The Last Story (2011)

The Last Story left me with mixed feelings.

On the one hand, I appreciated the fairy-tale atmosphere and the gameplay, which I find interesting, especially the battle system, which blends action and strategy in a fairly original way. The crossbow also adds a distinctive touch that I found fun to use.

On the other hand, I was disappointed to see how the setting isn’t given the attention it could have deserved. The story, while starting from interesting ideas, doesn’t manage to maintain cohesion. The narrative unfolds more like a series of separate episodes, interrupted by the classic text-based cutscenes typical of Mistwalker, and overall the effect is that of a kind of collage of situations that don’t always fit together well within the broader picture. A real shame, because I also liked the characters: eccentric, a bit unconventional, all with interesting quirks that could have made them far more impactful than the plot ultimately manages to allow. My favorites are Mirania, Calista, and Lowell.

I’ll skip over the plot twist, because I honestly could have done without it altogether.

There are only a few tracks I would probably listen to on loop; usually with Uematsu I feel much safer. Another big disappointment. 'Toberu mono' is beautiful, though.

Overall, it gave me the impression of being a game that "is smart, but doesn’t apply itself." Good ideas, but they remain just ideas. From the outside, it really feels like one of those titles that seems to have all the right ingredients for me to like it, and that’s what leaves me with the most bitter aftertaste.

I don't play a lot of JRPGs, but this had been sitting on my shelf for a while and it felt like the right time to give it a shot. It's a solid, somewhat unremarkable, game with a battle system that I enjoyed thoroughly.

The combat is realtime action-RPG stuff, but you can give commands to your party members, which allows some strategy. You can disperse other's area of attack spells to create alternate effects, or just run through those spell circles to set your sword on fire or whatever. You can run up walls for powerful downward slashes, and there is even a Gears-lite cover system.

Most importantly, you have a power called Gathering. When engaged this allows you to revive fallen teammates, but it also attracts the attention of all the enemies on the battlefield. You can use this to create distractions, giving your spellslinging buddies time to go buck wild  with their colour nonsense.

The game starts a little slow, introducing the battle system, but not really letting you use it due to constant cutscene interruptions. The story also starts a little slow, but there is a romantic focus that worked for me because I like romantic shit. Unfortunately this gets sidelined for the middle portion of the game.

The Last Story is a very linear game, which probably won't work for a lot of people. It is also very short by JRPG standards (it took me 25 hours). There is a city hub that is a maze of alleyways that is fun to run around in. It is filled with fetch quests, but there is no quest log, so good luck remembering who wanted those bananas.

For me, the linearity was one of its strengths. You hit the 'point of no return' with about 7 or 8 hours of gameplay left, and that final chunk has a great sense of momentum. You are basically pushed down a series of hallways into one encounter after the other, only stopping for the many cutscenes, which by this point I was geniunely invested in. On paper the characters and story are nothing special, but at some point I started to care, and a couple of touching moments towards the end made my eyes a little watery (oh shit, Zael getting knighted with Dagran's sword, oh and Zael and Calista watching the meteor shower, but instead of awkwardly trying to touch her like the beginning, you now just sweetly hold each other... my fucking heart was soaring). Also, the story is pretty simple, and never verges on incomprehensible, which can often be an issue with these types of games.

Overall, this is just a very good entry-level JRPG. The combat is easy to understand, with new mechanics being added gradually, all of which are useful. The story is simple, yet effective, and the characters are all likeable enough. It's a pity it is stuck on the Wii and can be very expensive, but here's hoping for a remaster or spiritual sequel at some point.

It is absolutely fitting that the director of The Last Story, Hironobu Sakaguchi, is the creator of the Final Fantasy series. After all, The Last Story is a RPG that, unlike the latest releases of the famous, and ironically endless, Square Enix franchise, develops its ideas and characters in a mature, but modest way.

The plot is pretty basic: Zael, the young protagonist, encounters a beautiful but strange girl in the market of a city one day. And, after helping her escape from the local guards, falls in love before discovering that she is, in fact, the princess of the kingdom, Calista.

What makes The Last Story special is how this simple story is told. The romance between Zael and Calista, for example, would certainly be one of the most irritating and unnecessary elements of the plot if it were treated in a juvenile and exaggerated way, but that does not happen here. The love relationship between the two grows little by little. At the beginning of the game, they just feel a natural attraction to each other, but with the powerful experiences they eventually share, with the adventures they live together, and mainly because of the great deal of understanding that one always offers to the other, their relationship becomes something special: it becomes palpable.

Zael himself is a much more complex character than he appears to be at first. His dream is to become a knight, so he can be able to protect the people from the evil that was inflicted upon his family when he was a child. However, his journey modifies him subtly, making him see the universe around him in a different light. So, when the opportunity to make his dream come true arises, his hesitation sounds not only natural, but correct to the player.

Another positive aspect of the story is the brilliant way in which Sakaguchi manages to interconnect all the plots in the game. The transitions between the political machinations of the court, intending to poison the relationship between Zael and Calista, the war against the inhabitants of the distant continent of the Gurak, and the plot about the deterioration of nature and the imminent end of the world are seemingless, thus preventing the game from losing its focus.

And the same serious and realistic approach to the love story is also given to all these plots, which start slowly but evolve over time. The war between continents, for example, does not bring one side more correct than the other; both races (humans and guraks) have extremely similar motivations and commit similar atrocities. Political intrigue sounds logical and necessary to move the most important pieces to war and the destruction of nature comes as the natural consequence of so much battle, hatred and death.

The villains in the The Last Story stand out because they occasionally show traces of rationality, making them more realistic: they are not evil because they are evil, but have excellent reasons for acting the way they do. The motivations of Count Arganan, for example, are absolutely understandable: he is the leader of the human race and has the duty to watch over their future. His relentless pursuit of a power capable of annihilating the rival and hostile race is justified. And even his most absurd moment – the solo attack on a dormant alien entity – is understandable because of the apparent lack of alternatives. The vile and cowardly Jirall also has his hostility towards the protagonist well justified, after all, Zael is stealing not only his wife, but also his entire future at court. Now, the villain Zangurak (the lost twin brother of Ganondorf from The Legend of Zelda) appears more one-dimensional, although this is due much more to his little presence throughout the adventure than by lack of conflicts or a weak personality.

Structured in the form of chapters and moving at a steady pace, the only problem of the story is precisely this, the fact that some subplots remain underdeveloped. In the end, it becomes apparent that more time should have been reserved for several characters to grow and have their stories told: in another words, The Last Story should have been longer. The secondary missions of Mirania and Yurick, Zael’s mercenary companions, serve as good examples. These missions – which are, in fact, entire chapters – develop not only their personality, but also some of the main themes. However, the rest of the mercenary group – Lowell, Syrenne and Dagran – have no chapters of their own. With the exception of the latter, since his story has a strong connection with the main one, this lack of development is felt and represents a great loss of opportunity to further expand the narrative.

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