Review: The Last Prince

[Ocedic 249]

Title: The Last Prince

Author: Arin

Version: 1.3c

Review by: Ocedic

 

Note: This project has been updated since this review; this review may or may not reflect the current state of the game.

 

Introduction

 

The Last Prince is a JRPG that, on the surface, appears to be fairly typical RPG Maker fare. There are a few things that set it apart from the crowd, but bugs and polish issues hold it back.

 

 

Presentation

 

The Last Prince is mostly composed of RTP graphics. For the most part, it's consistent, but there are bits and pieces that look out of place and jarring. The president's faceset, for example, uses the Facegen and looks sorely out of place when every other faceset appears to be regular RTP. The emosets look decent and are used well, but Leon's 'closed eyes' face looks pretty weird. I like the use of graphical anime tropes to convey emotion.

 

Mapping is generally bad, though at times passable. Many environments look blocky, barren and sometimes downright strange:

 

 

It doesn't help that the maps are huge. A lot of maps need quite a bit of polish, especially a ways into the demo once you meet Chester and go through the mountains. It's like the author got lazy and stopped caring about mapping entirely at that point, or just really rushed to create new content.

 

In terms of audio, The Last Prince fares much better. The music is great and so are the sound effects. The only criticism here is the music sometimes seems off. At times there are weird periods of silence for inexplicable reasons, and other times the music just doesn't match. For example, at one point you see a city burning in the distance, yet the same lighthearted field music is playing which doesn't really match the gravity of the situation.

 

Verdict: Audio good, graphics okay, mapping needs lots of work

 

Gameplay

 

The game has a lot of potential here, but ultimately falls flat. First, I chose Easy mode to quickly progress through the game, yet battles still seemed to take forever. They weren't very challenging, just very frequent and very long. Even the weakest enemy in the game seems to have an unusually high amount of hit points. I couldn't imagine playing the game on a higher difficulty if fights take even longer. Though there aren't random battles, you're forced to fight constantly because there are so many enemies on the field and they seem to seek you out. Running is hit or miss, as sometimes they immediately catch you again as soon as you escape. The end result is a lot of mandatory battles that seem to go on and on.

 

Last Prince's standout gameplay feature is the chain system, which is actually a lot of fun and feels very rewarding and satisfying to use. However, similar to how Final Fantasy's cool summon spells eventually wear your patience thin, the long winded chain system will lose its appeal after a while. The system feels woefully underutilized from a game design standpoint. I found myself using the same chains over and over which generally involved mashing A. Sometimes you're supposed to switch it up for different elemental weaknesses, but I don't really consider that strategy. In general, the skills are very uninspired; most are basically just the default skills. It also doesn't help that Siegfried shares the same starting chain skills as Leon when characters who barely stay in your party like Chester or Yukari have unique set of chains. This is honestly the game's biggest weakness: the combat isn't fun and skills aren't fun. If these were improved I would have a much better time playing the game.

 

Outside of combat, the game is okay. There are a lot of side paths to explore for people who like to find every piece of treasure. The huge maps make you get lost sometimes, and there is a tedious amount of backtracking which exacerbates the issues mentioned. You'll be fighting the same monsters over and over simply because the game makes you run back and forth between areas that you've already been through.

 

There's also minor bugs involving followers:

 

 

Verdict: Has potential, needs work

 

Story

 

I would say this is the strongest part of The Last Prince, though it's not without flaws. I was intrigued by this project to begin with because of its political story involving a fledgling democracy. Unfortunately, this part of the backstory isn't explored very well, and it just seems to be 'there.' Honestly, you could write the same story if you completely ignored the aspects of government. This isn't necessarily bad, just disappointing and different from what I expected. Other than that, the story feels a lot like an anime which is both good and bad. Characters have distinct and unique personalities, though sometimes they are a bit on the extreme side of quirkiness. There's also a bad case of character bloat, as you go from having two solid, well-written characters to a party of 5 in a short time. Some of those extra characters just seem utterly pointless, especially Chester. As you might imagine, character development sharply falls off once this deluge of characters comes into the picture.

 

 

The NPC's are very bland and boring. Almost none of them have any personality to speak of, and they seem completely indistinguishable from one another. It doesn't help that their dialogue does not change at all when you're forced to backtrack through the same towns, which makes them seem even more like lifeless decorations. They also don't seem to offer anything insightful about the political climate even though they just recently instated democracy for crying out loud.

 

The plotline itself is kind of nonsensical. Leon starts off by talking about how the world doesn't need him, since he's the last prince and heir to an archaic system. Yet inexplicably he's the most sought after character in the story. I imagine the bad guys have some reason to capture him which will be explained later, but it doesn't make sense that any of the good guys would care about a worthless noble. The narrative just feels forced, like stuff is happening for the sake of the game progressing. It made me lose interest as the game progressed as I felt that I didn't have a real goal or purpose. It's a shame because I think the setup of the plot is very interesting as a man who is trying to find his place in the world that has changed drastically.

 

Verdict: Interesting but underused premise, solid characters, NPC's need personality

 

Recommendation

 

First, I didn't finish this demo as my game froze when I got to this ironically appropriate scene:

 

 

I can say that I had a lot of fun early on, but the game got progressively less interesting as it went on. The characters are enjoyable enough that I'd say give it a try, and I think if the author polishes up the project a bit more it can be a solid, robust adventure.

Edited March 2, 2013 by Ocedic

[Radiant Arin 412]

Thank you for the critique, good sir.

 

Hmm...it seems that there is a lot that I must go back and do, and especially now that I've pretty much completed the barebone structure of the main plot, I definitely have wiggle room to go back and edit maps. I will look into the first enemies and their respective HP stats; I mainly made them high so that players can get a feel for the Combo System. And even though you have minimal Combo Skills to work with at first, they will, rest assured, become more and more important in later stages of the game. Also, I'm looking into something that can be used to escape combat efficiently, like a Common Event. Except, it hasn't been working out well.

 

How in the world did you get that Follower bug? :S

 

I think mapping is still something that I could definitely work on, especially in Pholoso. Pholoso was kind of rushed, if I remember correctly, so I didn't have much time to go back and make everything perfect, but now that I'm almost done, I can go and touch that up.

 

Hmm, that ship bug is interesting. I'll take a look at it.

 

I'm sorry that the game didn't live up to your expectations, but using this review, I think I have a right direction of where I need to go.

[Ocedic 249]

I believe the follower bug is from the map just north of where the screen shot is. I think you forgot a <Gather Followers> as Siegfried stopped following me after that.