I was quite interested in this game as soon as I saw it at the Misao list. Conversation-driven games were always bound to get my interest, and if it was mainly a grouping of dialogue trees, that would’ve been more than adequate. Instead, Last Word successfully re-invents the wheel, although its technical accomplishments are unfortunately not matched by its other aspects.

Gameplay

The primary reason why you absolutely should play the Last Word is to experience its Discourse mechanic, which is the name given to the verbal bouts between your protagonist, Whitty Gawship, and one of the game’s characters. It’s amazingly complex, requiring you to take no less than four different gauges into account, and yet it’s very fun in practice. The overall goal of each conversation is to drive it in your favour until your opponent has nothing left to say and you’ve gotten the last word, which is represented in-game by the slider at the bottom of the screen reaching “Win” (and “Lose” if you’ve failed). Both you and your opponent can accomplish this through saying Disruptive, Submissive and Aggressive things, all of which can be said in a Normal, Subtle and Overt manner.

This distinction matters, because while Aggressive options are the most efficient at pushing the slider in your direction, you can’t say them right off the bat in a polite discourse: you have to have enough Tact to get away with it. Tact is amassed through being Submissive, but these options, in turn, require Power gained through Disruptive options (the logic being that people easily ignore flattery unless you have their full attention, which is represented by Power). Generally, Subtle options give the least Power/Tact/Slider Movement but are the cheapest to use (or, for Disruptive, give the best movement early on), Overt is the opposite and normal is the middle ground. That would be quite enough for most games, but The Last Word adds yet another layer of Composure to it.

Simply put, Aggressive options are barely more effective than Disruptive ones at moving the conversation when your opponent is calm, but come into their own when they’re pissed off, getting movement bonus equivalent to the level of their discontent. This unsettling is done by following the rules of “rock-paper-scissors” game between Subtle, Normal and Overt options, with a handy chart in the center of the screen to keep you informed at all times. Here, take a look at the system in action:



Seymore here levels up alongside Whitty, so that each discourse with him will begin on equal footing. At least until you begin to buy skills.

Crisply designed, the system kept me engaged throughout the entire game, as I engaged in dozens of arguments just for fun. It helps that later on, the game goes the extra mile to include verbal skills, which can be purchased with post-battle experience from the butler. These all provide various passive bonuses such as a small amount of Power/Tact at the beginning, ability to survive a loss once, bonuses awarded for reaching certain “pegs” with the movement slider, and, my favourite, a skill that allows Whitty to calm down and regain some composure with Submissive options. Higher-level opponents will also have some (and eventually, all) of the skills available to Whitty, which is great: I really dislike it when some abilities are only available to the player for no in-universe reason.

Besides costing XP to purchase, each skill also takes up slots (represented as bow-ties) in Whitty’s pseudo-inventory. She automatically gets some of those bow-ties through winning discourses and more can be bought from the cat, along with levels of wine-tasting (which is required for some conversations and is also another way to get some one-off XP). To be honest, the whole bow-tie/wine-tasting system doesn’t make much sense (does wine turn to acid if you don’t buy the right skill?) and I wouldn’t mind if it was omitted in favour of just making the skills more expensive. While we’re on the subject of bowties, I should also mention that a bowtie also acts as a save point, in a system that ignores default RTP mechanism in favour of something much more elegant.



Finally, a system that lets you load within the game and actually shows the level you’re on!

Storyline

The game begins with a rather slow opening cutscene, which feels like it lasts ten minutes yet only manages to introduce the central premise and about half of the rather small cast. These initial dialogues also come off rather obnoxious due to the rather annoying “speech” sounds used for some of the characters (Saymore gets the worst of it), and the highly questionable decision to make all of the characters’ names into speech-related puns (Whitty Gawship, Chet Chatters, Seymour Saymore, etc.) Thankfully, the game gets a lot better once you’re finally given control of your character. The dialogues, whether storyline or optional, are all rather well-written, full of character and good-natured humour. There are a still few annoying typos, however, like respectable being misspelt as respectible in the St. Lauden Forces gossip with McCall, “weilded” encountered somewhere else, and a couple of other misspellings in the victory messages (i.e. “You devistated the opposition!” ), but these never break the immersion.

