The Last Story and Xenoblade Chronicles

[Anthony Davis]

I own both of these games because if I am going to spend my time playing a JRPG, I'm going to make sure it's a good one.

These games are awesome.

Who wants to talk about them?

 

[Anthony Davis]

I am all taken care of if someone wants to delete this thead.


Or, we can talk about how awesome these games are.

 

[Jinn]

I played a little of Xenoblade Chronicles (about 10 or so hours), but unfortunately the MMORPG battle system started to wear on me a bit. I might return to it one day, because there really are some interesting systems in place and the game can be pretty addictive.

I've never play The Last Story. It definitely looks intriguing to me. What would you say are some of your favorite aspects of it?

 

[Talby]

Tell us all about The Last Story. There was a lot of buzz around it back when it was new but then everyone seems to shut up about it.

 

[aweigh]

i think ellen page gave a terrific performance in the last story. best part of the game by far.

 

[Viata]

A friend of mine who is really into JRPG, shit on Last Story saying it was one of the worst he played. However, he considered Xenoblade Chronicles one of the best and since I loved Xenoblade, I do trust him on this.

 

[Hirato]

I played Xenoblade Chronicles long enough to be midway through climbing up the Mechonis, and then I quit out of boredom.
I have never before in my life seen an RPG, japanese or otherwise, filled with so many banal fetch quests, I mean, holy shit!

 

[CryptRat]

I stopped playing both after several hours. And I finished such games as Pandora's Tower, FF8, Grandia 3, Unfinite Undiscovery and even Crisis Core if you need to know how much I'm tolerant with bad games. If you want to play a good recent "classic" JRPG (so not Dark Souls), you should rather play Tales of Vesperia (or Resonance Of Fate, or Blue Dragon, or Lost Oyssey).

 

[Perkel]

Finished both.

XC - Amazing world design, interesting story (to a point), fun combat, amazing music.............. on other hand second 1/3 of story is garbage (butthurt because premise was superb but they fucked it up in standard JRPG way instead of following logic), shitload of fetch quests everywhere (to a point it being offline mmo), few characters are annoying.

Game is all about exploration in good way (similar to FFIX) with story playing second strings. Said this already but soundtrack is amazing.

7/10

Last Story - non garbage story up until the end (being more of FFT or Tactic Ogre type rather than traditional jrpg stories), which is something good considering jrpg stories. But it isn't superb either. Mid game fake choices are really great but as i said they are fake. Combat is great for jrpg and quests are fun overall (like that hunted house). Game isn't super long (50sh hours if i remember correctly).

8/10

If you look to play jRPG they should be on your list to play next. If we talk about overall jRPG genre they are probably one of the best jrpgs in last 10 years.

special mention: Xenoblade Chronicles world design + it's music is simply superb thing also game needs to be played on PC with dolphin emulator to see it properly in high res:

 

[ghostdog]

I also played Xenoblade for quite some time. I liked the world, the openness and at first the combat which seemed interesting, but eventually I got very bored with the stale MMO feel of the game in all departments.

The last JRPG I truly enjoyed was Nier for the PS3, which is a fantastic game that unfortunately has been completely overlooked by most.

You could also add Valkyria Chronicles, but that's a jTRPG.

 

[Perkel]

bonus tracks from xenoblade:

 

[Duraframe300]

A friend of mine who is really into JRPG, shit on Last Story saying it was one of the worst he played. However, he considered Xenoblade Chronicles one of the best and since I loved Xenoblade, I do trust him on this.

They are very different types of jrpgs. Might have more to do with the expectations he had.

 

[Duraframe300]

Game is all about exploration in good way (similar to FFIX) with story playing second strings. Said this already but soundtrack is amazing.

Also what?

How in the world was FFIX all about explorartion nor remotly similiar in that to Xenoblade?

 

[Perkel]

Game is all about exploration in good way (similar to FFIX) with story playing second strings. Said this already but soundtrack is amazing.

Also what?

How in the world was FFIX all about explorartion nor remotly similiar in that to Xenoblade?

FFIX constantly introduces new awesome places to visit on your journey similar to Xenoblade. Exploration =/= walking only.

FFXII is more similar to XC but world is shit and crappy to explore.

 

[Viata]

A friend of mine who is really into JRPG, shit on Last Story saying it was one of the worst he played. However, he considered Xenoblade Chronicles one of the best and since I loved Xenoblade, I do trust him on this.

They are very different types of jrpgs. Might have more to do with the expectations he had.

Well, he was expecting something like FF given TLS was from the same creator.

 

[CryptRat]

I don't like to speak of games I didn't like (I haven't even finished any of those two games so I may be wrong somewhere, I prefer to spend my time praising Voidspire Tactics, for example, which the most overlooked recent gema, and most of all everyone like the games they like and I won't judge) but these are two games that in my opinion took a wrong direction and were praised a lot (even on the Codex) so I try to understand why.

Game is all about exploration in good way (similar to FFIX) with story playing second strings.

