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The Last Story (Japan) |OT| The Gooch's Final (?) Fantasy
- Thread starter thefro
- Start date
AceBandage
Banned
This really needs a stateside release so I can try it out in Dolphin.
Finished it up this morning. My new game+ save is 18 hours on the dot, but I didn't do much of the town quests or mess around with the arena to much, so I can see it being 25-30 hours if you do everything.
Does game quality matter if it's fun?
That's the dilemma when trying to critique The Last Story. If you were judging it solely from "is it a good rpg?" perspective, the last story fails. If you were judging it solely from "is it a good action game" perspective, the last story still fails, although less so. But if you're perspective is "is it a fun game?" then the last story passes with flying colors.
The Last Story will probably be one of the most fun games this year, and it's definitely one of the more fun games on the Wii for sure. The game is constantly exciting, extremely accessible, and always makes you feel like an awesome gamer. As someone else put it early in the thread, "it's Mass Effect 2 with swords & magic". It has the same kind of stop & pop constant fun as ME2.
Gameplay - Combat
The real time system of TLS is so fresh, that's it's tough to describe without playing it. It's like Mass Effect x Tales of the Abyss. You run around slashing enemies and using powers, but similar the FoF system of Abyss, those powers leave elemental magic circles which you can then use to change your attacks. By the end of the game the strategies boil down to having a bunch of element spots around the floor that you can instantly fly over to and activate for buffs/debuffs or heals.
On the other hand, after a while the combat tends to feel a bit less fresh because frankly there just isn't that much depth to it. Similar to the combat in ME2, it's kind of "lite" on the rpg-strategy and more on just doing the same things from a very limited moveset. Because you can only control Elza, you basically have these attack options 1) slash a guy, 2) hide and then pop out and slash a guy, 3) use your one magic attack to activate circles, 4) shoot your bow arrow. While the circle system actually gives that more depth than it sounds and you spend most of your time ordering your sub-characters, the truth is that the limited moveset of both Elza and the rest of the cast give a game a learning curve that is perfect for about 10 hours and then sorta plateaus. But it tends to stay fun.
The other thing that's a bit unfortunate about the combat is that the game is really really easy until the final bosses. You can probably just run up and slash everything you see for most of the game without having to really go any deeper. This is great because it makes the game very accessible, but the lack of challenge is a bit of a shame. The final chapter, which has some tough bosses, is where the game really shines and is easily the best chapter in the game.
To be fair though, I have to admit I'm a bit glad the game is easy. Why? Because the controls, camera, AI, and glitches in the game are a little more than I like to deal with. The camera in particular is spaztastic. With the lock-on being more worthless than worthwhile. And then little stuff like assigning ROLL to the same button as ATTACH so if you run up to something you want to take cover behind and hit A to take cover, half the time you roll right past it instead of attaching. Same thing goes for when you have to pick up objects and you're being chased by enemies so you run up to hit and hit A (or down with manual controls) and you roll over it. The game definitely could have done its control scheme a bit better. And I had some nasty glitches, the worst being after a boss, the camera decide to get stuck locked at the ceiling so I had to go into FP to find the exit and then run out the exit while not seeing my character and having the camera spin around pointed straight up, lol. Could use some more polish for sure.
Also I want to mention that the boss fights are great and the highlight of the game as they play out more like Zelda where you need to figure out the solution to the puzzle to beat them. Very fun. Though the game also tells you the answer to the puzzle as your teammates shout what you need to do as you're fighting. I wish you could turn that off!
But overall the combat is great. Or at least a great start. I'd love to see a Last Story 2 that builds on the systems introduced here.
Gameplay - Non-combat
This is one of those "do you want an rpg?" grey areas when looking at the game. If you want an rpg experience of exploring environments, traveling the world, meeting people, towns, etc... you will hate this game. If you get past the fact that TLS really isn't an rpg, this stuff will bug you less because it's not like Gears of War really has anything to do outside shooting monsters and people are fine with that!
I guess the closest experience would be Dragon Quest Swords. Like DQS you have a town (that's much bigger in TLS) and you can walk around in that town. And then you go up to people who say essentially "do you want to continue the story" and when you click yes you're transported into the next corridor slasher dungeon or couple of dungeons and then you'll end up back at the town again. In the town you can do sidequests, but the lack of modern standards like a quest log to keep track of who asked you to do something and what they wanted, made the quests less enticing for me personally. Since there's no world or even environment out of the town to explore, all the quests are solved just by walking around doing things in the town or a few of them have their own unique "chapters" where they take you to a new location to do them like the normal game chapters.
And that's it. You can walk around, do some fights at the arena, do the quests in the town, shop or jump to the next setpiece. Because the scope of the game is so small (it's like a 2 hour summer action movie, rather than a novel or 20-50ep tv show), there's just not much to the world. TLS is mainly an on-rails action game.
Gameplay - Character Growth
One thing that's nice about TLS is that there's no grinding. If you want to gain levels before a boss you can call out enemies in a room next to the boss and fight them for 20 seconds and gain a level each time. It's simple, effective, and not important at all because stats don't matter much in TLS. TLS is an action game, if you get the strategy right, you win.
But in addition there's also a weapon/armor system where you get loot from dungeons and upgrade them and weapons have inherent abilities that make them unique and armor is visible and unique and looks cool. Tbh, this is just ok. On the plus side there is a lot of loot in dungeons and that's always fun; it's great picking up an item that glowing orange and says RARE. On the other hand upgrading weapons feels like a chore as it's boring and just breaks up the action. And while visible armor is great, there's like, less than 10 pieces of armor in the whole game. I think my cast looked the same for the entire 2nd half of the game. After playing Xenoblade with tons and tons of visible armor, it's a little sad.
Story
While TLS may be Sakaguchi's take on Mass Effect 2 and to a degree Gears of War, the plot and writing quality tends to be more towards the latter than the former. I love Sakaguchi for his creative game design and his 90s throwback style, and it pains me to say it, but the man can't write, at least not anymore. Blue Dragon turned out well, but Lost Odyssey (outside the 1000 year stories written by actual novelists) was junk. The Last Story's plotting and dialogue feel exactly like Lost Odyssey's main plot, straight down to the over-exaggerated villians, characters who never see the obvious and a personality-less main character who is basically just generic beefy guy A. I know LO has some fans, so maybe some people will enjoy it but while I loved the 1000 year stories in LO, I thought the plot and cast boring and generic. Which basically sums up TLS.
