The Last Story

[Fryguy64]

For anyone in the UK who is planning on buying The Last Story from Game, the struggling retailer isn't stocking it. All preorders have been cancelled and refunded.

Goodbye Game. You were a fair employer to me once, but you really misjudged the market several times over.

[Deleted]

Having seen some in-game footage, all I can really discern from the game is that it feels like the babby of Final Fantasy and Elder Scrolls, neither of which I'm particularly fond of. (However, I can at least understand why others would see the appeal.) You'll have to share how it is with the rest of us. Will all the hype lead it astray from the typical JRPG tropes?

[Da Robot]

Bump . . .


Okay . . . I finally . . . finally got my copy of the LE TLS delivered to my house . . . yep, and it was dispatched more than a month ago . . .

I was currently in the process of trying to get a refund/resend of another copy (which according to their site was out of stock) and lo and behold it was finally delivered today. ;D


Onto the game

Played first 45 minutes, consisted of movement/battle tutorials and such, so far it seems like it got an interesting battle system. One character appears to be a complete alcoholic and it's hilarious.

[Fryguy64]

I've owned it since my birthday on the 6th, but still haven't started playing it

Oh the shame!

[Da Robot]

12 hours in, still pretty good so far.

One thing I like is having multiple party members (up to 5) running around particiapating with you in battle, there is just something awesome about seeing that in action compared to other RPG's (over the years) have kept a "large party" but only allowed a few members to particpate in combat once it's started.

Moveable camera in cutscenes is a . . . odd addition to the game, it doesn't seem to add anything to them. (Movement consists of moving the camera a few degrees horizontal/vertically or zooming in).

Cutscenes can be fast forwarded, sadly it removes the sound, so there is no funny chipmunk voices to heard from doing so.

I wish sidequests could have had a menu system to keep check of them like Xenoblade does. Probably a good idea to write them down on paper to keep track.

Went and tried out the Arena for the first time, had a good battle and got some money out of it.

Still haven't tried the online multiplayer yet.


The one major negative I can think of, is that the game has no pointer functionality, which would have been really useful for the crossbow/seek view function.

[Da Robot]

Finally tried out VS multiplayer, and managed to have a 4 player match, I managed to get 3rd in. Every other match I'm lost. This is what happens when the currently leveled weapons/armour in game are transferred to multiplayer. The prizes I've won are special "effect dyes" for use on characters.

Eg "fluttering buttflies/moths/flies" causes those respective insects to buzz around your character at all times, also obtained "demonic halo" which causes a lovely orange glow around the selected character (really helps for seeing them at a distance!)

Each selectable character has a fully voiced message system, (Eg, Hello, Sorry, death quote and much more).

Game seems to be progressing along well, got tons of awesome weapons with different attributes (Eg, increased movement speed, bonus damage against enemies X, and/or Y, may have X% chance of unique attack, feels better than the weapon system of Xenoblade).

Also I'm obtained every "dye" colour, so now I can make my characters look like horrible Technicolor abominations. And also invisibility dye, so now characters can run around in their underwear.

[Da Robot]

Completed the game on Wednesday, and it was pretty good.

Combat system held up well, characters were good, their voices took a little to get used to at the start but became better as time progressed. The story was decent (I haven't played many RPG's before) but nothing revolutionary.

Combat is really fun and fast paced and is awesome in seeing (smart) AI comrades fighting around and alongside you. Mages cast magic circles onto the ground which can be diffused by you, to activate there effects. This game deserves a sequel to reuse the combat mechanics.

Weapon system and upgrading was good, large amount of variation/bonus effects between weapons. Armour though seems pretty crappy, some have even questioned whether it really has much effect in defense.

Another awesome feature is being able to dye each piece of clothing on a character. When armour is upgraded "pieces" of armour will appear on a character body (they can be coloured) and each piece of clothing/armour can be made invisible if you don't like the look of it (stats will still remain though). This also means that characters can also run around in their underwear.

The main city is a good size, not too big but not too small (has a quick travel option as well) Has a lot of nice details.

