What Last Dream lacks in innovation it makes up for in highly nostalgic RPG gameplay. For those well versed in SNES RPGs this reminds me of some mixture of Final Fantasy 4, Final Fantasy 5 and Lufia 2. Specifically the warring nations involved in the story (FF4); the class system and combat (FF5); and the puzzles and “The Abyss” optional dungeon (Lufia 2).
Beyond the nostalgia there are some modern game features that are welcome additions to the formula. Perhaps the best of them is the macro system that lets you save a set of battle commands for all 4 of your characters that can be triggered quickly. This does away with needing to repeatedly mash out a simple 4x Attack round that is so commonly used or manually input the same series of stat boosting spells that you’ll use on most tough fights. They’ve also made it so you can customize the difficulty, encounter rate and amount of restriction on save location, without being locked into any choices.
I was pleasantly surprised by the added enjoyment I got out of all the achievements this game has. They unlock at a steady rate and give a similar feeling of reward as loot collecting. Many of them are tied to the optional activities abounding throughout the game and give a nice incentive to complete them. I won’t go into details on all the optional areas but I will say that I greatly enjoyed most of them and was thrilled by the variety to be found.
The class, skill and leveling up systems in Last Dream are all very satisfying. There’s not a lot surprising here but the wide range of flexibility in how you choose to progress your character’s stats and skills helps keep things engaging. You can further personalize things with gear and that includes a solid crafting system that focuses on steady collection of goods rather than random chance drops. One critique of the crafting is that I would have liked to see a sortable synthesis menu. Once you’ve amassed a decent number of recipes it becomes annoying to have to sift through them all to find the ones you want.
Avoiding any spoilers I will say that the story was good, but not great. One major criticism I’ve always had of voiceless playable characters is that it then falls entirely on NPCs that you are infrequently in contact with to supply the game with interesting characters. This game is a prime example of that and, in my book, suffers because of it. That being said, I particularly enjoyed the character arc of the villain. I also want to give a big thumbs up for the huge amount of town NPC dialogue that continually evolves throughout the game, always reflecting the major happenings in the storyline. This does SO much to make the game world come alive.
Finally I’d like to point out that while the soundtrack was patched together from a lot of different sources, it all comes together brilliantly with loads of excellent tracks.