I also feel this hurts TLS a little more than LO though because TLS could almost be called an interactive movie. It's an on-rails experience with constant cutscenes every 2-5 mins that probably make up around 30-50% of the gametime. So when you're spending a good chunk of your time watching the story, it doesn't seem that unreasonable to want it to be good. I mean if Xenoblade was presented in the same way it'd still be great because Xenoblade's plot was extremely interesting and the cast and dialogue were well written. But here...not so much.
But like a Michael Bay movie, most of the time the lack of intelligence of the writing doesn't really bother you since it's presented in an exciting way to make the game feel like you're playing through the latest 2 hour explosive summer action movie. The pacing is amazing most of the time. It's like Call of Duty with constant things blowing up and happening left and right. TLS does CoD far better than FFXIII's attempt at it. It's only in the parts where the game stops and tries to add real emotion to the paper-thin characters and falls totally flat, that you kind of wish Sakaguchi would just let someone else write his stories.
Characters
The Characters also feel inspired by Gears of War. Your sub-cast of mercenaries have about as much depth as Dom or the loveable Cole Train. Taking a cue from FFXIII, TLS has active party talk while you're running through the dungeons. This is great as it makes dungeons a bit more lively and like with Gears, it's always fun to chat the chat while slicing monsters in half. One thing though, that is kind of annoying is the timing on these party talks. For instance you'll open a door and your crew will start talking, but the second you walk through the door it'll end the chat as it loads the new area. So if you want to finish hearing the whole conversation you have to keep stopping in front of doors and not going through them until everyone is finished talking. You kind of think they would have recorded the dialogues to be the length of time it takes to run through the corridor from one end to another since the game is so linear ^^;
Graphics
Very, very inconsistent. You can see it in this thread, you can see it on gamefaqs, you can see it in other forums where people are playing TLS. Half the people think the game looks terrible, one of the worst looking games on Wii. Half the people think it looks great, one of the best looking games on Wii.
Personally I just think it's totally inconsistent thanks to having X360/PS3 level effects like HDR lighting or depth of field or HD quality water combined with the worst texture work known to man and PS1-level flat geometry.
Even the animation is bizarrely inconsistent. For cutscenes or talking faces, or certain battle animations, the animation is stiff and low-budget cheap. Otoh, you have really nice movement animation that reacts to signs by ducking under them, or rails by leaning against them.
Then on top of that you throw in the art direction which is mainly brown and lacking-color and you have a package that can be appealing at times (parts of the castle, parts of town) and incredibly ugly at other times (dungeons, certain other areas).
Also I just gotta say the texture work is a mess. The main characters all look great, but any side stuff was given no effort. For example in chapter 35 there's this one cutscene where a knight is talking to you and the camera is close up on his body and you can't tell what anything is. It's just a huge blur and PS1 level textures. From a distance the knight model looks fine, but get close up and the textures are just awful. You also see PS1 textures on the walls or objects or clothing scattered around. I dunno if the game just had a really really low budget or if they just said "textures, who cares" but the texture work is about on par with launch-era PS2 rpgs like Tsuganai or some PSP stuff.
But I also want to point out that the water is amaaazing. Especially for the Wii. It's really the stand out visual point of the game.
Music
Another area where I've seen and am sure there will be much debate for years to come.
In TLS, Uematsu has decided to forgo the Uematsu melodic style that he used in BD/LO and FF games for a movie-soundtrack style. What this means is that while you're playing the music always fits the game and helps make it more enjoyable. But it also means that without having distinctive "town A song, dungeon B song", outside of the main title tracks and one boss tune towards the end that actually sounds classic Uematsu, the rest of the music is not very memorable.
Personally I'm going to side with the side that feels the ost, while competent, is a letdown as I re-listened to the first 10 tracks of the LO ost after finishing TLS, and every single one of those tracks was on a completely different level than the TLS soundtrack. I'm a fan of distinctive rpg music and was looking forward to another great Uematsu score (I bought the BD & LO osts), but came out disappointed here.
Content
The game is short, yeah. The main story is about 20 hours and there's around 5-10 hours of sidestuff and a new game+ if you ever want to replay it. But you can't really compare it to an rpg game length because of the pacing. In TLS you're always run run running through the chapters at a brisk and exciting pace. This is much different than the stop and go pacing of a standard 30-50 hour rpg. So while you'll finish the game relatively quickly, you'll be glad it was kept short with great pacing.
Also there's this online mode or something, but that's not really my thing so I can't comment on it. If you like online gaming, going by what everyone else is saying it should be fun and add plenty of time.
Overall Thoughts
My experience with The Last Story was that the graphics were kind of bad, the music was a letdown, the story and characters were cliche and dumb, the gameplay was simplistic and easy, there wasn't any world to explore, and the game was very short. If I was to only look at the parts, I would give the game a 6/10.
But a game is more than the sum of its parts, and TLS is a game that proves that. For almost every negative, there's a positive on the other side of the coin. Short game? Great pacing; Streamlined combat? Fun combat. Stupid plot? Lots of explosions. Most importantly, the game was just a lot of fun. Really, really fun. And fun should count for something, shouldn't it? I mean a lot of the games that get 8s or 9s from review sites aren't even that fun to play
So at the end of the day, I think The Last Story is a bad game that's ridiculously fun to the point that it becomes an enjoyable good game. Sakaguchi has succeeded in making the first Michael Bay game. Just don't go looking for an rpg. For your own sake.
8/10
Does game quality matter if it's fun?
That's the dilemma when trying to critique The Last Story. If you were judging it solely from "is it a good rpg?" perspective, the last story fails. If you were judging it solely from "is it a good action game" perspective, the last story still fails, although less so. But if you're perspective is "is it a fun game?" then the last story passes with flying colors.
The Last Story will probably be one of the most fun games this year, and it's definitely one of the more fun games on the Wii for sure. The game is constantly exciting, extremely accessible, and always makes you feel like an awesome gamer. As someone else put it early in the thread, "it's Mass Effect 2 with swords & magic". It has the same kind of stop & pop constant fun as ME2.
Gameplay - Combat
The real time system of TLS is so fresh, that's it's tough to describe without playing it. It's like Mass Effect x Tales of the Abyss. You run around slashing enemies and using powers, but similar the FoF system of Abyss, those powers leave elemental magic circles which you can then use to change your attacks. By the end of the game the strategies boil down to having a bunch of element spots around the floor that you can instantly fly over to and activate for buffs/debuffs or heals.
