Besides playing around with common themes (the land is dying, for instance, basically for the same reasons that the land was dying in Final Fantasies III V, and the Outsider's storyline feels an awful lot like a mish-mash of the Jenova/Lifestream plotline from Final Fantasy VII), the storyline is incredibly straightforward. I absolutely do not mean that as an insult indeed, this game has one of the clearest senses of purpose in the whole of Final Fantasy-dom, finally jettisoning the obscurantist jargon that has become de rigeur in most Final Fantasy games. Indeed, if anything, it recalls the clearness of Chrono Trigger, and suggests that Sakaguchi was a bigger force in that game's development than I had originally thought. The Last Story's plot basically feels like the last 15 years of Final Fantasy simply didn't happen, or that there was some sort of alternate universe where Sakaguchi continued to make Final Fantasy games himself on Nintendo consoles. It might be incredibly earnest about its ambitions (indeed, the game is at times almost embarrassingly earnest, which I for one can't help but admire, as I'll take earnestness over obliqueness any day of the week), basically saying that Genocide Is Bad and Killing the Planet Is Bad, but it's so much more effective than most JRPG stories that it can't help but feel like a complete revelation.
It's also helped along by Sakaguchi's apparent willingness to pull out all the stops on this game. Indeed, you can basically hear the gears inside the Wii churning as it struggles to keep up with the visual cornucopia on display. If there was a legitimate complaint to be made here, it's that the graphics, while beautiful, are in perhaps too muted of a palette (while it looks better than Twilight Princess, it does share its propensity for inappropriate bloom lighting), and that the Wii often struggles to keep up with the game, especially in complex battle sequences.
Like a good many modern JRPGs, the game is pretty much built around its battle system but unlike most of these games, the battles are actually outstanding, and they're not the only thing that the gameplay encompasses. Battling is comprised, again, of a pastiche of elements. It's got the hack and slash feeling of a Mana game, the "area of effect" spells of Dragon Age, the top-down strategizing of an RTS, the cover-based shooting of Mass Effect and the limit breaks and techs of Chrono Trigger. With that many elements, then, it was a complete shock to me that it didn't buckle under the weight of all these elements a la Brutal Legend. Instead, it all synthesizes together into an incredibly satisfying, intelligent, and most importantly, original whole. You're never just wildly swinging your sword around you need just as many strategic considerations as even the best Final Fantasy games. It feels like a better version of what Final Fantasy XII was going for, and I have no qualms about claiming that it's the best battle system in the entire FF series. And while the combat can be on the easy side under default settings, simply changing the attacks from automatic to manual makes the battles far more difficult and engaging.
The game might be "linear" in that it has set chapters and a set story order, but that really just allows good storytelling to flourish (side note, the translation and localization, as done by Nintendo UK and a team of ridiculously endearing British voice actors, is about the best bit of translation work done since the era of Ted Woolsey). Instead, the game pulls a page out of the Grand Theft Auto playbook and allows you free reign to explore an outrageously detailed and beautiful city in Lazulis. True, there's maybe not a whole lot to do in this city, but simply exploring its back alleys and European charm is more than enough. The game doesn't have the world-spanning travel of a Final Fantasy VII, but it does present a convincing local (fantasy) geography, and Sakaguchi's always in it to entertain the game never plops you in one place for too long.
In fact, one of the craziest criticisms against the game has been its length, which is completely asinine. Considering that some Final Fantasy games are a good 30 hours too long, the fact that The Last Story clocks in at 20 hours is about perfect. It's about the same length as Chrono Trigger, and while it doesn't have the same incident per second ratio as that game (few games could, in this day and age), it's about the breeziest feeling JRPG in generations. Twenty hours is basically the perfect length for a JRPG, and the fact that this is a criticism against the game's lack of "epicness" demonstrates just how histrionic the FF series and JRPGs in general have become.
The game isn't perfect, of course I don't think Sakaguchi has ever made a perfect game. But it's interesting, and it's about the best distillation of JRPG design in some time. It's a game that, despite its modern touches, is for the converted. For those of us who have been waiting for the genre to do that impossible balancing act of paying homage to the Golden Age while still feeling accessible and modern and able to excise those elements which have lost their usefulness, this is that game. Call it a Final Fantasy game and there's a good chance that a new Golden Age might have happened. This is absolutely essential playing, and one of the best role-playing games in years.