Thought I might have missed some chapters, but the only thing I'm seemed to have missed are some really minor sidequests (didn't even think they were sidequests when they happened). The game has no "sidequest log" (unlike Xenoblade) to keep track of them.

The arena (season 1) is awesome at first and then becomes crappy later on (it's just season 1 + slight higher difficulty) and I kept thinking "when's season 2?" And after quite a bit of game progressing season 2 finally appears. I'm surprised they didn't throw in more "seasons"



Multiplayer


Vs mode is crap when it's 1 on 1, having more players at least allows you to attack others indirectly when they are clashing swords with one another. Never managed to play with more than 4 people, and usually had my ass kicked. (Weapons/armour levels from single player are not carried over but appearance is.)

"Effect" items can be gained after the match, which can be applied to characters (Eg butterflies, causes butterflies to flutter around a character, music notes, shiny sparkles, etc) Other items/material can be gained as well (winners get better prizes)

All stages in Vs are taken from the game and could be considered location spoilers.


Co-op uses bosses from the game. Disappointingly it is only 5 bosses from the game (seriously? 5?) The people I played were able to slaughter bosses easily. (Weapons/armour levels from single player are carried over) Weapons and materials to upgrade those weapons can be gained from defeating these bosses.

During multiplayer you can level up your "rank", don't know if that results in you getting better items (levels up a lot faster in Co-op than Vs)


Multiplayer for both these modes is online only, meaning that once Nintendo shuts it down (when? who knows?) it's gone, goodbye chance of getting some of those items (though it's not much of a loss).





What could this game improve on for a sequel?

Possibly better story, maybe some more environments, a local co-op/vs multiplayer mode, better structured arena, more obvious sidequests and maybe some more control over AI allys in battle.

I think it's a good to hear the game is headed to NA, I think they might like the "actiony" combat better than that of Xenoblade's "RPG" combat.

[Nester the Lark]

I hope to play some online with some of you after the game comes out in NA this summer, but it sounds like I'll want to finish the single-player story first.

[Da Robot]

A better idea of what "location spoilers" are would be to compare the stages to the ones from Goldeneye N64, remember how some of those were just taken from the single player mode (while some were slightly modified).

[Nester the Lark]

Aside from that, tho, don't your characters from the main game carry over into the multiplayer mode? I'd want them to be good and powered up first. Or am I misunderstanding how multiplayer works?

[Da Robot]

In Co-op stats/levels carry over, while in Vs mode they don't carry over.

[Da Robot]

US Limited Edition revealed

Contains

- A copy of the game
- Art book (44 pages softcover)*
And comes in a box for both.

This is only avalible for those that for a first print run/pre-order type of deal.


* I counted the pages in my art book and it seems to be around 40, the US version looks more rectangular, instead of the hardcover square Euro owners got. So maybe you guys get some extra pictures?







It's not exactly the Euro LE, but it's something right?



Also there's an E3 trailer on the IGN page, it's better than the early Euro ones.

www.ign.com/articles/2012/06/02/the-last-story-special-gift-for-launch-copies

[Wildcat]

Need cash. So bad.

It's very nice that XSEED makes an effort to do something special for the game! Shame Xenoblade didn't get the same degree of treatment, but what can you do?

[Da Robot]

Apparantly this article, Operation Rainfall was not the cause of bringing The Last Story to NA. It was all XSEED's doing.

kotaku.com/5918478/the-surprisingly-simple-story-behind-what-might-be-the-last-great-wii-game

Copy/pasting the article here.

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"Nintendo has an annoying tendency to keep games all to themselves. Over the past few years, the Japanese company has sat on the rights to much-requested series like Mother, Fatal Frame, and Fire Emblem, stubbornly refusing to translate and ship them over to U.S. shores.

So it was a pleasant surprise when the Mario makers announced that much-anticipated Japanese role-playing game The Last Story would come to the U.S. this summer thanks to friendly publisher XSEED, the localization house that helped bring over some great Japanese games like Half Minute Hero and The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky.

But how'd that happen? Why did Nintendo suddenly decide to let another publisher take its property?

While meeting with XSEED last week in Los Angeles, I pulled aside Director of Publishing Ken Berry to bug him a little bit about the story behind The Last Story. And he told me how they convinced Nintendo to give it up.