On the other hand, after a while the combat tends to feel a bit less fresh because frankly there just isn't that much depth to it. Similar to the combat in ME2, it's kind of "lite" on the rpg-strategy and more on just doing the same things from a very limited moveset. Because you can only control Elza, you basically have these attack options 1) slash a guy, 2) hide and then pop out and slash a guy, 3) use your one magic attack to activate circles, 4) shoot your bow arrow. While the circle system actually gives that more depth than it sounds and you spend most of your time ordering your sub-characters, the truth is that the limited moveset of both Elza and the rest of the cast give a game a learning curve that is perfect for about 10 hours and then sorta plateaus. But it tends to stay fun.
The other thing that's a bit unfortunate about the combat is that the game is really really easy until the final bosses. You can probably just run up and slash everything you see for most of the game without having to really go any deeper. This is great because it makes the game very accessible, but the lack of challenge is a bit of a shame. The final chapter, which has some tough bosses, is where the game really shines and is easily the best chapter in the game.
To be fair though, I have to admit I'm a bit glad the game is easy. Why? Because the controls, camera, AI, and glitches in the game are a little more than I like to deal with. The camera in particular is spaztastic. With the lock-on being more worthless than worthwhile. And then little stuff like assigning ROLL to the same button as ATTACH so if you run up to something you want to take cover behind and hit A to take cover, half the time you roll right past it instead of attaching. Same thing goes for when you have to pick up objects and you're being chased by enemies so you run up to hit and hit A (or down with manual controls) and you roll over it. The game definitely could have done its control scheme a bit better. And I had some nasty glitches, the worst being after a boss, the camera decide to get stuck locked at the ceiling so I had to go into FP to find the exit and then run out the exit while not seeing my character and having the camera spin around pointed straight up, lol. Could use some more polish for sure.
Also I want to mention that the boss fights are great and the highlight of the game as they play out more like Zelda where you need to figure out the solution to the puzzle to beat them. Very fun. Though the game also tells you the answer to the puzzle as your teammates shout what you need to do as you're fighting. I wish you could turn that off!
But overall the combat is great. Or at least a great start. I'd love to see a Last Story 2 that builds on the systems introduced here.
Gameplay - Non-combat
This is one of those "do you want an rpg?" grey areas when looking at the game. If you want an rpg experience of exploring environments, traveling the world, meeting people, towns, etc... you will hate this game. If you get past the fact that TLS really isn't an rpg, this stuff will bug you less because it's not like Gears of War really has anything to do outside shooting monsters and people are fine with that!
I guess the closest experience would be Dragon Quest Swords. Like DQS you have a town (that's much bigger in TLS) and you can walk around in that town. And then you go up to people who say essentially "do you want to continue the story" and when you click yes you're transported into the next corridor slasher dungeon or couple of dungeons and then you'll end up back at the town again. In the town you can do sidequests, but the lack of modern standards like a quest log to keep track of who asked you to do something and what they wanted, made the quests less enticing for me personally. Since there's no world or even environment out of the town to explore, all the quests are solved just by walking around doing things in the town or a few of them have their own unique "chapters" where they take you to a new location to do them like the normal game chapters.
And that's it. You can walk around, do some fights at the arena, do the quests in the town, shop or jump to the next setpiece. Because the scope of the game is so small (it's like a 2 hour summer action movie, rather than a novel or 20-50ep tv show), there's just not much to the world. TLS is mainly an on-rails action game.
Gameplay - Character Growth
One thing that's nice about TLS is that there's no grinding. If you want to gain levels before a boss you can call out enemies in a room next to the boss and fight them for 20 seconds and gain a level each time. It's simple, effective, and not important at all because stats don't matter much in TLS. TLS is an action game, if you get the strategy right, you win.
But in addition there's also a weapon/armor system where you get loot from dungeons and upgrade them and weapons have inherent abilities that make them unique and armor is visible and unique and looks cool. Tbh, this is just ok. On the plus side there is a lot of loot in dungeons and that's always fun; it's great picking up an item that glowing orange and says RARE. On the other hand upgrading weapons feels like a chore as it's boring and just breaks up the action. And while visible armor is great, there's like, less than 10 pieces of armor in the whole game. I think my cast looked the same for the entire 2nd half of the game. After playing Xenoblade with tons and tons of visible armor, it's a little sad.
Story
While TLS may be Sakaguchi's take on Mass Effect 2 and to a degree Gears of War, the plot and writing quality tends to be more towards the latter than the former. I love Sakaguchi for his creative game design and his 90s throwback style, and it pains me to say it, but the man can't write, at least not anymore. Blue Dragon turned out well, but Lost Odyssey (outside the 1000 year stories written by actual novelists) was junk. The Last Story's plotting and dialogue feel exactly like Lost Odyssey's main plot, straight down to the over-exaggerated villians, characters who never see the obvious and a personality-less main character who is basically just generic beefy guy A. I know LO has some fans, so maybe some people will enjoy it but while I loved the 1000 year stories in LO, I thought the plot and cast boring and generic. Which basically sums up TLS.
I also feel this hurts TLS a little more than LO though because TLS could almost be called an interactive movie. It's an on-rails experience with constant cutscenes every 2-5 mins that probably make up around 30-50% of the gametime. So when you're spending a good chunk of your time watching the story, it doesn't seem that unreasonable to want it to be good. I mean if Xenoblade was presented in the same way it'd still be great because Xenoblade's plot was extremely interesting and the cast and dialogue were well written. But here...not so much.
But like a Michael Bay movie, most of the time the lack of intelligence of the writing doesn't really bother you since it's presented in an exciting way to make the game feel like you're playing through the latest 2 hour explosive summer action movie. The pacing is amazing most of the time. It's like Call of Duty with constant things blowing up and happening left and right. TLS does CoD far better than FFXIII's attempt at it. It's only in the parts where the game stops and tries to add real emotion to the paper-thin characters and falls totally flat, that you kind of wish Sakaguchi would just let someone else write his stories.
Characters
The Characters also feel inspired by Gears of War. Your sub-cast of mercenaries have about as much depth as Dom or the loveable Cole Train. Taking a cue from FFXIII, TLS has active party talk while you're running through the dungeons. This is great as it makes dungeons a bit more lively and like with Gears, it's always fun to chat the chat while slicing monsters in half. One thing though, that is kind of annoying is the timing on these party talks. For instance you'll open a door and your crew will start talking, but the second you walk through the door it'll end the chat as it loads the new area. So if you want to finish hearing the whole conversation you have to keep stopping in front of doors and not going through them until everyone is finished talking. You kind of think they would have recorded the dialogues to be the length of time it takes to run through the corridor from one end to another since the game is so linear ^^;
Graphics
Very, very inconsistent. You can see it in this thread, you can see it on gamefaqs, you can see it in other forums where people are playing TLS. Half the people think the game looks terrible, one of the worst looking games on Wii. Half the people think it looks great, one of the best looking games on Wii.
