Directed and designed by Hironobu Sakaguchi, who is pretty much responsible for the majority of Final Fantasy, he pulled the same move again of using an ironic title for a video game. Top it off with songs composed by Nobuo Uematsu, and you've got a great duo working together once again on something that has plenty of potential with the combat system, but lacks in other factors.
Let me explain. The basic story involves a group of mercenaries having a rough life but they do their best to support and protect others. Soon enough, the house of Arganan recognizes their tactical strategies and courage, and starts enlisting them into the aid of defeating the Gurak once and for all, who are an invading army of monsters.
These characters's personalities and behaviours might have been affected a bit negatively because of the voice acting which has been provided for the western audience. British, Scottish and Irish(feel free to correct me) voices are used here to enlarge your stay at Lazulis Island mainly. While a Japanese option has been left out, and some of the actors just did not feel right, I can't say that I didn't enjoy this unusual decision in a market where JRPG's are usually translated into the obvious language of American instead.
Although the game starts out strong with it's presentation and linear direction, the further I got, the more I felt that more effort could had been made with things such as dungeon design, the amount of abilities available plus it's eventual breakdown of the storyline. It's a very predictable plot, except for a twist at the end.
It does feel like a brother or a sister towards latter Final Fantasies. It's got a fantasy setting alright, with a typical protagonist group and an antagonist, plenty of cut scenes and dialogue, pretty graphics(I was especially impressed with the lightning effects in some areas) and traditional RPG elements such as shops, save points and leveling up.
However, The Last Story is also a new take for the RPG genre in many ways, and the best example to use is by looking at it's combat system. There is a variety usage of overcoming situations and defeating enemies. In some battles, you can at first take down a few enemies by sneaking upon them, or by sniping them out at a distance. Most of the time you will be controlling Zael as the main character while you will soon be able to command the others in their way of fighting.
While this sounds entertaining(and it is), the full potential of the combat system has not been used in here yet, as there are so many more ways of playing around with it in my opinion. One point that I should remind to say is that there weren't many abilities available, and while some of the terrain design being used to fight on was fun, battlefields like those should had been more common! It needed more challenge towards the gamers and more creativity and balance between assault, stealth and defensive types of fights!
Speaking of the terrain, the game implements a terrain advantage system linked with the spells being used onto the ground, allowing Zael the power to diffuse these circles of mysticism and grant helpful side effects. More importantly, he is also infused with the Gathering ability, which will draw the attention of enemies nearby towards him, so that his allies will have time and space as their advantage, a huge help essential into winning the boss battles during the final chapters. It's an easy game until these happen.
Zael would sometimes also have to forcefully look around for a certain object in order to continue, much like I experienced with Metroid: Other M, a dissapointing title, but here it isn't as obnoxious. And oddly enough, you can also bump into about 95% of the people you encounter, and while they might say something about it, you can do this basically forever for no reason. Weird Japanese programming...
The inventory system was managed uninspiring and dull with it's available equipment and items. I did not even feel motivated to use this. The same goes for any side quests I might have missed while wandering around Lazulis City. The location isn't terrible, especially when looking at it's visuals and how "alive" it sometimes seems, but I just wanted to move on with the main story.
And ultimately, none of the characters where outstanding or memorable enough. While The Last Story offers an interesting varied style of gameplay with some impressive scenery and music, it is not a great game. There is certainly a lot of room for improvement in it's storyline, characters, depth and creativity.
Rating: 7.7
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