Pixels and Perspectives #1: The Last Story

Pixels and Perspectives #1- The Last Story

Remember the Wii? Well, there are some very good games on it that aren’t directly related to Nintendo! I know it may be hard to believe in times like these, but  there are many fine rpg titles for the wii like Xenoblade Chronicles and… uh… Tales of Symphonia and… well… you know… something besides this one that I am reviewing today. I’m going to give you a view on my interpretation of Mistwalker’s latest achievement The Last Story.

When I started playing this game, I was hooked and had a lot of high hopes for this game. However, I started to lose interest over time. I wanted to get into more battles because the fights were great! However, after about two thirds of the way through the game, I lost interest. So, what happened? I’ll start with what I liked.

What I liked:

- the battle system. To be honest, I think that the battle system is really fun and innovating. There is no wait-time and no real battle sequence. Heck, there isn’t even an attack button! You literally point the stick at the enemy and the dude starts swinging. Not only that, but you can have up to six people on your side in a fight. Six people! I haven’t seen that many people fight along side you since the Suikoden series! I mean… you had to have those kind of numbers in the Suikoden series because of so many characters, but in this game you can use everyone you know in a fight. Thankfully, there are varying roles with each character so all in all it makes a nice chemistry. Which leads me to my next point…

- the cast. I’ll get to the individual characters later on, but I can say this about the cast: I like them a lot. My first impression is that they look like characters from the world of Ivalice, from Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII fame. I've heard multiple reviewers dive into this... but I'll let it slide. It’s an attractive cast; they're young, and they get along very well. So attractive the fanart is through the roof on this one! I would post some but… well, let’s just say that the male characters get very comfortable with each other. Even though there is all that, I can say that there is witty dialogue between each character and it creates an overall lighthearted feel. 

Straight out of Ivalice, er... Lazulis... Island.

What I didn’t like:

- the characters. Now, I know in the last point I said I liked the cast. As I was playing this, I kept having this awkward complex of liking the dialogue and present chemistry, but hating how superficial each character was. Through this, I realized that the group is great as a whole, but none of the characters are solid enough to establish an individual identity. This is partially because of the structure of the plot, but to me this is a major pitfall because I ended up not caring for the individual people. I went from,” Oh no, this person could be dead!” and instead saying,” oh no! who’s going to heal me now!?” It was frustrating, but I think the shallow characters could be because of……

- the plot. The plot to this game isn’t really enticing. It starts off with our young yet sort of androgynous heroZael and his buddies being mercenaries and fighting through the land to make money. Zael finds this power called the Power of the Outsider, which is mysterious and no one really knows about it except… you guessed it… the corrupt king that wants to use it for his own benefit! He wants it to fight the lizard people because… I guess they’re lizard people… I wish there were nice lizard people in a JRPG… oh well. 

an eyepatch AND gold trimmed black armor?! totally not evil.

But anyways! It seems fairly standard, and although I haven’t completed the game the plot seems to be pretty much about that. There’s a princess involved that doesn’t want to be royalty and acts like a love interest for Zael… that’s as much individual character development as you’re going to get.

- the “we are obligated to do this to make the game longer” phases. There is a lot of this in this game. I will give you a perfect example.

***SPOILERS… but not really because this was used as filler….***

Ok, so like in every JRPG, you get captured. Since you are the main character, you don’t just do your sentence and come off looking like a respectable citizen. No! You meet another man in your cell named Horace, who is the king of fetch quests in this game. Anyways, he has been digging a hole and thinks you can get out by going through this hole. Wonderful, it provides experience and, well… I’ve been fighting in caves through a majority of the game. So, you get to the end and beat the obligatory boss of the area, and you get to a dead end… What does Horace do? He says,” I’m sorry master Zael. I thought this would be a way out.”

I wanted to just write gotcha… but this photo helped me deliver it more.