Personally I just think it's totally inconsistent thanks to having X360/PS3 level effects like HDR lighting or depth of field or HD quality water combined with the worst texture work known to man and PS1-level flat geometry.
Even the animation is bizarrely inconsistent. For cutscenes or talking faces, or certain battle animations, the animation is stiff and low-budget cheap. Otoh, you have really nice movement animation that reacts to signs by ducking under them, or rails by leaning against them.
Then on top of that you throw in the art direction which is mainly brown and lacking-color and you have a package that can be appealing at times (parts of the castle, parts of town) and incredibly ugly at other times (dungeons, certain other areas).
Also I just gotta say the texture work is a mess. The main characters all look great, but any side stuff was given no effort. For example in chapter 35 there's this one cutscene where a knight is talking to you and the camera is close up on his body and you can't tell what anything is. It's just a huge blur and PS1 level textures. From a distance the knight model looks fine, but get close up and the textures are just awful. You also see PS1 textures on the walls or objects or clothing scattered around. I dunno if the game just had a really really low budget or if they just said "textures, who cares" but the texture work is about on par with launch-era PS2 rpgs like Tsuganai or some PSP stuff.
But I also want to point out that the water is amaaazing. Especially for the Wii. It's really the stand out visual point of the game.
Music
Another area where I've seen and am sure there will be much debate for years to come.
In TLS, Uematsu has decided to forgo the Uematsu melodic style that he used in BD/LO and FF games for a movie-soundtrack style. What this means is that while you're playing the music always fits the game and helps make it more enjoyable. But it also means that without having distinctive "town A song, dungeon B song", outside of the main title tracks and one boss tune towards the end that actually sounds classic Uematsu, the rest of the music is not very memorable.
Personally I'm going to side with the side that feels the ost, while competent, is a letdown as I re-listened to the first 10 tracks of the LO ost after finishing TLS, and every single one of those tracks was on a completely different level than the TLS soundtrack. I'm a fan of distinctive rpg music and was looking forward to another great Uematsu score (I bought the BD & LO osts), but came out disappointed here.
Content
The game is short, yeah. The main story is about 20 hours and there's around 5-10 hours of sidestuff and a new game+ if you ever want to replay it. But you can't really compare it to an rpg game length because of the pacing. In TLS you're always run run running through the chapters at a brisk and exciting pace. This is much different than the stop and go pacing of a standard 30-50 hour rpg. So while you'll finish the game relatively quickly, you'll be glad it was kept short with great pacing.
Also there's this online mode or something, but that's not really my thing so I can't comment on it. If you like online gaming, going by what everyone else is saying it should be fun and add plenty of time.
Overall Thoughts
My experience with The Last Story was that the graphics were kind of bad, the music was a letdown, the story and characters were cliche and dumb, the gameplay was simplistic and easy, there wasn't any world to explore, and the game was very short. If I was to only look at the parts, I would give the game a 6/10.
But a game is more than the sum of its parts, and TLS is a game that proves that. For almost every negative, there's a positive on the other side of the coin. Short game? Great pacing; Streamlined combat? Fun combat. Stupid plot? Lots of explosions. Most importantly, the game was just a lot of fun. Really, really fun. And fun should count for something, shouldn't it? I mean a lot of the games that get 8s or 9s from review sites aren't even that fun to play
So at the end of the day, I think The Last Story is a bad game that's ridiculously fun to the point that it becomes an enjoyable good game. Sakaguchi has succeeded in making the first Michael Bay game. Just don't go looking for an rpg. For your own sake.
8/10
Some pics of the inconsistency of the visuals (in the same 2-3 mins):
Game looks good! (great water)
Game looks WTF (ps1 wall textures)
I get the feeling if you turn off the HD effects like the water, HDR, depth of field; the game would run perfectly on a straight port to the PSP. It really seems like they sacrificed some areas to get access to effects that should be beyond the Wii's tech ability. It's an interesting tradeoff, though one that makes the visuals come off as inconsistent.
Game looks good! (great water)
Game looks WTF (ps1 wall textures)
I get the feeling if you turn off the HD effects like the water, HDR, depth of field; the game would run perfectly on a straight port to the PSP. It really seems like they sacrificed some areas to get access to effects that should be beyond the Wii's tech ability. It's an interesting tradeoff, though one that makes the visuals come off as inconsistent.
Man, that review pretty much killed my expectations for the game but I really appreciate your honesty, Bebpo. Even though The Last Story now appears to be a below average game in terms of overall quality, the fun factor seems like it will make up for it.
Personally, I'm not much of a fan of level grinding or side quests but I do like accessible gameplay and exploration and some sense of challenge in my RPGs. It's a shame that the graphics,story, and music are a let down and the combat isn't as deep as some of us were expecting it to be. At least the pacing and boss fights are done well. Based on your impressions, XenoBlade seems like it is may end up being the more desired RPG. However, I'd still be interested in The Last Story but that would really depend on what other games are going to be available at the same time of release (assuming it does come out overseas).
Personally, I'm not much of a fan of level grinding or side quests but I do like accessible gameplay and exploration and some sense of challenge in my RPGs. It's a shame that the graphics,story, and music are a let down and the combat isn't as deep as some of us were expecting it to be. At least the pacing and boss fights are done well. Based on your impressions, XenoBlade seems like it is may end up being the more desired RPG. However, I'd still be interested in The Last Story but that would really depend on what other games are going to be available at the same time of release (assuming it does come out overseas).
ZephyrFate
Banned
I'm just disappointed it's not the super amazing title it was hyped to be. But then again, not much is these days. I actually prefer a game that is spread through word of mouth (Nier) over a game whose main creator made it seem like the cat's pajamas.
Still love the artstyle, and the music.
Still love the artstyle, and the music.
Attackthebase
Member
Thanks for the (brutally-honest) review of The Last Story. Before this thread, I expected a magical game, now I can expect an above-average RPG. I still hope Nintendo eventually translate and releases it over here in the States.
