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 →