Last Fantasy Vol. 1

Last Fantasy is a tribute to anyone who has ever played an RPG and spent hours trawling through dungeons, trying to find those legendary “Level 30 Boots of Butt-Kicking” that a friend told you about.  Or the times when you accidentally drank a potion of complete restoration when your health was already completely full only to then walk into the liar of a seven-headed beast of death!  It might have been Diablo, Asherons Call or Zelda but we, the RPG-playing fraternity, have all been there and done it!  

Last Fantasy points and laughs at you with shameless abandon and parodies anything and everything you ever loved/hated about fantasy role playing games and, well, I kinda like it.

The first volume covers a series of misadventures involving two slightly self-serving, slightly incompetent heroes (Drei and Tian) that despite good intentions, manage to screw everything up given half the chance.  Drei is the “attack first, think later” sword master while Tian brings up the rear with his magic (of which he only seems to have a level 1 fireball spell to his name).  There isn’t really any plot as such and the back story on our main characters is very thin, but after reading the first chapter it becomes quite clear what Last Fantasy is about and you either don’t care or it doesn’t matter.  

The unrelated quests that Drei and Tian undertake could quite easily have been lifted from any fantasy RPG you might have played but it’s the humour surrounding them that makes this an enjoyable read.  The dialog is a little predictable in places and I wonder if it would be quite so funny for someone not familiar with Role Playing Game conventions but nevertheless, if you’re clued up on the subject matter, the jokes are good and will keep you laughing throughout.  The artwork isn’t bad either.  It isn’t anything outstanding but it’s solid and conveys the action (where it happens) and the humour well.

Last Fantasy certainly isn’t going to win any awards for literary or artistic genius but so long as you’re not looking for anything serious and fancy a bit of a laugh, there’s a fair amount like here.