each character so all in all it makes a nice chemistry. Which leads me to my next point…
- the cast. I’ll get to the individual characters later on, but I can say this about the cast: I like them a lot. My first impression is that they look like characters from the world of Ivalice, from Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII fame. I've heard multiple reviewers dive into this... but I'll let it slide. It’s an attractive cast; they're young, and they get along very well. So attractive the fanart is through the roof on this one! I would post some but… well, let’s just say that the male characters get very comfortable with each other. Even though there is all that, I can say that there is witty dialogue between each character and it creates an overall lighthearted feel.
- the battle system. To be honest, I think that the battle system is really fun and innovating. There is no wait-time and no real battle sequence. Heck, there isn’t even an attack button! You literally point the stick at the enemy and the dude starts swinging. Not only that, but you can have up to six people on your side in a fight. Six people! I haven’t seen that many people fight along side you since the Suikoden series! I mean… you had to have those kind of numbers in the Suikoden series because of so many characters, but in this game you can use everyone you know in a fight. Thankfully, there are varying roles with each character so all in all it makes a nice chemistry. Which leads me to my next point…
- the cast. I’ll get to the individual characters later on, but I can say this about the cast: I like them a lot. My first impression is that they look like characters from the world of Ivalice, from Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII fame. I've heard multiple reviewers dive into this... but I'll let it slide. It’s an attractive cast; they're young, and they get along very well. So attractive the fanart is through the roof on this one! I would post some but… well, let’s just say that the male characters get very comfortable with each other. Even though there is all that, I can say that there is witty dialogue between each character and it creates an overall lighthearted feel.
Straight out of Ivalice, er... Lazulis... Island.
What I didn’t like:
- the characters. Now, I know in the last point I said I
liked the cast. As I was playing this, I kept having this awkward complex of
liking the dialogue and present chemistry, but hating how superficial each
character was. Through this, I realized that the group is great as a whole, but
none of the characters are solid enough to establish an individual identity.
This is partially because of the structure of the plot, but to me this is a
major pitfall because I ended up not caring for the individual people. I went
from,” Oh no, this person could be dead!” and instead saying,” oh no! who’s
going to heal me now!?” It was frustrating, but I think the shallow characters
could be because of……
- the plot. The plot to this game isn’t really enticing. It starts off with our young yet sort of androgynous heroZael and his buddies being mercenaries and fighting through the land to make money. Zael finds this power called the Power of the Outsider, which is mysterious and no one really knows about it except… you guessed it… the corrupt king that wants to use it for his own benefit! He wants it to fight the lizard people because… I guess they’re lizard people… I wish there were nice lizard people in a JRPG… oh well.
- the plot. The plot to this game isn’t really enticing. It starts off with our young yet sort of androgynous heroZael and his buddies being mercenaries and fighting through the land to make money. Zael finds this power called the Power of the Outsider, which is mysterious and no one really knows about it except… you guessed it… the corrupt king that wants to use it for his own benefit! He wants it to fight the lizard people because… I guess they’re lizard people… I wish there were nice lizard people in a JRPG… oh well.
an eyepatch AND gold trimmed black armor?! totally not evil.
But anyways! It seems fairly standard, and although I haven’t completed the game the plot seems to be pretty much about that. There’s a princess involved that doesn’t want to be royalty and acts like a love interest for Zael… that’s as much individual character development as you’re going to get.
- the “we are obligated to do this to make the game longer”
phases. There is a lot of this in this game. I will give you a perfect example.
***SPOILERS… but not really because this was used as filler….***
***SPOILERS… but not really because this was used as filler….***
Ok, so like in every JRPG, you get captured. Since you are
the main character, you don’t just do your sentence and come off looking like a
respectable citizen. No! You meet another man in your cell named Horace, who is
the king of fetch quests in this game. Anyways, he has been digging a hole and
thinks you can get out by going through this hole. Wonderful, it provides
experience and, well… I’ve been fighting in caves through a majority of the
game. So, you get to the end and beat the obligatory boss of the area, and you
get to a dead end… What does Horace do? He says,” I’m sorry master Zael. I
thought this would be a way out.”
I wanted to just write gotcha… but this photo helped me
deliver it more.
…… that’s it. You just spent about 30 min and nothing came of it!? No special item!? No new plot to this Outsider thing!? Then, guess how you get out of the cell? You are proven innocent. This was very frustrating to me, and one of many examples of ways they tried to extend this game to make the storyline longer. The length of this game isn’t close to long either; I’ve spent about 15 hours on it and I’m two thirds through the storyline. One way they could’ve made this longer was if they changed…
- the difficulty. My last rub with this game is how easy it
is. The battle system grants everyone five lives, and if your character uses
all five of his/her lives, then you must start from the last check/save point.
This is fine, but I’ve hardly lost one life in a battle, let alone all five of
them. Another aspect that contributes to the easiness of the battle system is
that the game stresses tactics in every battle, but the tactics can be easily
disregarded which will lead to you winning battles by just brute strength.
Pretty much, you just point your control stick at what you want to attack and…
well that’s it because you don’t even have to manually attack someone.
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