Game REVIEWS

unWIRED Rating:

Last Rebellion (PS3)

System: Playstation 3
Publisher: NISA
Category: RPG
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Last Rebellion, created by Hit Maker (the company behind Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light, Dragoneer’s Aria and A Witch’s Tale) and brought to North America by NISA (Nippon Ichi Software of America) is not what you would call your everyday RPG, while there are many similarities between this and all other RPG’s, Hit Maker steps out of many safe zones to create a new style RPG for the Playstation 3.

The game’s primary focus is on the two main characters, Nine the Blade and Aisha the Sealer. Nine is an orphan who was adopted by the king once he learned of Nine’s magic abilities and then trained him to becomes a strong Blade. This led to Nine’s harsh persona since he was never given the chance to find his own happiness. Aisha is a powerful Sealer who has a mysterious background, knowing a lot more than she leads on. Almost immediately after the beginning of the game, Nine is introduced to Aisha and they both watch as Nine’s father, the king, is murdered from behind by his closest friend Alfred, and wonder why he would do that. Alfred immediately resurrected the dead king with the power of the god Formival, who has the power to revive dead beings, humans and demons alike, and orders the undead king to kill Nine. Nine wakes up in a strange room seeing only Aisha, who informs Nine that he is indeed dead, but his soul is bound to Aisha’s, thanks to a forbidden spell. Aisha offers Nine a chance at revenge against Alfred who accepted her offer after further discussion. Together the two must stop whatever ambitions Alfred has.

It is a dungeon explorer, where you have to journey around a large map to get to different areas, you will have to double back at points to reach newer areas, but luckily as you proceed you can enter “large black slabs” that will take you back to the world where Nine and Aisha’s soul link, giving you access to large mirrors set around already visited maps and dungeons to make back tracking easier as you progress deeper into the story. Exploring a dungeon in this game is very important to progress as certain spells or items found in chests are needed to continue on. Especially in the last dungeon you will be revisiting every area in the game to find hidden chests to proceed. It is very easy to loose track of which dungeon has already been visited and which one has not, and the end result might be that hours are wasted on just figuring out where to go next.

This will be a challenging game at first and somewhat hard to get use to. There are 2 characters that share one body, both can attack in the same player’s turn and each can target every opponent on the screen. The speed of the characters, both player and opposing enemy, dictates who gets to attack first. During the player’s turn, the order of attack is determined by the player. Enemies have multiple areas to attack (ex: head, arms, feet, stomach and so forth) and every enemy has a pattern to attack. The pattern helps deal more damage as well as helping you complete the monster encyclopedia. By attacking each and every area on an enemy you place a stamp on them which allows you to use attack magic, only enemy areas that are currently stamped will be affected by attack magic. Balancing your attacks with magic is the key to winning battles in this game. Support magic is free to use at anytime on yourself or enemies (as long as enemy has at least one stamp) and magic is customizable from level 1-5, as well as whom it is equipped to. Because of all of the freedom to customization, each save file can have the two characters with very different builds, with different focuses on different fields. Magic is learned through finding them in chests, hence why exploring dungeons are very important. One of the less enjoyable parts to this game is the fact that monsters often come in groups of 5 and 6. At which point they just gang up on the characters and can easily deal enough damage to cause a game over in one turn, or less. Leveling in this game is crucial. Since a few levels can make the difference between killing the enemies in a few hits, or game over in a few hits. Enemies can revive after 2 turns when you empty their HP, which can only be countered by Aisha’s Seal spell, which “releases the soul” of the defeated opponent, the only way to proceed. Just to make things harder, this entire game runs on what is known as CP, the combo points. Each action from either character takes up a CP. Each attacking location on the enemy would cost 1 CP to deal damage. So if all 10 parts of the enemy are targeted, it would take 10 CP per enemy per turn to lower their HP. Unlike MP and HP, CP can only be regained through one of two ways. One way is to use a recovery item to heal and the other is to use magic to convert MP into CP. If, however, CP run out, both controlled characters cannot do anything, and would eventually receive a game over from being killed since it is impossible to fight back without CP.

The story of this game is very straight forward. It has nothing to do with saving the world, or saving someone important. The story began as a quest for revenge, and at some point, turns into a simple “revenge is not important anymore. I will just kill you because I feel like it.” There really are not that many characters in this story that are actually significantly involved. There are: the king who is killed off at the beginning, the kings trusted aid, a ghost, named Milly, from the past who is connected to Alfred Sephi, an odd cat like Sealer and a mechanic named Jacob who knows much but says nothing. The game may seem a bit limited and lacking with only 8 characters and no towns, but everything fits in well in this title. This is really a fun game to pick up and play, but it is a bit short with only about 20 hrs or so of actual game play time that would take to complete with everything. One part that really deserves some fun mention is that 2 characters from other NISA series make an appearance at the end of the game. The infamous Prinny from the Disgaea series are fightable in the game as well as Orange (aka Mikan from Jigsaw World from a Japan only Ds game) can be challenged depending on what character you use to enter that last mirror, by defeating them you unlock something for the challenge.

Visuals for this game are well done, the character art and concept really catch the eye, and the game runs at a full 1080p. You are in for some treats as you progress through the game, reaching different points in the game unlocks special character art done by guest artists. Each one gives Nine and Aisha a totally new look, and you really need to check them out for yourself, Revolutionary girl Utena, Magna Carta artist are just a couple names from the more need to be given props for it. All cut scenes are fully voiced over (English only) and hand drawn scenes or characters on screen. Music is a nice touch, very light and simple but sadly easy passable, except for the final boss theme, ending theme and hidden boss fights (Prinny and Orange).

This game leaves many questions at the end; hopefully it means the possibility of a sequel. But there are too many from the start to the end and some never answered, other problems would be for all the hard work you put in at the beginning the game becomes very easy at the end where you won’t even need attacking magicto win. Enemy spawning is another problem, to stop enemies from reviving you need to seal them, that should take care of them, but less than 30 seconds after the battle a new enemy spawns, sometimes the same enemy, sometimes old. So you will end up battling constantly, which does get annoying. The English voices are well done for this game, normally I just skip straight to Japanese voices, but this is the first non-portable NISA game that doesn’t feature dual language support (here is hoping for DLC) but the voices do suit the characters and mood. There is almost no replay value once you beat the game, and get everything that is all there is…unless you get jollies from kicking 3D Prinny butt. The worst part for me was the single body for 2 characters, so if one character is poisoned both characters deal damage after their attacks, and it can stack with corrosion (which does twice as much damage as poison), and be hit with stun, and paralyzed. So look forward to standing still being hit with every possible status effect, even if just one character is affected.

Last Rebellion comes out at a time where so many other RPG titles just came out or are coming out. This game is a sleeper title that is easily missed, but is definitely worth checking out. It requires a lot of patience, luck and time beat, and make you feel happy after wanting to rip your hair out hours ago.

**Written by Christopher Del Castillo