These Environments Can At Times Play Havoc With The Player

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While The Last Story is very obviously limited by the graphical capabilities of the Wii, it’s also obvious that the development team at Mistwalker packed as much detail into the game as they could. Simply put, the game looks gorgeous for the console it was created for. The art and design of the environments and characters gives the fantastical feel of a pre-modern world bordering on a renaissance built on magic, reminiscent of earlier Final Fantasy games, or even Chrono Trigger.

Sakaguchi and company frequently use color in The Last Story to convey the tone of a given area or cinematic. For more emotional moments, colors are often muted and dulled, giving it an almost old cinema feel; while some environments can contain a lot of vibrance in their color palette, especially during big action sequences. Even many of the colors available to you for customizing your characters (using dyes that you can collect throughout the story) refrain from being lively, so as not to stand out overwhelmingly from the rest of the game’s motif. It’s a system that works very well with bringing a level of seriousness, foreboding, ...
... or loss for a given scenario in the game.

While gorgeous, these environments can at times play havoc with the player, especially in the area of camera controls. Oftentimes when obstructed, the game does well to adjust the transparency of the obscuring object, such as a wall or pillar. However, where the problem occurs is in Command Mode, when you’re in a multilevel environment, as the game seems to fail to bring transparency to the ceiling above, obstructing your view and making it difficult to get a lay of the land when providing your team with orders.

In creating this wondrous world of The Last Story, Sakaguchi draws a lot from themes that he’s used in the past: a lonely hero on his adventure meets a beautiful woman who carries the secret of her royal heritage and desires nothing more than to break away from the walls of the castle to see the world, and the impending love triangle that ensues. These are all elements that have been seen in Sakaguchi’s previous works, but it’s a formula cheap fifa coins that still manages to do the job of creating a fascinating story that’s easy to get lost in. Sakaguchi, together with writers Masaru Hatano and Takatoshi Aoki, show their prowess with a pen in creating a script with loveable characters, powerful villains, and a world that you can really sink your teeth into.

Mistwalker and XSEED have also managed to put together an exceptional team of voice actors for the main characters to deliver their powerful script. Veteran voice actress Alix Wilton Regan (Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age Origins) portrays Calista, the niece of Count Arganan, who wishes to see the world and is the love interest of Zael, the male lead. Zael is voiced by British theatre and television actor Jack Ryder. Regan and Ryder display fantastic chemistry that brings a lot of life to both characters as they adventure together and grow closer, bringing with them an emotional conflict: Being unable to openly show their affections for one each other, as Calista is betrothed to the Lord Jirall at the behest of Arganan to further strengthen his position politically.