You ever play a game that feels like a "missing link" somewhere in the history of games? I won't say this game is hugely influential, as it seems to tread a similar path as Dragon Quest I or Final Fantasy I, but it taps into something I never knew I needed and it perhaps is indirectly influential instead.

This is one of those games where the price of entry is incredibly steep. Not only is it a game that never left Japan but it's also very obtuse, not only in gameplay but presentation, and it's gotten pretty archaic now as well. It's not family friendly, especially in the US in the 80s, where a game with demons as its protagonists could never fly. Not only all that, but the only version that has been translated into English by fans is the Famicom version, which I'm told is the worst version of them all. Big sigh. Regardless, the core of the idea is still there and it's good enough to gloss over some minor and major issues.

It seems like I've been finding a lot of sandbox JRPGs lately. These don't seem to make it out of Japan very easily, which I wonder about, as the story can be fairly sparse and the focus is on exploration. While DQ1 and FF1 weren't straight away sandbox games (you can throw LOZ1 in the conversation too), they did have a lot of open-world elements or at least gave the illusion of such, so was there an audience for these types of games? Yeah, I believe so. I think the problem lies in the entry point. You either need a guide (manual) or a LOT of patience to figure out how everything works.

You're simply dropped into a world. There is an opening cinematic but only if you wait on the title screen for 30 something seconds. Even then, it only really establishes that this is a post-apocalyptic world, no humans left, being invaded by space aliens. Demons, literally from hell, are the only ones that can stop them. Is the concept basically a B-horror movie plot? Yes, but it's also pretty gnarly.

The biggest flaw to the game is the flow of combat as it is incredibly slow, but if you're playing this through illicit means ahem, find out where the fast forward button is, you'll need it. And the entire gameplay loop IS basically combat. You travel around an open world searching out stone tablets that have some strange sage wisdom on them. Some of them are pretty philosophical, others help you understand each monster's strengths and/or weaknesses. You can't beat the game unless you read all 108, but luckily, they're pretty memorable so if you tread over them more than once it's not a complete waste. It's clear as you read more of these that this is very much a game made by a people that are living in a post-apocalyptic world (Japan). It's interesting to see how much the atom bomb affected art in Japan, lots of nihilism since, and I really cannot blame them at all. Paraphrasing but "Whether worshipping God or demons, neither mattered in the long run." This captures the feel of everything quite well.

You essentially level up like Final Fantasy II even though all the versions of Last Armageddon came out before that. If you haven't played Final Fantasy II, you don't acquire simplified experience points, you have experience points for every single action you take. You attack, your attack goes up, you use magic, your magic goes up, etc. While I do like the level of control in growing your characters that this gives, it also means GRIND GRIND GRIND. So while a part of me is sad that this type of JRPG never made a big impact, the other part is glad that not all JRPGs are ridiculous grind fests (unless you want them to be of course, you always have that option).

That said, you can break the game to some extent. Basically spam all of your magic while you are on the field (heals/cures/etc), your magic will increase after one battle by one level and it also restores all of your MP. However EXP does stack so if you did enough actions to level up several times you just have to go through that many battles to get to the appropriate level for it. This also works well if you go into a battle and defend for 5+ rounds straight. Your defense level will increase by one level after the battle and then by one more after each subsequent battle depending on how much EXP you accumulated. Confused? Oh well, I'll stop with the deep details there.

Your monsters also evolve at some point and even change appearance which is a fun little touch which might even be the first time this happened in a JRPG? Surely correct me if I'm wrong there.

After all is said and done, this can be a very hard recommend. Almost every other battle you're going to be poisoned. So you have to make the medicine each time until your magic is high enough to use the "cure" spell. Still, you have to bring up the menu after almost every battle and use the cure. Super tedious.

When/IF you arrive at a dungeon, they are in first person, which is cool at first. Seems like a nice change of pace, although you'll soon realize these are all mazes in the worst way. Everything looks the same, so finding your way is as confusing as you would think it is, not only that, but the spots you need to find in the dungeons to move the story forward have no visual indicators so it's literally just going everywhere you possibly can till something pops up. I can't imagine trying to beat this game back in 88 when there was zero help. I suggest getting a guide and finding the maps for every dungeon to save yourself (some) headaches.

By the second part of the game it feels like they decide to make the game more challenging in the cheap way of making the random encounter rate spike significantly. The encounter rate was already pretty high at 8-10 steps, now it's more like 4-5, sometimes as few as 2-3. I ended up putting in a Game Genie code to turn off random battles at the second half of the game to keep my sanity. Don't really care if that makes me a "cheater," I respect my time and would rather enjoy things than pull my hair out. There's challenge and then there's tedium and I'm very much over the latter. Besides, at this point in the game, if you played your cards right, your monsters are pretty much tanks and every single battle just starts to feel like a time sink.

So yeah, with how archaic this feels now, I can't openly recommend it, but the story is very interesting and it's almost (almost) worth it. There's so much weird stuff in this particular game for the time however, that it may be worth exploring as a curiosity, you'll likely never play something remotely like it again. While the story definitely seems like one of nihilism, the end has a spark of hope and likely leads into the sequel (After Armageddon).

I might want to check out the PCE CD version as I hear that's the most user friendly and the sequel is on the SEGA (MEGA) CD. Either way, these seem like games that deserve a more modern remake or at least some kind of fan-inspired indies, purely based on what they do right.

I recommend it only to people that like new experiences, but expect a ton of flaws.