The Last Story

[Hong Cong Phooie]

o god i would love a copy of the last story...does anyone know if there is any news on if it will come to the states or if not if there will be a translated version?

i have been wanting to play this game since i saw the first screens and videos of it....please let me know

[Gare]

No news yet. It might come out in the US, but they haven't really said anything specific as far as I know. If it makes you feel any better, while the game is quite enjoyable and far from terrible, it's not that good. I was pretty hyped up myself, and was a bit disappointed.

[jamallego]

waiting for these game..... and xenoblade... hoping they translate them

[Hong Cong Phooie]

No news yet. It might come out in the US, but they haven't really said anything specific as far as I know. If it makes you feel any better, while the game is quite enjoyable and far from terrible, it's not that good. I was pretty hyped up myself, and was a bit disappointed.

yea but come on the graphics for it look crazy good...one of the best i have ever seen for the wii...and xenoblade looks pretty good

[Gare]

So what? Graphics alone don't make for a good game. Yes, it does look pretty for a Wii game, but the gameplay itself didn't blow me away.

[Hong Cong Phooie]

really...what about it that made it that bad?

[Gare]

Read my first post in this thread. I never said it was bad. I enjoyed the game, but to me, it's just not "holy shit this is fucking awesome" kind of good like Xenoblade. I felt combat was rather simplistic and extremely easy. One of the easiest RPGs I've ever played, actually. Plus it's almost impossible to die because you can revive up to 5 or 6 times in a row. Bosses as well as regular enemies require little to no skill to defeat, and combat gets slightly tedious towards the end for that very reason.

Combat isn't as tactical as you might expect - there was only one time when I really had to use stealth and guerilla tactics; most of the time, though, you just hack and slash your way through enemies while your AI-controlled teammates do their thing. (You can actually give orders to teammates, but it's not especially exciting. It comes in handy sometimes, though.) Also, your characters only have a limited amount of skills. And by limited, I mean very limited. The protagonist has the most, and even he only has about 7-8, some of which are non-combat skills. The rest of your teammates have around 3-4. In other words, you'll be using the same 2 or 3 attacks during the entire game. Hilariously enough, it's still rather fun to play, and it was only getting really tedious towards the very end.

There's also no exploration at all - most of the game takes place in one city, which is not as big as you might expect. Other than that, you're just visiting one dungeon after the other; there's no open world whatsoever. If you don't care about exploration, this isn't such a big deal, though. Still felt a bit claustrophobic to me.

There's quite a number of things I liked, some of which you can find here. As you can see, I don't hate it at all. But it's really only an "okay" game IMO.

And that's about it. Hope it was descriptive enough.

[Hong Cong Phooie]

Read my first post in this thread. I never said it was bad. I enjoyed the game, but to me, it's just not "holy shit this is fucking awesome" kind of good like Xenoblade. I felt combat was rather simplistic and extremely easy. One of the easiest RPGs I've ever played, actually. Plus it's almost impossible to die because you can revive up to 5 or 6 times in a row. Bosses as well as regular enemies require little to no skill to defeat, and combat gets slightly tedious towards the end for that very reason.

Combat isn't as tactical as you might expect - there was only one time when I really had to use stealth and guerilla tactics; most of the time, though, you just hack and slash your way through enemies while your AI-controlled teammates do their thing. (You can actually give orders to teammates, but it's not especially exciting. It comes in handy sometimes, though.) Also, your characters only have a limited amount of skills. And by limited, I mean very limited. The protagonist has the most, and even he only has about 7-8, some of which are non-combat skills. The rest of your teammates have around 3-4. In other words, you'll be using the same 2 or 3 attacks during the entire game. Hilariously enough, it's still rather fun to play, and it was only getting really tedious towards the very end.

There's also no exploration at all - most of the game takes place in one city, which is not as big as you might expect. Other than that, you're just visiting one dungeon after the other; there's no open world whatsoever. If you don't care about exploration, this isn't such a big deal, though. Still felt a bit claustrophobic to me.

There's quite a number of things I liked, some of which you can find here. As you can see, I don't hate it at all. But it's really only an "okay" game IMO.

And that's about it. Hope it was descriptive enough.

lol very and thanks for the info...and i see what you mean....but i still wouldnt mind playing it...or xenoblade...if they ever get a english translation just cant really stand playing a game without knowing the story or what is going on lmao

[Gare]

Yeah, it's still definitely worth playing, I think. Xenoblade is getting a translation, actually. It was just announced for a European release yesterday. No news about when you guys in the States will be getting it, though.

[Miss Piggy]

To be honest I`ve never heard of the game
However after what you`ve been saying, I`m interested in picking it up now
Tell me, about how many hours have you sunk into it so far?

EDIT: Oh, and that`s defiantly good news about Xenoblade. I`ll be picking myself up a copy, even if it has to be shipped from Europe

[retrofiber]

Its official, this game will not be coming to the states. Dowload the J version immediatly as it will soon no longer be available...sorry.

[Miss Piggy]

Its official, this game will not be coming to the states. Dowload the J version immediatly as it will soon no longer be available...sorry.

