A Long Time Coming – The Last Story

Have you ever heard of Hironobu Sakaguchi? If not, don’t worry I don’t read the credits at the end of ANY game either. You know about him, though, have you ever heard of Final Fantasy? Or Chrono Trigger? How about Kingdom Hearts? Xenogears? I’m sure that many (if not all of you) have heard of at least one of them. Hironobu had a hand in all of them. Final Fantasy was his original idea. So if you ask me, any RPG fan should be grateful to this guy.

Another famous Japanese gentleman Nobuo Uematsu, is also working on this title. Nobuo has written many notable pieces for many games, such as “To Zanarkand,” “Eyes on Me” and “Melodies of Life.”

If I’m honest, the logo looks similar to that of Final Fantasy but it still does the job. If you saw this in a shop, would you pick it up? I would. It’s so simple, with a punchy title the perfect ingredients to catch a gamer’s attention.

As far as I know, the game revolves around a set of mercenaries, who are each experts in one area of combat. For instance, Calista (the main female protagonist) is skilled at using Holy Magic which no other party member can use and Lowell who appears to be a combat mage of sorts, using a sword and Ice magic.

Not only is there a new unique combat system, where players must utilise abilities such as “Gathering” which provokes enemies to redirect their attention from the rest of your team to a tank, which then allows the mages to safely cast their spells without interruption. The “Focus” technique involves attacking NPCs with long-range attacks to find out individual weaknesses of certain enemies… or to blow up a bridge with enemies on it. If you’ve seen the trailer (it is in Japanese, though) then you will have already seen these tactics already, although briefly.

Although not as beautiful as the graphics on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 (as the Wii lacks an HD function [which has been rectified for the Wii U!]) this game is perhaps one of the most beautiful games released for the Wii to date. If you’ve seen some of the art floating about for this game, it may tempt you into buying the limited collector’s edition.

Star Viewing Tower.
The island where the story is set.

It certainly looks like things are looking up for RPG gamers if you own a Wii. My current game collection for the Wii is two “Legend of Zelda” games, “Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of a New World,” “Super Smash Brothers Brawl” and “Rabid Rabbits” which is still in its cellophane wrapper. I’m actually looking forward to  dusting off my Wii, plugging in new batteries for the remote, and actually turning it on for the first time since December. Not to mention, I don’t need to buy a new piece of Wii remote equipment to play the game!


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