…… that’s it. You just spent about 30 min and nothing came of it!? No special item!? No new plot to this Outsider thing!? Then, guess how you get out of the cell? You are proven innocent.  This was very frustrating to me, and one of many examples of ways they tried to extend this game to make the storyline longer. The length of this game isn’t close to long either; I’ve spent about 15 hours on it and I’m two thirds through the storyline. One way they could’ve made this longer was if they changed…

- the difficulty. My last rub with this game is how easy it is. The battle system grants everyone five lives, and if your character uses all five of his/her lives, then you must start from the last check/save point. This is fine, but I’ve hardly lost one life in a battle, let alone all five of them. Another aspect that contributes to the easiness of the battle system is that the game stresses tactics in every battle, but the tactics can be easily disregarded which will lead to you winning battles by just brute strength. Pretty much, you just point your control stick at what you want to attack and… well that’s it because you don’t even have to manually attack someone.

What’s my verdict? The Last Story is fun, but don’t look at it if you want an in-depth and inventive RPG that changes the face of gaming. Although the battle system and overall feel is nice, the intricacies of the game make it become less appealing. Even though it is not the best RPG, I do believe that this game is at least worth a couple plays.

Metal Cereal #1: Amaranthe

There is a reason why I haven’t written anything for Metal Cereal yet. I keep going through my metal and as much as I love my metal, it wasn’t well updated. Then, after clicking on random videos on youtube and going down a random metal rabbit hole, I found this band and they have changed my view on metal: Amaranthe.

Amaranthe is a Swedish metal band that is somewhat of a supergroup. There are THREE vocalists: a clean female vocalist (formerly sang with Kamelot), clean male vocalist (who sang with Dream Evil) and a harsh male vocalist. The keyboardist and guitarist? Originally played for Nightrage and Dragonland (a great band, even if their name sounds stupid. Don’t judge me!) the other members have played with other strong metal bands, and well,  this group thrives. After listening to their self titled debut album, this group is firing on all cylinders. What is interesting though, if the vehicle they are propelling.

To me, this group sums up all things metal from 2000s on. My metal palette was confused at first due to the blending of styles, but that is what makes this group stand out so much: the diversity of styles. The vocalists compliment each other so well, providing a lot of variance and excitement in every song. Not only that, but every instrument in addition to the vocalists has their fair share of exemplification. This is also a tough feat to overcome. Whenever there is a musical collaboration there is generally a more dominant artist or instrumentalist (like how in Rebecca Black’s Friday no one remembers the rap section that is equally awkward!) However, every musician stands out in all of the songs on this album.

Now, for the negative attributes of this band. This group has received some reviews that the songs are canny and uninspired.  Although I don’t agree with the uninspired section, I can say that I feel like the band made a checklist of what makes a good metal song and stuck to that list. Most every song has these qualities:

- overly emotional clean male vocals

- screamer guy to add more intensity

- girl singer/sex appeal (Yeah, I know you can’t hear that. Wudup!?)

- double bass/ sweet drum rhythms

- sweet solo/ keyboard intros and interludes

- the bass guy mercilessly headbanging. After all, what is a metal bassist to do?

BASS SOLO! E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E

Here’s my rebuttal for all that. Yeah, it’s an intense thrill ride from beginning to end to the extent that the only point of rest is their ballad. Yet, even then it’s very emotionally charged. However, I know that the greatest of bands have been accused of writing one song over and over. Listen to even the most metal of bands. Although their songs resemble their other content, they have a central sound that is unique. This is why the latest Iron Maiden album went platinum and no one happily talks about Kiss’s disco album.

It's not disco, it's 70s rock...

So, here’s my last point. This group is good if you want a band that sums up different styles of metal in a nice yet intense manner. The best news? They show no signs of stopping. They just released their new single and they are touring with power metal giants Stratovarius in March and April! So, I definitely recommend this band because they’re going to be something big… if they haven’t gotten there already.

How does your mouth feel after eating your metal cereal!?