Last Dream (PC, Steam)
Mar. 8th, 2019 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroA man from Earth is torn from his life and drawn into the strange world of Terra, where a terrible mistake a thousand years in the past both destroyed the elvish civilization and unleashed a terror on the world today. Can this man and his companions save both worlds from a genocidal madman with designs on godhood?
This is a deeply loving tribute to the original Final Fantasy, made in RPG Maker, and I was shocked at how happy I ended up being with it. It has multiple plot paths, lots of sidequests, open-world exploration and heavily customizable character builds…but also manages to avoid beef gates and insane difficulty spikes. Right from the start, you can choose a difficulty level (out of six; I played the second-lowest); whether you can save anywhere or only at save points; and the frequency of random encounters.
The character classes are the original Fighter, Monk, Thief, Black Mage, White Mage andRed Grey Mage; and they add a Hunter and an Engineer. Each class can distinctly affect the gameplay experience: Opening chests in towns requires picking locks; if you don’t have a thief, this attracts the attention of the town guards. There are also pickable doors and a lot of rare items you can steal. The Hunter can tame and ride chocobos Giant Moas and opens up an alternate quest route that way. The Engineer can allow you to take “tunnel” shortcuts and in one instance can alter a quest ending by defusing a bomb. (Engineers also get double effects for items; using the fishing system to get heal-all items they can use on the party is an excellent build.) The Warp and Life spells are exclusive to the White and Grey Mages, and there are no life-restoring items. High-level Monks can hit multiple times (up to 7) in a single regular attack, massively out-damaging any other class.
(Bahamut will upgrade your classes after you’ve gathered the four crystals and the magic medallion; around the same time you can pick up the airship. Most of them just unlock new skills and extra stat points, though the Thief gets a better equipment set, too.)
I went with Grey Mage, Monk, Thief and Engineer, and it was a solid party. The Grey Mage’s effectiveness as an attacker waned by mid-game (especially as the Monk came into his own), but he was a very good tank in heavy armor and had access to the Life spell. I don’t think I every used his attack magic (MP costs are very high), but he worked great as the “armored cleric” type. The Engineer was my primary black/white mage by the endgame, because after upgrades he was healing triple damage and dealing triple damage with potions and attack items, respectively. The thief’s “healing steal” was useful early on, and later he acquired some of my only debuff spells. He was also my second-strongest fighter in the late-game. The Monk was a glass cannon (particularly against magic), but he hit so hard it was worth devoting half my party to keeping him alive. I never really had a great selection of mass-damage abilities, but unless status effects or powerful magic attacks were involved, I could steamroller much of the game.
The quality of life choices built into the game are excellent. Each level up gives you stat points that you can distribute, but there’s a quick-apply method that lets you choose balanced, offensive or defensive builds if you don’t want to bother. You get skill points from battles to buy abilities, but you can also purchase skill orbs if you need more points. There’s no way to warp between towns (which was irritating) but the world map system is fantastic and always available. You get a “sonar” to find hidden items later on, and you can use it from the airship rather than having to be on foot. There’s a complicated system of finding recipes and crafting better equipment out of vendortrash, or you can quick-sell the vendortrash to a guy who’s in every town and just buy equipment and you’ll do find. You can set up your own battle macros (with “all fight” just being the tip of the iceberg.)
There are fifty official puzzles scattered through the world, each with several chests as prizes, and there are extra prizes you can collect from a puzzle enthusiast as you report on them. There’s the aforementioned fishing minigame. There’s an arena to fight mobs, a “mystic’s cave” with different mob battles, a hunter’s guild with bonus boss fights, giant moas races based on button-mashing, a half-dozen optional dungeons and optional superbosses. The ending updates depending on which sidequests you cleared!
In trying to keep the dungeon areas fresh, there are several that automatically apply status effects or have damage floors. The latter was a pain (bring plenty of potions or fish), but the former can be defeated if you collect the accessories that prevent that status. In another homage, the Ice Cave is full of hellish enemies you can’t run from who can inflict instant death—but in another improvement, you can collect enough accessories that block instant death for your entire party if you do other sidequests first.
Oh, and there’s a free strategy guide on their website, should you get stuck. (I only got very mildly stuck—I actually happened into most of the sidequest goals before I realized I’d need them.)
The plot is doled out in flashback cutscenes that actually pull together fairly well as the game goes on, and are reasonably well-paced. The subtleties of the plot aren’t really spelled out for you, but the time-travel weirdness of Final Fantasy is here, too: When Gabriel uses the gate, there’s a time dilation that causes him to return before he left, but whoever he sacrificed to open the gate remains gone. This is foreshadowed: Throughout the game, you hear stories of people who vanished without a trace; and also it’s clear that Gabriel’s military genius is practically precognitive. It’s not made clear, but Dante (who sets you on your path) was the other person to travel through the gate, so he had some knowledge of future events as well. I suspect there’s an additional revelation or two if I was willing to do the Abyss dungeon, which is a bonus roguelike dungeon in the postgame.