Though, Nintendo can release Xenoblade first. That's all I truly want from them. Just Xenoblade. Please, pretty please. :-(
Though, Nintendo can release Xenoblade first. That's all I truly want from them. Just Xenoblade. Please, pretty please. :-(
actually it reminds me of the song from the live action halo:Odst [/ur]commercial...well at least when it comes to the part you linked too, reminded me of the main theme of that song.SpacePirate Ridley said:
JordanLMiller
Member
Thank you for the review! Sounds somewhat disappointing about being transported straight to the next areas and in general being Mass Effect-like since I'm not a fan, but I'd still like to try it if it ever comes over.
Man, I wonder if I was playing the same game as you, Bebpo. The game is short, but I didn't have any problem with the story, textures, or anything like that. This is the Wii we're talking about. However, I do think that people need to go into this game expecting an action RPG. Though, I don't think they were trying to sell us anything but that, so you have to keep your expectations in check.
Another thing is they need to add more bosses to fight online. Five bosses definitely isn't enough.
Another thing is they need to add more bosses to fight online. Five bosses definitely isn't enough.
I am far from completing this game. But I have to agree with a few points bebpo pointed out.
1. Combat : Its just like Bebpo says. You have a limited amount of options (Slash the enemies yourself, hit em with arrows, command your allies to do magical attacks, spread the magical circle for buffs and debuffs) but still it doesnt matter as the game is fun (I mean how many options do you have in a game like gears. shooting, throwing grenades, meelee thats about it). But its definately more of an action RPG with strategy elements game then a traditional RPG. Its definately a great system. What I also like is the variety of killing things.
2. Overall controls : I hear a lot of criticisms because of the camera. But i dont seem to have any problems with it. I played with the classic controller and the left stick gives you control over the camera. I guess playing with the wiimote will make it a bit more difficult overall.
3. Graphics : This is where i dont really agree with a lot of people in this thread. I think the graphics are very good. While the character design is a bit iffy for my taste (JRPGs, duh) the character models are very high quality (non important characters look like shit. but thats the case for a lot of rpgs) and the animations are top notch imo. I do agree that the textures are sometimes bad. But overall the game looks very good. Especially the Ruli Town area looks amazingly well made.
4. Voiceacting : This is really where the game shines imo. The game has some top notch japanese voice acting and it uses it well. The in between battles banter (although sometimes you will hear the same line over and over again), the cutscenes and the chat in the tavern is all really great. Especially Seiren (a dual blade lady with a foul mouth and a drinking habit) and Quark (the bro in the game) stand out imo. The main characters (Elza and Kanan) on the other hand are pretty bland unfortunately.
cant comment on story as i am in the middle of things but up until now its pretty standard JRPG stuff. it reminds me of FF 9 a lot for some reason.
1. Combat : Its just like Bebpo says. You have a limited amount of options (Slash the enemies yourself, hit em with arrows, command your allies to do magical attacks, spread the magical circle for buffs and debuffs) but still it doesnt matter as the game is fun (I mean how many options do you have in a game like gears. shooting, throwing grenades, meelee thats about it). But its definately more of an action RPG with strategy elements game then a traditional RPG. Its definately a great system. What I also like is the variety of killing things.
For example there is a spider enemy in the middle of the game that eats up your party if you dont help them with your wind ability. The spider enemy is weak against fire attacks so normally you would take yuris to attack the spider with fire for maximum damage. But you can also just kill the spider alone after every party member is gone by attacking the back of the spider manually.
2. Overall controls : I hear a lot of criticisms because of the camera. But i dont seem to have any problems with it. I played with the classic controller and the left stick gives you control over the camera. I guess playing with the wiimote will make it a bit more difficult overall.
3. Graphics : This is where i dont really agree with a lot of people in this thread. I think the graphics are very good. While the character design is a bit iffy for my taste (JRPGs, duh) the character models are very high quality (non important characters look like shit. but thats the case for a lot of rpgs) and the animations are top notch imo. I do agree that the textures are sometimes bad. But overall the game looks very good. Especially the Ruli Town area looks amazingly well made.
4. Voiceacting : This is really where the game shines imo. The game has some top notch japanese voice acting and it uses it well. The in between battles banter (although sometimes you will hear the same line over and over again), the cutscenes and the chat in the tavern is all really great. Especially Seiren (a dual blade lady with a foul mouth and a drinking habit) and Quark (the bro in the game) stand out imo. The main characters (Elza and Kanan) on the other hand are pretty bland unfortunately.
cant comment on story as i am in the middle of things but up until now its pretty standard JRPG stuff. it reminds me of FF 9 a lot for some reason.
Geez, another case of people being way too hyped about a game!? Stop listening to japanese game devs ...
Anyway Bebpo, I can just totally agree on everything you've written. Really feel totally the same about the TLS like you do (I would also give it the exact same rating).
I thought the game was tons of fun but there just way too many things that annoyed me as well (just a few of them, what Bebpo is pretty much perfect already)
- Camera and character/enemy ai are just bad and annoying. When you hide directly in front of a enemy it suddenly goes into "?"-state and doesnt know where you are anymore. Collision detection is bad at times too and I hated it when characters were blocking my way and I had to go into blocking to be able to jump over them. At some points I freaked out because the camera or characters were just going on my nerves (in the slightly harder boss fights).
- Way too easy, this game really needs a very hard mode. It simply boils down to not really having to think about everything as you can just slash it down. This goes along with the very limited skills/attacks you and party have so its not like there exist many ways to do things differently. Except 1-2 bosses all of them were als pretty easy, and your characters are shouting how to beat the boss, so as long as you can actually understand japanese its a usually a no-brainer to kill the bosses. Wish this would have been optional.
- There are quite some cool looking weapons, I like the way they changed when you upgrade them (reminded me of Lineage2). Armor on the otherside is quite boring and totally limited. Most of them look way too much alike and I also spent half of the game with one armor and the other half of the game with another armor. The whole customization is obviously pretty awesome but kinda useless if they dont include enough different looking armors.
- Dungeons/Environments were okay, due to the color palett most of them looked pretty boring and you always felt like you have been there already. Thats probably the reason I loved the final dungeon so much because it looked totally different, it also had this "big-scale" environments like XB and that made it even more awesome.
- Recycling! The game has way too few different enemy types (prolly due to being such a short game anyway). Towards the end it annoyed me that you visited a dungeon for the 3rd (or was it even the 4th) time. Same goes for the endbosses, you will encounter some of them multiple times (especially towards the end).
- Some parts of the game looked really awesome, some others look just really bad. The water looks really spectecular and some of the effects used as well. However sometimes the textures are just so shitty, you just want to pretend you haven't seen them.
