Have you ever played an RPG and for the first half it was so much fun you couldn’t stop playing, then the last half was pretty meh and draggy, so much so that you didn’t feel like finishing it and had to force yourself, but then when you finally finished it you were glad you did? Long lead-in sentence, but I’m sure anyone who’s been playing RPGs for a while knows what I’m talking about. I’m still a fan of Last Ranker and I would still recommend it to any fan of action RPGs, but it didn’t quite live up to the promise of the first 15 hours or so.

But first, all the great things about Last Ranker. The graphics are awesome. Bright, happy colors! Varied locations, interesting character designs, a little heavy on the palette-swaps but still within acceptable limits. I posted lots of screenshots last time and will do the same this time, just in case you still don’t believe me. Basically Last Ranker has some of the best graphics on the PSP, all without having to cover most of their outdoor locations with fog (shame on you, FF Type-0). In keeping with the colorful palette, the mood of the game is also… not quite light, but never too dark and heavy either, even towards the end. It’s actually pretty funny sometimes.

The soundtrack is excellent as well. Like, I don’t normally notice soundtracks in RPGs, but this time I had to stop and google who did the soundtrack. Yoko Shimomura, the google told me. She’s good. Not that every tune was 10/10, but everything gets an above-average mark and the best themes were really, really good. The voice acting was great as well, but some of the later-game dialogue was just so cheesy that it didn’t matter. The pacing of the speech also felt a little ‘off’ somehow, with people taking unnaturally long pauses between sentences. Overall it was quite good, though. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Good old Imageepoch. They make some terrible stinkers when they’re working on their own, but the games they make for other companies are usually pretty good. Case in point, Last Ranker. I wasn’t expecting much when I saw the surly-faced main character, but it has given me a very pleasant surprise. The other characters could use some work in the ‘likeability’ department, but they’re all memorable. I really like the real-time-turn-based battle system, though skills are a pain to handle. The graphics are cool, the music is decent, the jury is still out on the story.

I’m about 15 hours in and I expect to be done any minute now. I’ll save a full review for when I’m actually done. I took a lot of screenshots when I first started the game, so I’ll just post them here by way of introducing Last Ranker‘s gameplay, then I won’t have to explain myself come review time.

Story: A boy named Zig gets tired of life in his village and runs off to the city to make a name for himself. He becomes a Ranker, i.e a fighter that goes around fighting people, doing quests and keeping law and order in the world. Rankers are ranked, aha, from 1 to 95,008, from strongest to weakest, and the top 7 rankers rule the world. If you can beat a ranker, their rank is yours. Zig started out at 95,000 but has now clawed his way up to 8,397. I’m slightly bummed that I didn’t have to defeat 80,000 other rankers to get there, though. Do please go on, this is most interesting →