Overall: I actually got this as part of the Fanatical RPG Bundle, so it cost me less than a dollar and was well, well worth it. It’s got very strong NES Final Fantasy nostalgia with significant quality-of-life improvements.
This is a deeply loving tribute to the original Final Fantasy, made in RPG Maker, and I was shocked at how happy I ended up being with it. It has multiple plot paths, lots of sidequests, open-world exploration and heavily customizable character builds…but also manages to avoid beef gates and insane difficulty spikes. Right from the start, you can choose a difficulty level (out of six; I played the second-lowest); whether you can save anywhere or only at save points; and the frequency of random encounters.
The character classes are the original Fighter, Monk, Thief, Black Mage, White Mage and
(Bahamut will upgrade your classes after you’ve gathered the four crystals and the magic medallion; around the same time you can pick up the airship. Most of them just unlock new skills and extra stat points, though the Thief gets a better equipment set, too.)
I went with Grey Mage, Monk, Thief and Engineer, and it was a solid party. The Grey Mage’s effectiveness as an attacker waned by mid-game (especially as the Monk came into his own), but he was a very good tank in heavy armor and had access to the Life spell. I don’t think I every used his attack magic (MP costs are very high), but he worked great as the “armored cleric” type. The Engineer was my primary black/white mage by the endgame, because after upgrades he was healing triple damage and dealing triple damage with potions and attack items, respectively. The thief’s “healing steal” was useful early on, and later he acquired some of my only debuff spells. He was also my second-strongest fighter in the late-game. The Monk was a glass cannon (particularly against magic), but he hit so hard it was worth devoting half my party to keeping him alive. I never really had a great selection of mass-damage abilities, but unless status effects or powerful magic attacks were involved, I could steamroller much of the game.
The quality of life choices built into the game are excellent. Each level up gives you stat points that you can distribute, but there’s a quick-apply method that lets you choose balanced, offensive or defensive builds if you don’t want to bother. You get skill points from battles to buy abilities, but you can also purchase skill orbs if you need more points. There’s no way to warp between towns (which was irritating) but the world map system is fantastic and always available. You get a “sonar” to find hidden items later on, and you can use it from the airship rather than having to be on foot. There’s a complicated system of finding recipes and crafting better equipment out of vendortrash, or you can quick-sell the vendortrash to a guy who’s in every town and just buy equipment and you’ll do find. You can set up your own battle macros (with “all fight” just being the tip of the iceberg.)
There are fifty official puzzles scattered through the world, each with several chests as prizes, and there are extra prizes you can collect from a puzzle enthusiast as you report on them. There’s the aforementioned fishing minigame. There’s an arena to fight mobs, a “mystic’s cave” with different mob battles, a hunter’s guild with bonus boss fights, giant moas races based on button-mashing, a half-dozen optional dungeons and optional superbosses. The ending updates depending on which sidequests you cleared!
In trying to keep the dungeon areas fresh, there are several that automatically apply status effects or have damage floors. The latter was a pain (bring plenty of potions or fish), but the former can be defeated if you collect the accessories that prevent that status. In another homage, the Ice Cave is full of hellish enemies you can’t run from who can inflict instant death—but in another improvement, you can collect enough accessories that block instant death for your entire party if you do other sidequests first.
Oh, and there’s a free strategy guide on their website, should you get stuck. (I only got very mildly stuck—I actually happened into most of the sidequest goals before I realized I’d need them.)
The plot is doled out in flashback cutscenes that actually pull together fairly well as the game goes on, and are reasonably well-paced. The subtleties of the plot aren’t really spelled out for you, but the time-travel weirdness of Final Fantasy is here, too: When Gabriel uses the gate, there’s a time dilation that causes him to return before he left, but whoever he sacrificed to open the gate remains gone. This is foreshadowed: Throughout the game, you hear stories of people who vanished without a trace; and also it’s clear that Gabriel’s military genius is practically precognitive. It’s not made clear, but Dante (who sets you on your path) was the other person to travel through the gate, so he had some knowledge of future events as well. I suspect there’s an additional revelation or two if I was willing to do the Abyss dungeon, which is a bonus roguelike dungeon in the postgame.
Overall: I actually got this as part of the Fanatical RPG Bundle, so it cost me less than a dollar and was well, well worth it. It’s got very strong NES Final Fantasy nostalgia with significant quality-of-life improvements.
