Above all others, Last Dream has always served as the game against which all other RPGMaker clones should be measured against. Closely following classic RPG tropes and qualities without using them as a crutch, it struck a very precise balance between paying tribute to SNES era releases while displaying surprising level mechanical innovation. Well, after several years the stand-alone expansion World Unknown has finally hit shelves, and it was more than worth the wait.
As with all things, as a franchise builds and develops they sadly develop flaws. Some fan be fatal, others divert it down a route the story never explored, and the canon devolves into a patchwork of retcons or forced sequels. Whether this is down to the creators losing sight of what worked, the rights shifting to those who do not understand the property, or even just changes in vision which go against its best strengths, we’ve seen this many times over. Sometimes it can take an indie to show where a major publisher went wrong, and Last Dream captures everything which SquareEnix has lost sight of with Final Fantasy.
Chalgyr's Game Room writes:
Every RPG fan has that one special experience that brings them into the genre. So when my brother told me that he played what seemed to be a hardcore Final Fantasy I, not only did I raise my eyebrows, but I said sounds like fun and I set out to attempt it. Last Dream is the story of a man who gets separated from his children while on a beach, and he winds up in this mystical realm where he sets out to figure out what happened and if he can make it back.
Using the RPG Maker system today carries a lot more weight than it did compared to just a few years ago. The stigma that exists from building a game using an engine of this type is slowly starting to fade with the Indie style games becoming more and more popular and modifications becoming more and more impressive.
