2012 | Mistwalker | Wii
Every time I see the logo for Mistwalker attached to something, I get a little giddy on the inside. It invokes the feeling of being swept off of my feet by the emotional rollercoaster that is Lost Odyssey; one of my favorite JRPGs of that generation. So naturally, I had to try out the rest of the catalog at some point. Hoping for at least a fraction of the experience that I got from playing Lost Odyssey, I dusted off my Wii U and sat down to play The Last Story.
Now before we get to the game itself, I should say that I am a massive sucker for the “console gimmick”. You know? The oddly implemented motion controls that were questionably implemented at the start of the PS3 and Wii era. Clumsily attempting to not crash land your dragon into the nearest mountain region, or the ever classic “You’re now driving a car”. While it isn’t always the best tool for the job, this specific bit of controller gimmick always makes me smile. So when one of the first things that The Last Story made me do was pointing my Wii-mote, or in my case Classic Controller, at the screen to play spot the clue in first person, I was grinning from ear to ear.
The Last Story wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I was familiar with the combat being heavily action oriented, however I wasn’t quite ready for just how much arcade spirit the game had in it. From the moment you hit new game, to the moment where you strike down the final boss, it blasts you from stage to stage, giving you hordes of enemies to swipe down with a simplistic yet intuitive design to gameplay. It scraps the excess of stat management and party optimization for a more simplistic big number do big damage type of RPG. This greatly compliments the action, since the menu rarely interrupts the hacking and slashing of various knights, reptiles and Ganondorfs long enough to halt the pacing. You basically pick up a sword, see if it has bigger numbers than the sword you’re currently using, and if yes on bigger numbers, you equip the sword to do bigger numbers of damage.
And with parties as large as six or seven members prancing around the battlefield like drunken stray bullets, it makes it ever easier to quickly boost a party member to the level you want them to be. It makes the whole experience feel remarkably refreshing to interact with.
The pacing of the game does bring me to a bit of a caveat, though. Playing The Last Story feels like you’re playing a game like Final Fantasy IX, like a Time Crisis game. The (last) story is constantly shifted in high gear and with the amount of characters, concepts and worldbuilding it has to do, most of it ends up in a footnote or in one of the three moments where the game catches its breath before going into another sprint.
The Last Story introduces us to our main character, Zael, who with his merry band of mercenaries is trying to make a name for themselves in the kingdom of Lazulis. During one of their sorties, Zael and everybody’s favorite town drunk, Syrenne, get overwhelmed by a horde of skeletons. After a struggle, Syrenne is fatally wounded by an arrow. This causes Zael to curse his fate so much that an entity known as The Outsider gives him the power to revive his fallen comrade. This gives Zael the ability to use Gathering; an all in one stop shop for all your revival, magical and taunting needs. It serves as a core mechanic in the game to revive fallen comrades for a limited amount of time, absorb damage to unleash status effects, and to be used as a global taunt to get every enemy inside upset enough to want to reduce your HP to zero.
The story thereafter passes like a blur. After some hefty binge drinking with the gang, they get recruited to serve as security detail for a wedding between the counts’ niece and one of the most irritating individuals to ever exist, where you find out that the girl you rescued from the guard earlier is actually the niece you’re supposed to protect. Ganondorf proceeds to crash the wedding with his fellow Ganondorfs…. Gandorves? After which the princess gets kidnapped.
A rescue attempt ensues.
A rescue attempt succeeds.
After which we get thrown in prison, because the irritating man tried to frame you for kidnapping. This led to one of the funnier moments in the livestream, where I had to explain to the people asking “Why are you still in prison?” that I wasn’t still in prison.
I was in prison again.
I won’t go into too much detail on the story as the game is fantastic at taking you along for the ride, and it’s a great experience to have. The point I’m trying to get to, though, is that due to the pacing of it, a lot of information gets lost on the first time through it, leaving the overall story feel kind of flat in certain areas. There are some brilliant ideas surrounding the Arganan bloodline and the power of the Outsider, but I feel like it never quite gets the screen time to feel fully fleshed out. I also never realized how important nametags are to help you remember the names of all the characters. It took me a good couple of hours to remember all of my party’s names and that also didn’t do the story flow any favors. This is something that I’m a bit particular on, though, since I’m terrible at remembering names to begin with.
Once the credits rolled however, it did make me want to replay it to see what I missed in the chaos.
The whole experience is backed up by a fantastic medieval backdrop that felt like a mix of Vagrant Story’s dark gothic architecture with the sci-fi magic tech from Final Fantasy XII. The set pieces look incredible and the variety of scenery is a rather welcome sight. It would’ve been really easy to simply reuse castle_interior_4 for most of the battles, but instead we get teleported to magical dimensions, overgrown forests and a fire temple.
It uses the relatively short length to its advantage by taking you on an extensive tour of the vastly diverse biomes that the world has to offer. There’s even a fight which takes place in your own head and then it doesn’t. Wow.
The entire package is supported by an incredible OST composed by the legendary Nobuo Uematsu, with an absolute beast of a final boss theme to get you excitedly screaming and yelling along as you slowly peel away at the gigantic health bar.
All in all, The Last Story isn’t Mistwalkers finest. It’s difficult to follow up on such a strong game as Lost Odyssey. However, it brings a refreshing spring breeze to the table with its intuitive gameplay, loveable and dorky cast of characters and a fresh dosage of banana peel trick shots. The voice actors sound like they’re having a blast at all times, with banter flying across like precision stabs. Particularly between Lowell and Syrene. If you have a Wii or Wii U laying about and are looking for a fun, action packed experience, you can’t really miss with The Last Story.
Banana Bonanza Blaster/10
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