The Last Spell Is Fiendishly Challenging, But At Least It’s Upfront About It
My city is on fire. My people are panicking. I’ve exhausted every last resource I had left from the night before, and my heroes are running out of Mana. At this point, I’ve furrowed my brow so deeply that I’m giving myself tension headaches. I want to keep going, I want to fight — There’s only about fifty of these monsters left — But my walls have crumbled, and they’re clawing at the barrier protecting my Mages Circle. I have no other option. I must abandon them, reset my progress, and return to square one. It wasn’t until now that I realized how long twelve nights could be. But when you’re nervously counting your available resources by day five, it quickly dawns on you just how much is still ahead. ALRIGHT, FROM THE TOP!
The Last Spell (developed by Ishtar Games, currently in Early Access) is a gruelingly difficult tactical RPG where you command a band of heroes who must protect a group of mages in the middle of your city for twelve nights as hordes of ‘Clawers’ assault your walls. Each day is spent leveling up your heroes, buying gear, and improving your defenses. Each night, you fend off the assault. With each subsequent run, you gain access to more features, stronger starting heroes, more buildings, and more varied equipment to bolster your units. You can also fortify your city walls, build ballistae, and set up teleportation circles in order to easily traverse and protect the city perimeter. There are a lot of options that slowly become available to you to make each run unique. And the more you play, the easier it becomes to manage each assault.
Supposedly.
I’ll be honest; I am on my twentieth attempt, and I still haven’t gotten past Night Eight. And it’s not just because I’m bad at the game, either — The game is tough. But despite this crushing difficulty, despite getting my business rocked every time I try and make a bit more progress, I keep coming back to be greeted by the same warning.
“This game is meant to be hard”.
And there’s something about this Disclaimer that makes that OK. The Last Spell is coming out amidst an ongoing discussion about difficulty in video games. Frankly it’s ongoing because it hasn’t stopped for the past three years but it’s still an important discussion to have. Does a game have to be hard to be rewarding? Does it need to have a reduced difficulty option in order to be accessible? How do you walk the knife’s edge of something being challenging without making it needlessly frustrating? On top of that, how do you distract your player from getting sick of failure?
And The Last Spell, despite only being in early access and having so little available, is doing a decent job of it. The difficulty of the game isn’t the lacking number of heroes you start with, or your fortifications being too weak (both of which have ‘fixes’ in Easy Mode); it’s about map and resource management. Your buddy’s still going to get his face clawed in twain if you’re not watching their health, mana, and positioning, and your city structures are going to be attacked if you’re not shoring up defenses appropriately. But what that Easy Mode is providing is breathing room. It’s making the game more initially accessible without entirely sacrificing the challenge of the game. Because the challenge IS the game.
And it’s really frickin’ good.
I’ve sunk about 40 hours into The Last Spell and I’m still finding it an enjoyable experience. Everything from the spritework, to the music, to the gameplay combines together to help formulate an incredible atmosphere I can’t help but immerse myself in. This game has me constantly coming back after every defeat. Maybe once I actually manage to make it to Night Twelve (some time in December, I’m sure) I’ll finally free myself from its clutches, but for now, I head once more into Lakeburg. Hopefully I’ll get to see the dawn of a ninth day. And if I don’t…
That’s OK, too. The challenge is its own reward.