The Last Heroes series continues with an installment in the same vein as Last Heroes 2. Once again returning heroes Amelia and Roland are joined by two new party members who are functionally equivalent to the ones from Last Heroes 1, the touch-based encounters are designed to be unavoidable, backtracking through dungeons is excessive, stock RPGMaker assets are used, and everything has a slapdash "There, I made an RPG. Can I go on lunch break now?" feel. Even the plot is re-used; once again, you ask around for the whereabouts of Amelia's mom without getting anywhere and fight some cultist for unexplored reasons. But there are a few differences.
The enemy encounters' movement on the overhead screen is generally a little slower, so it is at least possible to avoid them in many cases, though not all. The "escape" option in battle is again enabled. The backtracking is toned down a little, though it's still excessive. The final dungeon is normal length (as opposed to the ad nauseam 14 levels of the final dungeon in Last Heroes 2). A playthrough takes 4 hours, the same as the original Last Heroes, though that feels like it's also in part due to less story content. And this time the final boss is someone you've at least met before you fight him, though he doesn't have much in the way of motive or personality.
But these are minor improvements over an utter disaster, and Last Heroes 3 has its own set of problems. For instance, there's an absolutely confounding bug when approaching the end of one of the dungeons: normally, the cutscene fails to trigger, leaving you no way to progress through the game. The pathway forward widens slightly as you approach, and only by continually hugging the West side of the path can you make the cutscene trigger. How something like this could get past even the most rudimentary playtesting is beyond me.
Overall Last Heroes 3 is an improvement over Last Heroes 2, but still nowhere up to the sloppy standard set by the original Last Heroes, much less an RPG that stands out from the crowd. If you're one of the few who played and enjoyed Last Heroes 1 and 2 but haven't yet bought Last Heroes 3, well, it won't disappoint you. But if like me, you thought Last Heroes 2 was a serious misstep, rest assured that Last Heroes 3 doesn't bring the series back on track. And if you haven't played any of the series, I recommend that you either start with Last Heroes 1, or better yet, don't bother with the series at all.
