Yet again, I get the awesome privilege of having to spend many hours playing a rogue-like game. The Last Spell is mostly a tactical role-playing game akin to Final Fantasy Tactics, XCOM, or the Disgaea series. But instead of going through a story and preset levels and enemies, players fight giant hordes of enemies, defend a small town, and only have one shot to do it or they have to start all over. With great visuals and intense gameplay, this game will surely put any gamer to the test in both skills, smarts, luck, and patience.
A tactical role-playing game seems pretty easy to set up; you can get a bunch of characters and plop them in an arena letting them move only a certain number of spaces and attack in a certain number of ways. The real finesse and quality that comes from this kind of game are in its ability to promote strategized positioning, intelligent attacks, and powerful choices. The Last Spell fantastically forces players to choose between many hard choices and players must use the area around them to attack, run away and position themselves just out of harm’s way. Between losing future revenue, losing health, or making risky attacks, and hoping for the best, there is a lot to consider. At the end of each round players get to choose different abilities, gear, buildings, and much more to prepare for the next battle. It is amazing to see how much can change and how each run plays very differently depending on what players obtain and choose. While I do feel the game is a little stingy at times with its rewards and extremely brutal in battle, it never feels unfair or unjust.
This game is very difficult, the creators of the game make a note of that before you start playing and encourages you to try again and again while you’re learning to approach certain situations. While I agree with them and wouldn’t want a less aggressive and brutal game, I think that dialing it back a little bit in the first hours of the game wouldn’t take away from the overall experience.
After a full run is over by either death or success, players get to spend souls they’ve collected for upgrades and receive blessings by hitting certain milestones. Both these upgrade systems are great and can really make a difference in a player’s next playthrough. While this strong progression is welcome to players as they put more hours into the game, at times it does feel like progressing through levels and grinding for those upgrades are a bit more important than a player’s actual skill and strategy.
The Last Spell is absolutely for hardcore gamers who want all of the stats, all of the difficulty, and all the challenges that video games can offer. Imagine it being the Dark Souls of rogue-like games. It’s great and has plenty of amazing content that will push you to your limits, but it isn’t for everybody.
