Yup. Is very awesome.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Last Story.

I don't have a huge amount of time to play videogames, so a fairly short action RPG like The Last Story was a really pleasant change of pace.

No Xenoblade isn't an ARPG. But it still fit the JRPG craving that I wanted at the time. 

What makes a game an ARPG or not is whether or not attacks are mapped to keys/buttons 1:1. Meaning there are no/few menus. 

Also you shouldn't have to grind at all in Xenoblade if you do side-quests. You run risk of being OVERLEVELED not underleveled. 

An example of an ARPG that has grinding in it is the Tales of series. 

It was fun, but flawed. After playing Xenoblade, which had a grand, open world and took about around 200 hours to complete everything before I even went back and beat the final boss, I didn't mind a much smaller scale RPG with a bit more focus and linearity. Not every game should be like XBC, otherwise I'd only finish two games a year at this point.

The characters are cool, but one thing that bugged me about the game is how the romance between the alpha couple felt so forced and slapped together. It's like, "Hey, here's a boy and here's a girl, and they are in love because BOYS AND GIRLS FALL IN LOVE!!!". Whereas with the beta couple, things develop a bit more organically, and I found it way more interesting.

Meh... its slow paced, buggy and has a simplistic combat system. Its not what i would recommend at all.

Hmm, I guess I don't really know the definition of what an action RPG is then. And yeah, early on I did the side quests and yeah, I never had an issue. I guess I just got impatient because I liked the story so much lol

I liked it more than Xenoblade last gen. Strangely, I got Xenoblade for the 3DS and now I like Xenoblade more. I preferred Lost Odyssey to them both, though--but I haven't played that game in forever. It might not be as good as I remember.

zelmusario said: This has been in my backlog for years now and I've never gotten around to it. OP, I think you're the one who convinced me to play SMT IV with your review several months back and I wasn't disappointed. So I think it might be time to crack open The Last Story, finally. I trust your gaming taste. Btw, the attack system sounds kind of like Ni No Kuni? A combination of real-time and turn-based combat?

My favorite genre is RPG, and being more specific, JRPG's. So it probably was me because I wrote a smallish review on SMT IV. If you need any advice on RPG's, you can ask me because I've most likely played it or will in the near future. (only on 3DS, Wii, Wii U and 360 though because I don't own a PS3, Xone or PS4, but I plan to get a PS4 soon)

And the attack system is not really turn based. It's just the normal attack most action games have will attack automatically if you get close to a monster without you having to press a button. Now you can turn this off but I prefered it on so I could focus on the skills everyone used and etc. 

There are a lot of cutscenes and it was pretty linear (but some people prefer linear, and I did not mind this) but I enjoyed the cutscenes so.

This is definitely something I agree with. It did feel slapped together... I enjoyed the beta couple a lot more. They were so much more entertaining as well.

That is kind of what Xenoblade is. 

However, I agree. I would love for The Last Story to become another "Final Fantasy" for Nintendo systems.