Well, looks like I`m getting mine shipped from Europe than. Unless it`s coming to Canada and not the States. But I doubt that highly.

[Gare]

To be honest I`ve never heard of the game
However after what you`ve been saying, I`m interested in picking it up now
Tell me, about how many hours have you sunk into it so far?

EDIT: Oh, and that`s defiantly good news about Xenoblade. I`ll be picking myself up a copy, even if it has to be shipped from Europe

Xenoblade took me a little over 100 hours to beat. The playtime counter hit the 99:59 limit during the final bossfight, actually. But based on what I've read online, I've missed quite a bit of extra content. If you want to complete everything, it's way over 100 hours from what I heard.

And no, I've no idea why the counter stops at 99:59 when the game is obviously so long.

As for The Last Story, it only took me about 30 hours to finish.

Its official, this game will not be coming to the states. Dowload the J version immediatly as it will soon no longer be available...sorry.

Where did you read that? Post a link to an official statement by Nintendo or whoever it is that's responsible. I haven't really been following news regarding The Last Story.

If -for some reason- you're talking about Xenoblade, the European release will have both the English dub and Japanese original AFAIK. There's no need to get the JP game. Well, unless you want to play it RIGHT NOW. Which I don't disapprove of.

[lizard81288]

yeah, i hope they show Last Story at E3 as a US release too.

[Elin]

Playing TLS just now, and I sort of have to agree with Gare's sentiments. For me it's not bad, but not much better than that. A lot of this will overlap with what Gare said, but here's my thoughts (mostly complaints) so far:

Spoiler warning:

- Nice gameplay mechanics that aren't nearly as nice as they could be because of the aforementioned ridiculous lack of difficulty. Why bother sneaking around or using some of the nifty tools at your disposal when you can just wade into crowds of enemies and sweep them aside? It's a shame, too, as there's definitely the bones of something really fun, and all it needs is a bit of tweaking.

- Compounding the difficulty issues, the enemy AI is really dumb. Part of this is intentional, as you have the ability to draw enemies toward you at will. But even when they're acting of their own volition, they're pretty useless, and oh-so-easy to outsmart.

- Pretty graphics that aren't nearly as pretty as they could be because of cut corners. Some of the textures and models outside of the main characters are incredibly sloppy. The stray cats, for example, genuinely look like something out of Grandia II, and when your 2011 Wii game looks like a 2000 Dreamcast one, you know there's something wrong. There are elements that look fantastic, of course. The animation is really nice, and the water looks amazing for a Wii game. And it's not like a few sloppy textures and poorly designed cats make the game look terrible. Still, for me it feels...very disjointed graphically. At times it looks better than any other title on the Wii. At times, it almost looks Dreamcast like. It's sort of schizophrenic, and it's so obvious that they put lots of work into some elements and almost none into others. I don't really care that much about graphics, but it's jarring to be looking around in the first person mode enjoying the scenery and then catching sight of something that looks like it fell out of an early PS2 game. I'd prefer if it looked a bit more even all over, even if it meant the graphics being technically worse. There's also loads of slowdown when there's a lot of enemies on screen. Which sadly is most of the encounters in the game.

- Even when the graphics are at their best, I personally think the art direction is completely uninspired. I like the character designs, but they're pretty generic and unmemorable. And the environments fare somewhat worse: everything's very washed out and grey, and many of the dungeon areas just look the same. It's not bad per se, but I've been playing it on and off alongside a replay of Xenoblade, which has incredible art direction, and the difference is night and day. At times TLS is much, much prettier than Xenoblade, but there's just so little heart in it. Take a screenshot from the game, Photoshop out the main character and the HUD, and I doubt I could tell you what game I was looking at. That's unbelievably depressing.

- Similarly, pleasant but completely unmemorable music. It works as background music, but there's a depressing lack of memorable melodies for the guy who wrote the scores to Final Fantasy I-IX, and outside of a few key pieces it feels totally phoned in. Far and away the worst Nobuo Uematsu soundtrack I've heard.

- So, so linear. Easily as bad as Final Fantasy XIII in that regard. Maybe worse in that even the battles are scripted. Fortunately the drip feed of new abilities is much better paced than XIII, and you don't have to play ten hours with a crippled battle system here.

- Storyline is pretty bland and boring, characters' motivations are forgettable, setting is terribly generic. This is somewhat alleviated by the little conversations your characters have as you go through dungeons, which are cute and full of personality, and where the characters actually shine. But you wonder why they couldn't have put a little more of that sparkle into the main story. It's nothing offensively stupid or anything, but take away the flashy cinematics and voices and you've got the storyline to almost any throwaway 16-bit RPG.

Yes, I am somewhat focusing on the negatives above. It's a fun enough game despite my complaints. Still, there's enough wrong with it that I think it's important to approach it with caution. Maybe I'm being a little bit harsh, but I think it's because there are lots of things that it almost does really well, and playing it I can't help but get frustrated at all the missed potential. It's a fun game, but it's close to being a really, really good one, and it's hard to see that and not feel disappointed.