I lost count of the number of hours I poured into Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari. About 25? Something like that. Most people seem to finish between 15-20 hours, so I really dragged things out. Instead of grinding to beat bosses I should have just used those overpowered SP attacks earlier. I was afraid of running out, though, and they came in really handy for the final boss and subsequent boss rush, so it all worked out.

I got two ending CGs. First I got the one you get where every Messiah is alive, then I went back and killed Sasha off (told you I’d get her someday) so I could get the Rushdie CG you see on your right. If I’d had the stamina I would have tried to get a third ending, where I kill Rushdie off to see which CG they give me. Probably nothing, since I won’t qualify for any of them.

The ending is the same for all ‘routes’ as far as I can tell, it’s just the final CG displayed after the credits that differs depending on who you made your final promise with and who’s still alive at the end. The ending itself was okay, but really short. No surprises throughout the whole game. Around chapter 3 they said “This is the problem we’re having, and this is what we’re going to do about it.” Two chapters later they did it, everything went off without a hitch, roll credits. No unexpected events, no chance to do the wrong thing, no multiple solutions, just linear as the 5 o’clock express.

I was going to write a detailed, spoiler-ful post with my thoughts about Final Promise Story later on, but now I think of it, it doesn’t really deserve that kind of attention.  Plus I would have had to do a lot of reading up about the promotion of this game, and I don’t feel like getting involved in FPS any further.

Why reading up about the promotion? Because the crux of my problem with this game revolves around whether Imageepoch accurately represented Final Promise Story as a pure dungeon crawler and not as a full-fledged RPG before it came out, or not. If it’s the former, then I have very little grounds for complaint. I’d end up whining about stuff like this:

– The characters were shallow and completely undeveloped, probably because they all know each other already and have nothing to discover over the course of 24 hours,

– character interaction was nearly non-existent. Because of the game’s anyone-can-die mechanic, no party members except Wolf and that girl can be intimately connected to the plot. This causes a disjoint because your relationship with the other Messiahs is supposed to be vital to the story, but the Messiahs themselves can’t be important lest they die so, wtf? I’ll also note that Sasha didn’t get so much as an “Alas, poor Sasha” when she kicked the bucket,

– the plot never went anywhere (wtf was that incident a year ago they keep referring to? what is Sabi Chantier’s ultimate goal? how exactly did the war start? who’s the mastermind behind the whole attack? what’s to stop them from coming back with more machines? what happens after the end, aren’t they doomed anyway?) and leaves you with more questions than it answers,

– the mood of the music was off, it felt more like casual lounge music. More “Why yes, I’ll have another glass of champagne with my caviar” than “OSHIT OSHIT we’re all going to die,” and the music stays the same throughout the whole game even as the time gets shorter and shorter. Heck the mood of the whole game was off,

– the battles were repetitive, I just found one or two patterns that worked and used them forever on the same old palette swaps in the same old dungeons. I remember hearing that enemies would adapt to your battle strategy after a while but that’s a 1000% lie,

– goddammit, why do I have to do the same bloody crappy mission over and over again? Hundreds of hours of gameplay my bottom, it’s all the same damned mission worded differently! <— the strong language is because this is by far my biggest complaint about the game,

– having all your skills and attacks as well as the entire map revealed right from the start takes out all elements of surprise and excitement from the gameplay. Now I understand why randomized dungeons and treasure chests are so common in that genre,

etc etc, and these are all common features of dungeon crawlers. Not all of them and not all the time, but the weak plot, repetitive gameplay and underdeveloped characters occur pretty often. So if Imageepoch was clear about that from the start then I was expecting stuff the game was never intended to deliver, and thus I have no case whatsoever. I mean, my memory is telling me stuff about weekly character introductions and action-packed trailers worded in a way to make it seem like an ordinary jRPG, but I’m not as young as I used to be so maybe I imagined it. I freely admit I didn’t pay very close attention to the pre-game hype, to my lasting regret. In any case, I’d need to check all this out before writing anything definitive about Saigo no Yuckysucky no Monogatari, and I really don’t want have anything more to do with this game.

Long story short, Final Promise Story is a short dungeon crawler in which absolutely nothing happens. It’s got pretty graphics, decent character designs and nice, relaxing music. If you can accept that without asking for anything more, go for it and good luck. I’m out.

Related posts:

Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari – 7 hours in Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari – 14 hours in Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari – 21 hours in Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari – Screenshots