The Last Story

TheMadGamer

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Have any of you played The Last Story on the Wii?

I haven't played a JRPG in probably over a decade now but this one caught my eye. The art direction of the enviornments has a 'western' tone to it and the anime-influenced art style of the characters show a lot of restraint (i.e. spikey hair-do only goes 40 feet into the air insteand of 80)

I'm interested in the gameplay features as the box doesn't really list them and the Gamespot Review I linked above is too long for me to watch (limited band-with thing). Besides, I'm more interested in the player experiences here on this forum than anything a gamespot reviewer might say.
 
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Sadly, I haven't been able to play this yet, even though Mistwalker (the company who created the game) is one of my favorite RPG developers. I just haven't bought it yet. No real reason.

I imagine it's great though. No doubt about it. From the little I've seen and read about it, it looks stellar.

Check out Xenoblade Chronicles for the Wii as well. Another fantastic RPG.

I bought a Wii just to play those 2 games.
 
@Fluent Thanks for the remarks.

If you get it and play it I'd be very interested in your feedback.

Some things that turned me from being a rabid fan of JRPGs to never playing them at all are:

-Art direction, at first glance, not so much an issue with what I've seen with this game. I could tolerate the 'anime' art direction of early JRPGs during the 8, 16, and 32 bit era game machines. But once worlds started being rendered in 3D and the teen-aged males with their spikey hair-dos and females with their must-have-an-impossibly-tiny-waste-accompanied-with-impossibly-huge-boobies became a gigantic turn off.

-World exploration that is constantly interrupted by random unavoidable monster encounters is something that I just do not have the patience for anymore and won't for the next 719 lifetimes.

-Too many and too long uninterruptable QTEs. Too many JRPGs put too much of their time and energy into movie making and not making their RPG-niche improve its gameplay experience.

-Menus that have you constantly fiddling in the menus instead of playing the game. Common tasks should be quick to execute. I just can't play another console JRPG where I spent a lot of time in one sub-menu or another, over and over again, for hours upon hours... just can't take that anymore lol.
 
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Well from what you say, it appears The Last Story will be enjoyable for you, because it doesn't have most of those negative elements you posted.

I would also recommend, again, Xenoblade Chronicles for the Wii. It has a pretty huge open-world, no random encounters (you see all the enemies on the map), a good art direction, and working in menus is pretty simple, however, there are some issues when trying to equip new gear. You're going to be looking at the equipment screen quite a bit and it's not exactly simple to compare items to one another. Other than that though, it's a fantastic game.

I really have no problems with JRPGs. I grew up playing them extensively as a kid and still enjoy them in adulthood. Most of the JRPGs I have played have been very tasteful, well-crafted games that have kept me entertained for long periods of time. Some of my favorite games of all time have been with spikey-haired protagonists (Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 7) and girls with big boobs (Lost Odyssey) :D. To each their own though.

But anyway, I will be playing this game soon enough. Gotta finish up my Oblivion play through and then playing some Skyrim with the DLCs installed, or possibly Morrowind. In between all that I will try and find some time to fire up my Wii and play this game...
 
I got about 1/3 through Xenoblade Chronicles before I couldn't take anymore. I'm sure it's a fine game if you really like jRPGs, but to me it felt like the same grindy, goofy jRPG style as most of them.

I haven't really liked any JRPGs since the SNES days, but I'm pretty sure that's due to the way my tastes have changed rather than the actual games.
 
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But once worlds started being rendered in 3D and the teen-aged males with their spikey hair-dos and females with their must-have-an-impossibly-tiny-waste-accompanied-with-impossibly-huge-boobies became a gigantic turn off.
Not so impossible
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But anyway, I will be playing this game soon enough. Gotta finish up my Oblivion play through and then playing some Skyrim with the DLCs installed, or possibly Morrowind. In between all that I will try and find some
time to fire up my Wii and play this game…

Well if you have the inclination and the time, I'll be really interested in reading about your actual gameplay experience and thoughts. Thanks for the tip on Xeno I'll check it out.
 
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