Characters reveal surprising depth once you begin talking to them and introduce various topics. Character traits that could come off forced and overdone with weaker delivery (i.e. Seymore and his shyness and resentment towards his overbearing mother) are treated with a lot of nuance here, ensuring that characters feel like real people. Whitty herself is far from flawless; the way she expects complete deference from the servant in one of the dialogues would be completely unacceptable today, but makes perfect sense within this late 19th century setting. The plot develops as you gossip to people about various topics (selected beforehand through another elegant menu), as one of them will always know more about a certain area of interest (i.e. professor’s past) than others, and that additional knowledge will in turn get another person to reveal something else, which can then be brought with yet another guest so that they can remember more about the topic you’re really after. It doesn’t always flow perfectly, and I wish that some of the dialogue was updated more often, but the system is undeniably effective when it works, feeling entirely like a real conversation.

Unfortunately, the game is unwilling to use its mechanics and instead again desires to put them center stage. As a result, the plot becomes significantly less interesting once a certain McGuffin is introduced, with few genuine surprises and a lot of pro forma events. I appreciate the decision to keep the tone light-hearted and avoid the descent into forced darkness, as well as the refusal to artificially heighten drama through out-of-character decisions and other such nonsense. Right now, the tone remains consistent all the way through and nearly everything makes sense, but the plot simply fizzles out at the end, and I can’t help but think there could have been a better alternative. One easy area for improvement would’ve been the rather loose world-building. The game is set in what appears to be mid-to-late 19th-century, because electricity is present but radio is still in experimental stage, and in the fictional European country of St. Lauden. It doesn’t have any forced steampunk crap, but it’s not a perfect replica of the time, either, as the setting appears to be less progressive in regards to class (as noble Houses still hold great influence within the society) but far more progressive with gender (as evidenced by our female General Sandhoff and McCall mentioning his twin sister’s thriving career as a boxer). It’s subtle, yet quite thought-provoking, which is something I cannot say about Last Word’s military lore. It seems to flirt with the idea that soldiers win battles with words and arguments instead of weapons, but never fully commits to it or explains how that would even work, and that’s a disappointing omission to say the least.

Aesthetics (art, design and sound)

The game’s graphics appear to be mostly custom (although I’m not too familiar with RMXP, and so can’t say for certain) and fit the game quite well. All of the characters use single-colour portraits with only one highlight (bowtie for Whitty) There are a few little animations like the fireplace burning and such, but doors opening and closing is the only one that looks great, and most movement animations (like the poor kitty’s tail twirling) feel a bit rough. There’s also a really cool effect where the light in the rooms is automatically turned on when you walk into them and is turned off as you exit, but it’s overdone in that it happens even in the rooms that are already occupied by someone else.

The sound effects are generally good; there’s a very realistic chirping when you go on the balcony outside, the sound of doors opening and closing is just right and the sounds used in various menus are also great. The sounds used when a particular person begins to speak are hit-and-miss, however; they do give us a sense of their character, true, and they add quite a lot to the game. Saymore’s ones are so over-done, however, that you’ll want to punch him hard for the first half of the game at least. It’s also rather disappointing to see footstep sounds forgotten yet again.

The music compositions are technically pretty good, and the one-off dramatic ones immediately set the mood. On the other hand, there are simply not enough of them and they end up over-used; you’ll be constantly hearing the same ball theme throughout the whole game (although it does get quieter when you walk outside onto the balcony), the same track is used for practically all of the “discourses”, and while victory and loss are tracks are technically different, the difference is not apparent unless you listen in for a long time, which is the last thing people do when they’ve lost. If the background music changed, even a little, every chapter or two, and there were more discourse themes, then the game would’ve been a lot more appealing.

Conclusion

The Last Word has a unique, great system at its core, but instead of using it organically in service of a greater plot, it has unfortunately allowed the mechanic to override other aspects of it. It’s still an interesting, enjoyable game, and the other aspects are quite competent. At the end of the day, however, it’s hard to shake off a feeling that it’s more of a shadow of what could’ve been.