No it's like FF12, like you furtherly said, so it sucks ; the combat sucks, the quests suck even more, the exploration is correct ; also I don't like the social link thing but I am OK to say I am the one to blame for this and not the game.

Last Story - non garbage story up until the end (being more of FFT or Tactic Ogre type rather than traditional jrpg stories), which is something good considering jrpg stories. But it isn't superb either. Mid game fake choices are really great but as i said they are fake. Combat is great for jrpg and quests are fun overall (like that hunted house). Game isn't super long (50sh hours if i remember correctly).

The companions constantly whining and giving you instructions during combat and exploration is the next level of companion crap and the love story is particularly horrible/heavy in this one. Also there's an important corridor and non-stop action feeling with this game, I don't like that, I like to explore a world, take a few notes, I like some backtracking, etc. These three things completely ruined the game for me, but I agree that the quests and environnements were good and the characters (far?) above average.

Combat is great for jrpg

I disagree with that, like I said in the FF7 topic in my opinion the good combat systems in JRPG are generally turn-based, see Eternal Sonata or Resonance of Fate. And I prefer most blobber combat systems to the system of The Last Story.

The last JRPG I truly enjoyed was Nier for the PS3, which is a fantastic game that unfortunately has been completely overlooked by most.

I tend not to like Nier as much as other people here, but sure it's remarkable. And unfortunately what makes its gameplay remarkable will be lacking from the sequel (the good exploration parts like the manor or the text adventure part), they'll only make a 5-hour long action game that you need to finish 3 times and will add some MMO-sidequests. I probably won't like it but I assume the story itself could still have very good moments, and judging by the few videos there will still be bullet boss fights, I like that too.

 

[aweigh]

i think ellen page gave a terrific performance in the last story. best part of the game by far.

lol 10/10

 

[Viata]

You quoted your own post, are you on drugs?

 

[aweigh]

i'm a bit drunk

also come on that troll was fucking masterful

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

As much as I wish I could say The Last Story was awesome, even Nobuo Uematsu's soundtrack was disappointing compared to his track record. The game's mechanics, plot, characterization, and environments were all competent but uninspired, and not what I had been hoping for from a game helmed by Hironobu Sakaguchi. Still, it's good by the standards of JRPG-style games, and it's unfortunate that Mistwalker is seemingly relegated to making games for phone/mobile platforms.

 

[Abu Antar]

I never played The Last Story.
Pros:
Xenoblade Chronicles has a great soundtrack and very nice environments. I like how weaker mobs left you alone because you were too powerful. It was also cool that there were more powerful enemies to be aware of when you explored. Took some of them down just to challenge myself and it felt good. Exploration is fun. Main story is decent. Getting new gear was fun. Not many jrpgs that have loot drops like Xenoblade. Cool boss fights.

Cons:
Combat system isn't that fun. Fetch quests galore. Story gets weaker as the game moves on.

 

[Siveon]

Xenoblade would've been much much much much SO MUCH better as a straight up Action RPG like Secret of Mana. They could've kept the MMO stuff in too, just lose the auto-attack and cool downs. I thought that shit was only invented because of bandwidth.

Exploration was fun though.
EDIT: Oh, and the British dub was hilarious. I would like to see more of those, the people who do American VOs always get recycled (like Japan *COUGH*) so some variety once and a while is nice.

 

[e-mailio estevez]

I liked Xenoblade. Sure it had a lot of MMO-isms... but it's been a good many years since I invested time in an MMO, so I didn't necessarily mind it. All the characters were charming, and I enjoyed the banter a lot. The banter changed depending on who was in your party, so swapping members out and taking turns playing them helped with the monotony, I think. Melia was more fun to play than Shulk.

The only thing that really irked me about XC was how much of a role level played in hit chance. If you were 5 levels lower than something and it was red, nearly every attack would miss. Gain 1 level, suddenly they're yellow and your attacks never miss. I just prefer hit-chance to be related to stats rather than your character level, especially when there's these goliath-sized creatures roaming around, luring you to test your mettle against them.

As for Last Story, I lost steam a few chapters into it. Don't remember much of it. The thing I liked most about it, oddly enough, was how you could dye your armor however you wanted. Every armor slot typically had something like 2-4 different components you could dye. It's a really good game for dress-up fags.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

I completed The Last Story recently and it's pretty fun. Combat system is pretty solid (albeit with a few hiccups), and almost each boss battle had some kind of twist to it that kept things interesting. Doppelganger fight was probably the most memorable one due to chaos it caused on the battlefield.

Story (apart from a few retarded moments) was alright and interesting enough to not be an eyesore.

I'd say it's one of the better modern JRPGs, but the difficulty was pretty low most of the time and only boss battles managed to pose some kind of challenge. The last boss battle was actually pretty tough, but it wasn't even an issue -- if he murdered you, you could spend 10 minutes grinding at the summon area to bump your characters a bit and kick his ass.

Also, the game starts getting really interesting only around the time you start investigating a small island. Before that it's easy to see why so many people dropped the game.