Overall I feel this game could have been improved in a lot of ways. However the game kinda turned out like I expected it. I didn't suck up all of Sakaguchis hype and so I wasn't really dissapointed at all. In the end the game is really fun, even despite its flaws. If I had the time right now, I would probably start another play through for higher level bosses and higher equipment upgrades. And since the game is rather short its not another 150h trip you have to take to complete the game another time.
Anyway Bebpo, I can just totally agree on everything you've written. Really feel totally the same about the TLS like you do (I would also give it the exact same rating).
I thought the game was tons of fun but there just way too many things that annoyed me as well (just a few of them, what Bebpo is pretty much perfect already)
- Camera and character/enemy ai are just bad and annoying. When you hide directly in front of a enemy it suddenly goes into "?"-state and doesnt know where you are anymore. Collision detection is bad at times too and I hated it when characters were blocking my way and I had to go into blocking to be able to jump over them. At some points I freaked out because the camera or characters were just going on my nerves (in the slightly harder boss fights).
- Way too easy, this game really needs a very hard mode. It simply boils down to not really having to think about everything as you can just slash it down. This goes along with the very limited skills/attacks you and party have so its not like there exist many ways to do things differently. Except 1-2 bosses all of them were als pretty easy, and your characters are shouting how to beat the boss, so as long as you can actually understand japanese its a usually a no-brainer to kill the bosses. Wish this would have been optional.
- There are quite some cool looking weapons, I like the way they changed when you upgrade them (reminded me of Lineage2). Armor on the otherside is quite boring and totally limited. Most of them look way too much alike and I also spent half of the game with one armor and the other half of the game with another armor. The whole customization is obviously pretty awesome but kinda useless if they dont include enough different looking armors.
- Dungeons/Environments were okay, due to the color palett most of them looked pretty boring and you always felt like you have been there already. Thats probably the reason I loved the final dungeon so much because it looked totally different, it also had this "big-scale" environments like XB and that made it even more awesome.
- Recycling! The game has way too few different enemy types (prolly due to being such a short game anyway). Towards the end it annoyed me that you visited a dungeon for the 3rd (or was it even the 4th) time. Same goes for the endbosses, you will encounter some of them multiple times (especially towards the end).
- Some parts of the game looked really awesome, some others look just really bad. The water looks really spectecular and some of the effects used as well. However sometimes the textures are just so shitty, you just want to pretend you haven't seen them.
Overall I feel this game could have been improved in a lot of ways. However the game kinda turned out like I expected it. I didn't suck up all of Sakaguchis hype and so I wasn't really dissapointed at all. In the end the game is really fun, even despite its flaws. If I had the time right now, I would probably start another play through for higher level bosses and higher equipment upgrades. And since the game is rather short its not another 150h trip you have to take to complete the game another time.
mjemirzian
Banned
If Bebpo thinks it's easy, it will probably put seasoned action game fans to sleep. Not that I expected differently. I didn't like ME2 so that's not a kind comparison to me.
I read somewhere that there is a hard mode after you beat the game?
I read somewhere that there is a hard mode after you beat the game?
Yeah, I thought the same thing too about the final dungeon. The art direction was really nice and more like an SMT game than Last Story. Between the cool visuals and good bosses, I thought it was a great chapter that kind of sets the template for how I'd like a sequel to be, if they ever made one.
And man, the game looks sooo much better in Dolphin
And man, the game looks sooo much better in Dolphin
Sammy Samusu
Member
Yes, Bebpo. Spill the true tea.
I have always said "it's a Mistwalker game", but people don't care because "OMG SAKAGUCHI" and that seems to be enough.
From what I have heard (and briefly played), Xenoblade is the true JRPG experience of this generation, but since it doesn't have Sakaguchi's name we don't get the same level of hype, which is a shame.
I have always said "it's a Mistwalker game", but people don't care because "OMG SAKAGUCHI" and that seems to be enough.
From what I have heard (and briefly played), Xenoblade is the true JRPG experience of this generation, but since it doesn't have Sakaguchi's name we don't get the same level of hype, which is a shame.
Let me go through Bebpo's review (I'm on Chapter 30 of the game now). I agree with some of his points and disagree fairly strongly on some.
Gameplay - Combat
- Combat's quite a bit deeper than Bebpo gives it credit for, but you're not forced to explore all your options due to the fairly easy difficulty. You have several different types of arrows. There are a few different types of slashes, the counter move, and a couple more moves for your allies. Gathering lets you do a few different things as well. It's a gross oversimplification to say you can "only do 4 things". That may be the case in Chapter 6 but it's not the case later. Also, positioning is important, but again, you don't have to explore that side of things due to the difficulty.
I am looking forward to a sequel because there's a ton of room to expand on the system and make it even better.
I will say I've gotten game over about 10 time so far, but half of those were in non-combat events. The game is really easy until Chapter 15, then some stuff becomes a decent challenge. A couple of the optional dungeon revisits are pretty tough (the ones with 5-star difficulty). The online RAID battles are also tough.
- On the controls, there are some issues with everything being mapped to A, but I mainly notice it when I tried to pick a cannon up and would go into Wind magic mode instead. Haven't had any issues at all with rolling through cover.
- There have been a couple times in my 18 hours where the camera has gotten funky, but a simple Z button press fixed it. There was also a visual glitch I could trigger in one spot (that didn't impact gameplay) where my character would start vibrating like crazy bouncing off a wall and an open door. Still, it's up to the standards you expect from a Nintendo non-EAD developed game in terms of quality on this front. Game hasn't crashed on me like the Metroid Prime games seem to do, for one example.
Gameplay - Non-combat
Totally disagree here. The main town is HUGE (the size of 4-5 RPG towns), plus there's a castle that's probably the size of 2-3 towns in other RPGs which you can freely explore after you get about halfway through the game. The beginning of the game is linear and then opens up. You can also jump back and revisit most of the dungeons you were in before. It's really not that much different than other RPGs without a world map like Chrono Trigger.
Now, I think this is going to be divisive because outside of the combat chapters you're not going to completely different locations, but you can explore the town/castle which combined is a pretty large environment. There's also at least a couple different points in the story where you can do 3-4 of the story chapters in any order.
Story/Characters
I can't judge this really until the English release comes out. I think calling the characters "paper-thin" and the story being like "Call of Duty" are both hyperbole. The settings and locations are generally interesting. It's not quite "on-rails" either, as there have been a few times where there's at least a couple different ways to play each chapter.