"It was actually much easier than you would expect," he said. "They were receptive to our inquiry from the very start."

The companies first started talking toward the end of last year. "We approached them once it looked pretty certain that it wasn't coming over," Berry said. "I was in Japan for Tokyo Game Show and I picked up a copy of The Last Story, cause a lot of us in the office would want to play it anyways. Once we started playing it, we just figured, 'Wow, this would be nice if this came over—let's talk to Nintendo!'"

So Berry and crew went to Nintendo's Japanese office and started up a conversation. It helped that the president of XSEED's parent company, Marvelous AQL, was close friends with Final Fantasy maestro Hironobu Sakaguchi, the man behind The Last Story. In Japan, connections are everything.

"[Nintendo was] like 'Well, no one's asked us yet, but it may be possible. Let us take a look,'" Berry said.

Hold up. Nobody asked?

Let's flash back to last summer. Right after E3, when it seemed apparent that Nintendo had no intention of bringing over three of its major Wii RPGs including The Last Story and Xenoblade, a group of fans got together and started a letter-writing campaign called Operation Rainfall. The campaign received a near-instant explosion of media coverage, even earning an official, albeit tepid response from Nintendo itself. And the RPGs started getting all sorts of buzz.

Plenty of companies have asked Nintendo about games like Mother 3. So I was shocked to hear from Berry that by the end of last year, not a single other publisher had asked Nintendo for the rights to The Last Story.

"Perhaps people just assumed that if Nintendo wasn't gonna do it, it wasn't coming over," Berry said. "But yeah, they were very receptive from the start."

So did Operation Rainfall have any impact on his decision? Did all of those Internet petitions and letter-writing campaigns help at all?

"No, I don't believe so," Berry said. "Nintendo, they have their own set of rules that they go by. And as for us, it didn't really affect us either—cause we have our own requirements that we look for on potential titles. And, you know, it just met all [our] prerequisites."

XSEED's prerequisites:

1. It has to be a great title.
2. It has to have some market potential in North America.
3. It has to be something that entire company is passionate about.

The Last Story passed the checklist, and the deal came together pretty quickly. By February, XSEED and Nintendo were ready to announce that The Last Story would be out in the U.S. this coming summer. It's looking great, too. (Even if it would look much better in high definition.)

Just don't count on XSEED to bring over any of Nintendo's other Japan-only titles. Berry told me they have no plans to pursue games like Pandora's Tower or the elusive Mother 3—although they could very wind up working with other big publishers, like Sega or Konami, in the future, if the "right opportunity" comes along. (My personal request: Suikoden PSP.)

So would The Last Story have made it here without XSEED's help? It's certainly something to ponder. When Kotaku's Stephen Totilo asked Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime about the games they've kept to themselves over the years, he said they don't "hold games back."

"Nintendo of America does not quote unquote hold games back," Fils-Aime said. "Our process, with every game, is to assess its potential and if we judge a game as having significant potential or the potential is there to warrant the the localization cost, then we will localize it and bring it to the market—that is our philosophy."

We'll never know what would have happened to The Last Story—a game that will likely be the Wii's last decent original title in the United States—if XSEED hadn't swooped in for the U.S. rights. It's a good thing they asked Nintendo for permission. Somebody had to."

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What . . . ? I partly think there has to be someone lying in here, (to prevent future fan campaigns which is pretty unlikely now since OR exists) or maybe the real lack of anyone asking at last years E3 was a factor for them not bringing it over. It just seems so surprsing that this info is only being mentioned now.

[Nester the Lark]

If one of XSEED's prerequisites was market potential in North America, then wasn't the purpose of Operation Rainfall to demonstrate that?

I don't think there was meant to be any discrediting with the statement, though. OpRainfall didn't take offense to it, Tweeting, "Good thing we NEVER claimed to be responsible for the game coming over, that thanks should go to @xseedgames"

XSEED responded with, "TLS met all of our requirements for pursuing it, but OpRain is an asset to the JRPG movement as a whole. They know what's up." They've also tweeted several of OpRainfall's news stories (about TLS and other games), so I think they've got a good relationship.