#oneaday Day 767: Probably Not the Last Post I Will Write About The Last Story

The Last Story came out today in Europe. For the uninitiated, this is one of the “big three” Japanese role playing games that many are hailing as the Wii’s last great hurrah before it goes off and has a well-earned break ahead of its younger brother’s arrival. Said “big three” includes the already-released Xenoblade Chronicles, which is out in North America next month and which I have already discussed extensively elsewhere on this blog; The Last Story, which I will educate you on today; and Pandora’s Tower which I confess to not knowing a great deal about at this time. The three games have little to do with one another save for the fact that they’re published by Nintendo in Japan and Europe, though in North America it’s a somewhat more complex situation.

It’s hard not to see The Last Story as director Hironobu Sakaguchi and composer Nobuo Uematsu making a gentle jab at the Final Fantasy series which they both cut their teeth on, and which has now passed into the hands of a completely new team. Even the name means the same thing — Final Fantasy, The Last Story, do you see what they did there?

Far from being a throwback to these industry veterans’ glory days, however, The Last Story manages to take the JRPG genre and, like Xenoblade Chronicles, give it a mighty kick up the rectum. It does this by taking almost everything you thought you knew about JRPG conventions and throwing it all out of the window.

The most obvious difference from “traditional” JRPGs is the combat system. While old-school JRPGs favour abstract turn-based systems, The Last Story‘s combat is somewhat closer to an action game. With elements of real-time strategy. And stealth games. And third-person shooter.

While that may sound like something of a mess, in practice it works very well. Here’s how.

You take control of the game’s protagonist Zael. Despite having a variety of weird and wonderful characters in your party and being able to equip them as you please, you’re always in direct control of Zael. He can run around the battlefield, take cover behind objects, attack enemies, leap out from cover to do powerful “Slash” attacks, fire his crossbow, look around for structural weak points and order magic users to bring them tumbling down, release the power in allies’ “magic circles” for various special effects and even — a little later, anyway — give direct orders to his allies.

Rather than thrusting the player into random combats a la Final Fantasy or having enemies scattered around the field a la Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story favours scripted battles which occur at predefined moments. This means that enemies have formations and arrangements which the player must study from the top-down view which pops up before each battle. Allies may offer suggestions on appropriate strategies in which to proceed, which may then be followed or ignored at will, as the party AI will react to how aggressive the player’s approach to combat is.

The trouble with prescripted combat scenarios, however, is that it leaves little scope for level grinding or powering up characters, meaning that if a difficult situation presents itself later in the game, there’s no means of beefing yourself up to make it easier. Or is there? Well, yes there is. The Last Story gets around this issue with occasional “Summoning Circles” at which it’s possible to call up a group of enemies appropriate to the area the party is in and then kick the shit out of them. It’s a slightly odd system, but it does at least get around the problem outlined above while avoiding frustrating random battles.

Outside of combat, there’s plenty of interest, too. Like BioWare’s divisive Dragon Age II, the game appears to largely be set in and around a large city rather than being a globetrotting adventure. Sure, you get to go off and visit other locations throughout the course of the story, but the city of Lazulis is very much a “hub” from which everything else extends, similar to how Kirkwall is in Dragon Age II.

Or, I should say, how Kirkwall should have been in Dragon Age II. Something just didn’t feel quite “right” about the whole world we saw in Dragon Age II. Perhaps it was the copypaste areas. Perhaps it was the fact that all the residents of the city seemed to be perpetually standing around doing nothing. Perhaps it was the fact that you spent more time staring at the minimap than the 3D view itself. But Kirkwall didn’t feel very “alive”.

Lazulis, on the other hand, feels very alive. While the number of NPCs you can interact with directly is somewhat limited, there is plenty of “background colour” going about its business. Women scold children, guards patrol, merchants hawk their wares. And rather than being a passive observer, Zael slinks past people, squeezes down alleyways, shoves past people who are in his way when running, bangs his head on low-hanging signs and goes “ouch” and even has the option of tipping up fruit baskets and then watching in amusement as passersby slip over.

There’s a ton to do in Lazulis even when not following the main plot, too. There’s an arena in which to fight, plenty of sidequests to pursue and numerous hidden objects to collect. Rather than being a meaningless collection quest, however, said hidden objects provide the means of acquiring new items, upgrading weapons and gaining access to additional dyes for clothing.

Because last of all, The Last Story provides an impressive amount of character customization, particularly by JRPG standards. It’s possible to dye each part of a character’s outfit, remove certain parts of it to create the look you want and even to make certain parts invisible altogether. Couple that with the equipment upgrade system, which causes armour to change its physical appearance according to how much it’s been worked on, and you have a band of heroes which the player feels they can truly take ownership of.

I’m about six hours into the game so far and having a blast. The gameplay is solid, the battle system is less bewildering and daunting than descriptions may make it appear, the cast is endearing (thanks in part to the use of English voice actors, much like Xenoblade), the graphics are lovely (not just “lovely for the Wii”, but just plain “lovely”) and the story is interesting. While you can clearly see it’s a JRPG from the ludicrous haircuts that some of the characters are sporting, there’s plenty of positive influence from Western titles here too — customization, choice and a good degree of freedom. I’m getting an inexplicable Baldur’s Gate vibe from some of it — perhaps it’s just the city-based medieval-ish political story.

I’ll be looking forward to seeing what the game has to offer. In the meantime, if you’re considering trading in that Wii that’s been gathering dust for months — don’t. At least not until you’ve played this and Xenoblade Chronicles. And, if the quality of these two titles is anything to go by, the upcoming Pandora’s Tower.