A lot of this would have benefited greatly from a typical Uematsu score in most of the event scenes.
Graphics
"PS1-level textures" is just pure hyperbole. Most of the game looks really good but there's a few medicore textures. You can tell they did cut some corners with some of the talking head scenes (there's one in particular with everyone in your party talking that would have been much better as an event scene). You're right that this is going to be divisive.
Music
Agreed that this will be divisive. Some of Uematsu's best tracks of the game are stashed away on the online mode. There's no themes for each dungeon, or character themes that repeat several times so the music isn't going to be remembered like a FF game in that regards.
Content
20 hours if you run straight through is probably right. On the shorter side for a RPG but it's nearly all fun and no frustration.
Online
I would check this out if I were you because it's one of the strongest points of the game. You could certainly make the argument that it has the best online MP of anything on the console. Again, plenty of room to expand, but I think the gameplay is really fresh here.
Gameplay - Combat
- Combat's quite a bit deeper than Bebpo gives it credit for, but you're not forced to explore all your options due to the fairly easy difficulty. You have several different types of arrows. There are a few different types of slashes, the counter move, and a couple more moves for your allies. Gathering lets you do a few different things as well. It's a gross oversimplification to say you can "only do 4 things". That may be the case in Chapter 6 but it's not the case later. Also, positioning is important, but again, you don't have to explore that side of things due to the difficulty.
I am looking forward to a sequel because there's a ton of room to expand on the system and make it even better.
I will say I've gotten game over about 10 time so far, but half of those were in non-combat events. The game is really easy until Chapter 15, then some stuff becomes a decent challenge. A couple of the optional dungeon revisits are pretty tough (the ones with 5-star difficulty). The online RAID battles are also tough.
- On the controls, there are some issues with everything being mapped to A, but I mainly notice it when I tried to pick a cannon up and would go into Wind magic mode instead. Haven't had any issues at all with rolling through cover.
- There have been a couple times in my 18 hours where the camera has gotten funky, but a simple Z button press fixed it. There was also a visual glitch I could trigger in one spot (that didn't impact gameplay) where my character would start vibrating like crazy bouncing off a wall and an open door. Still, it's up to the standards you expect from a Nintendo non-EAD developed game in terms of quality on this front. Game hasn't crashed on me like the Metroid Prime games seem to do, for one example.
Gameplay - Non-combat
Totally disagree here. The main town is HUGE (the size of 4-5 RPG towns), plus there's a castle that's probably the size of 2-3 towns in other RPGs which you can freely explore after you get about halfway through the game. The beginning of the game is linear and then opens up. You can also jump back and revisit most of the dungeons you were in before. It's really not that much different than other RPGs without a world map like Chrono Trigger.
Now, I think this is going to be divisive because outside of the combat chapters you're not going to completely different locations, but you can explore the town/castle which combined is a pretty large environment. There's also at least a couple different points in the story where you can do 3-4 of the story chapters in any order.
Story/Characters
I can't judge this really until the English release comes out. I think calling the characters "paper-thin" and the story being like "Call of Duty" are both hyperbole. The settings and locations are generally interesting. It's not quite "on-rails" either, as there have been a few times where there's at least a couple different ways to play each chapter.
A lot of this would have benefited greatly from a typical Uematsu score in most of the event scenes.
Graphics
"PS1-level textures" is just pure hyperbole. Most of the game looks really good but there's a few medicore textures. You can tell they did cut some corners with some of the talking head scenes (there's one in particular with everyone in your party talking that would have been much better as an event scene). You're right that this is going to be divisive.
Music
Agreed that this will be divisive. Some of Uematsu's best tracks of the game are stashed away on the online mode. There's no themes for each dungeon, or character themes that repeat several times so the music isn't going to be remembered like a FF game in that regards.
Content
20 hours if you run straight through is probably right. On the shorter side for a RPG but it's nearly all fun and no frustration.
Online
I would check this out if I were you because it's one of the strongest points of the game. You could certainly make the argument that it has the best online MP of anything on the console. Again, plenty of room to expand, but I think the gameplay is really fresh here.
The concept of a bad game that is ridiculously fun doesn't make any sense to me.
If the game is fun, then it's a good game.
You never played the biggest Mistwalker games (Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey) and correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not though), but you were quite excited about this game lately, with some great hyperboles being thrown around. You don't get to play the "I always knew" role now. I do remeber you were quite skeptical when the game was first announced, but in the last couple of months you stance changed completely.
If the game is fun, then it's a good game.
Sammy Samusu said:
You never played the biggest Mistwalker games (Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey) and correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not though), but you were quite excited about this game lately, with some great hyperboles being thrown around. You don't get to play the "I always knew" role now. I do remeber you were quite skeptical when the game was first announced, but in the last couple of months you stance changed completely.
Neon_Icarus
Member
Well, if the game is eventually brought over, then things like the difficulty level could potentially be improved. After all, we won't be seeing it until November at the earliest, so they have plenty of time.
the biggest mistwalker game is ash thoughheringer said:You never played the biggest Mistwalker games (Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey) and correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not though), but you were quite excited about this game lately, with some great hyperboles being thrown around. You don't get to play the "I always knew" role now. I do remeber you were quite skeptical when the game was first announced, but in the last couple of months you stance changed completely.
This game's design decisions seem as far from Xenoblade's as possible while still being able to call itself a JRPG.
I was following TLS from day 1 and I never thought, "Oh, this will be Xenoblade but better".
Xenoblade seems traditional but progressive whereas TLS seems to abandon many JRPG tradtions outright.
I want to play both but I have completely different expectations for each.
I was following TLS from day 1 and I never thought, "Oh, this will be Xenoblade but better".
Xenoblade seems traditional but progressive whereas TLS seems to abandon many JRPG tradtions outright.
I want to play both but I have completely different expectations for each.
AceBandage
Banned
heringer said:
I'd consider NMH (one of my favorite games of this generation) a bad game that is ridiculously fun.
The whole is better than the sum of its parts.
cooljeanius
Member
I think you have your cause and effect reversed...?farnham said:
flintstryker
Banned
see this here this is what i consider as rubbish argument, as far as am concerned if a game is fun then its good fullfuckingstop.AceBandage said:
Cow Mengde
Banned
May I ask what qualifies these as "HD" effects? Many of the effects lists were there in the GC era. HD not so much, but I seriously doubt the Wii is even running true HDR, nor does the HD in HDR stand for high definition. I personally hate DOF myself.
flintstryker said:
How is it a rubbish argument. There are lots of people who knowingly enjoy things they know to be of very poor quality, for various reasons. There are many bad movies which people enjoy watching, and many of the people who enjoy watching them don't consider them good movies either. The same applies for games. Zombies vs Ambulance is a fucking terrible game, but I couldn't stop playing it for a period of time.
