My most anticipated RPGs of 2011: Day 6

The Last Story - Wii - TBA:

The name Hironobu Sakaguchi is synonymous with the brand Final Fantasy, as its creator Sakaguchi has been at the helm of some of the best games in the series, as well as being the executive producer/producer of countless others. His reputation was built on an unwavering stance of providing extremely polished games to the players and the will to bring something new to the plate. But when the failed movie venture, Final Fantasy: Spirits Within in 2000, came out to massive amounts of negative reviews, he voluntarily left SqaureEnix to make a new company named Mistwalker.

Since then the company has made a few solid if unspectacular RPGs for the Xbox 360 and the DS. But with the The Last Story the company is aiming for something substantial, but what is more important that Sakaguchi-san is the director of the game after a span of 19 years!. His last game as a director was Final Fantasy V for the SNES, so you can see The Last Story is quite an important game for the RPG genre. The Wii may have been an odd choice for a game for this caliber, but with the Japanese release early this year to some really good press it is a clear indication that the game and and console of choice was indeed inspiring.

The Last Story may very well be the last game from Sakaguchi and so the game seems to have pulled all stops and is set to give a great RPG experience. The game uses a variant of the turn based/ action RPG mechanics and twists it in a new direction. It is a huge departure from the turn based system which Sakaguchi specializes in and in the case of The Last Story this translates in huge expectation of RPG players on a whole.

While the setting of The Last Story is reminiscent of awesome games like Final Fantasy XII or Vagrant Story with strong medieval influences, but it still has stamp of a master who knows and loves his trade and it will be interesting to see if whole product is as polish as Sakaguchi older games. Oh yeah the game also sees Nobou Uematsu as the music composer which is always an awesome thing and we can expect the same high level of compositions Uematsu-san is know for.

The Last Story still awaits an official announcement for an English version but very recently there have been rumbling of an announcment soon, but till the E3 arrives its still all up in the air. The Last Story is very easily the last big game for the Wii and if it strikes gold then Wii will end up having one of the best RPGs in years. I really hope the game does get a English version and is as good as the hype!

mini-updated: Keiji Inafune has quit Capcom....

Capcom's legend Keiji Inafune has quit the company as effective end of October. Wow, this is major news. I mean the guy has been credited as being the creator of many awesome games like the Mega Man series, Onimusha series and more recently Dead Rising games. Although I have not played many of his games, but it still makes me a little sad that one of the pioneers of the game industry has left the company which made him the legend and brought amazing games to the world. I guess these are changing times. I still remember a few years back I felt the same when Hironobu Sakaguchi left SquareEnix. Anyways back to Keiji Inafune.


Personally I was not his fan esp not after this scathing remarks that Japanese game industry was finished and how Japanese developers could not compete with the Western developers. In this HD generation I have played many incredible Japanese developed games like Valkyria Chronicles, Final Fantasy XIII, Tales of Vesperia and Bayonetta to name a few. Hence Inafune-san remarks were a kick to the gonads and it made me wonder why the hell he made such a statement. But anyways I guess he had his reasons and him being one of the bigger developers from Japan he must know what we don't or maybe this was bout of reverse psychology!! (conspiracy theories anyone?)

Well good luck to him I guess as he embarks on a new challenge and I am sure many of his fans will wait impatiently for his next game or series. As for me, what will be interesting how he plans to bring the Japanese game industry back to it feet with his new game whenever it comes out! (whatever that means!)