Believe it or not, I had no idea what the story was about before I started this game. I didn’t think it would come over, and if it did I wasn’t planning to play it, so I never bothered to find out. I’m glad I didn’t, though. Otherwise I wouldn’t have dreamed of starting The Last Story, seeing as it consists of two extremely hackneyed stories and one potentially interesting one.

Story 1: Zael desperately wants to bang this random Calista girl he met on the street. Calista wants to bang him too. Unfortunately she has a fiance. Luckily Zael is the main character, so things are obviously going to work out somehow. The Last Story = Japanese for “Hoes before bros.”

Story 2: Zael and his best friend Dagran want to leave the mercenary life and become knights. Now they’re rare, but games and movies do exist where the MC’s best friend does not turn evil and betray him, but this depends entirely on the BF having absolutely no ambition of his own besides being MC’s BFF. I like Dagran and I’ll be sorry to see him go, but… yeah, he’s a goner.

Story 3: Zael (again) has gotten his hands on the mysterious ‘Power of the Outsider’ that promises to make him the savior of the world. I’ve reached the point where an evil count is offering to let Zael plow Calista in exchange for putting the power at the count’s disposal. Sounds like a good deal to me. What could possibly go wrong?

Obviously I’m just playing along to see how Story 2 turns out. Don’t let me down, Dagran! You can do it! You can buck the trend!

Apart from the three main plots there’s also some stuff about a “Gurak” race that attacks humans while chasing the Power of the Outsider. They’re being played up as bad guys, but we’ll find out later they were not-so-bad after all. This isn’t even a spoiler, since I’ve only played one (1) RPG where the initial antagonists were still the bad guys by the end. If I had to place my bets on something, it would be the Outsider or something related to it that’s the ultimate baddie.

Anyway, it’s early days yet. I’m told The Last Story is about 30-35 hours long, so at 13 hours I’m 30-40% done. Progress-wise I just finished… uhh… I forget what I just finished. I saved a little girl from a cult, then I played through a haunted mansion. That part was funny. Then …. umm… reptids! Yes, I fought reptids in a well. Wow, this game really doesn’t stick in my mind. Every stage is like the other, and very few chapters seem to have anything to do with the main story. That’s forgivable in a longer game but TLS should really start getting serious now.

Forgettable chapters aside, my main problem right now is the battle system. I have NO idea what is going on. At all. Even after 13 hours. I don’t know how I’ve made it through all the battles so far with only 2 Game Overs, and I don’t think this beginner’s luck is going to hold out forever. Use Gathering, run around, get whaled on, use Gale repeatedly, use Vertical Slice when I accidentally run up a wall (searching for climbable walls takes too much time) take Gathering off when it’s too much, die, revive, die, revive, oh look the boss is dead. Save, continue. Welp, don’t mess with a winning formula and all that.

In other gaming news, I’m almost done with Dungeon Maker Girl’s Type (9th floor out of 10) and I started Lunar Silver Star Harmony last night. I hope to have the former finished either today or tomorrow, then I’ll post my thoughts.