Crash Station
Member
AceBandage said:
NMH is an interesting example. In any other game, some of the poor design decisions would bother me. For me, it actually adds to the atmosphere and makes the game better somehow. It's funny because NMH2 was better designed imo but wasn't as good for that very reason.
Anyway, thanks for the review Bebpo. Only part I'm really unsure about is this Mass Effect 2 mention again. I really need to try this before I consider buying it.
thefro said:
Yeah, I'm reading the new game+ is a lot better challenge. I'd be up for playing it but I also hear that you need to grind to get your weapons to +99 to beat the final bosses, which doesn't sound appealing to me. I dunno, maybe I'll do a new game+ and just turn it off before the end boss run.
I'm going to give the online a shot since I want to hear the online-exclusive music tracks you're talking about
Also I'm watching the few of the hidden chapters that I missed and I gotta say I wish they hadn't locked away entire game chapters to hidden quests. Especially if they contain much needed character development. I see the point that Sakaguchi basically took all the character development-only chapters that don't advance the plot and put them in as optional, so they wouldn't bring down the pacing of the game narrative if you did a straight story run. But it also makes the experience a lot more empty if you miss them. Definitely seems like a game that'd be worth using a guide first play to make sure you don't miss chapters. It's a shame that they're timing specific (I think) and you can't load up an endgame save and do all the ones you missed, going to try this out for myself.
And man, for those who've beaten it:
I somehow missed the bit in the 2nd part of the Zanburg final battle where the camera pans over to the blue wall with your teammates behind it. I did that entire fight solo and it took FOREVER. Must've been about 20 mins+ fight. Which is why I was surprised when I beat it that the credits didn't start rolling and there was ANOTHER 20 min+ fight after it. ^^;
For someone like me that sounds very good. Most of the time i despise character arcs especially since they always seem so disconnected from the rest of the plot. Symphonia singlehandly made me remove two characters from my squad after one of them. They felt much better when handled in Demon Stone.Bebpo said:
MYE said:
One of the games that comes to mind in this category is Goemon 64. From an objective standpoint, this game suffers from mediocre design, and horrible graphics. If I had to review it objectively, I'd give it a six out of ten. This doesn't stop it from being one of my favorite games of all time. For some reason, despite its flaws, all of the game's elements just seem to come together and work.
I'd imagine this is similar to folks like Bebpo are talking about.
Bel Marduk
Banned
MYE said:
I think he means it's "bad"/dissappointing if you have certain expectations for it, but the overall package is fun.
Umm...I guess it'll really depend when you play it. I like how he said the pacing's good and how the story's like a 2 hour summer blockbuster (movies I always tend to enjoy, even though they aren't always deep on the story/character factor).
Also I personally like how the graphics look even though there isn't always that much color in the game, which isn't anything huge for me.
When it comes to combat, I prefer action RPGs but even though Bebpo said it's kind of shallow, a lot of reviewers like on GameFAQs have said they liked the combat a lot so I'll probably like that too.
Online is also a big plus for me if the story's not all that long (although I take more time to finish the game as I like to spend my time. A NG+ sounds good to do if the length's not terribly long) especially since I loved MH3's online.
Anyway I bet I'll really like the game, but Xenoblade seems better overall.
Bebpo said:
Oh wow, someone linked me to Koulis video of the fight by accident and I noticed how he had the full party there. Just like you I did the whole fight alone (which is imoh even better than with a full party).
The only reason I replayed him is because my girlfriend told me you can get his
Zan Lance if you beat him with it. Zangurg in particular was so easy that made me cry. Wait for his attack animation to start, evade and attack him 1-4 times, then wait for the next animation to start and attack him again. Was a peace of cake (sadly).
Yeah, one thing I like to do after finishing rpgs is reading the guides/faqs/wikis and see all the easter eggs/secrets there are.
After reading up on all The Last Story stuff, it's pretty nice the little things things (like that) that are in the game considering the size and scope. I think all the little touches is what makes it stand out as a Sakaguchi game as opposed to just some a-rpg by any other dev.
I hope Sakaguchi doesn't retire and makes more games with Mistwalker. Though I'd prefer if he stuck to lighter stuff. The best parts of TLS story-wise imo are the tiny bits of comedic touches here and there. When the game lets its serious face down and just has fun, it's nice. I feel like Sakaguchi is a kid at heart and writes stories for 13 year old kids. When he does lighter stuff about adventures like Blue Dragon, it comes off as genuine with fun characters like maru-maru and poop snake, but when he tries to do serious adult drama like most of LO and most of TLS it just doesn't seem to work that well and the emotional attachment the player is supposed to have to the characters never seems there.
If I could have anything I wanted, I'd really like Blue Dragon 2 on Wii by Sakaguchi x Artoon x Mistwalker again But I'd be ok with Last Story 2 as well, mainly because I think there's a ton of room for improvement and because next time I'd know what I'm getting into and not go in expecting a real FF/BD/LO-style rpg.
After reading up on all The Last Story stuff, it's pretty nice the little things things (like that) that are in the game considering the size and scope. I think all the little touches is what makes it stand out as a Sakaguchi game as opposed to just some a-rpg by any other dev.
I hope Sakaguchi doesn't retire and makes more games with Mistwalker. Though I'd prefer if he stuck to lighter stuff. The best parts of TLS story-wise imo are the tiny bits of comedic touches here and there. When the game lets its serious face down and just has fun, it's nice. I feel like Sakaguchi is a kid at heart and writes stories for 13 year old kids. When he does lighter stuff about adventures like Blue Dragon, it comes off as genuine with fun characters like maru-maru and poop snake, but when he tries to do serious adult drama like most of LO and most of TLS it just doesn't seem to work that well and the emotional attachment the player is supposed to have to the characters never seems there.
If I could have anything I wanted, I'd really like Blue Dragon 2 on Wii by Sakaguchi x Artoon x Mistwalker again
But I'd be ok with Last Story 2 as well, mainly because I think there's a ton of room for improvement and because next time I'd know what I'm getting into and not go in expecting a real FF/BD/LO-style rpg.VivaciousSoul
Member
Sounds like a game I would buy for NES, Genesis, or SNES before the internet where all that mattered was if I was entertained or not.