Last Vanguard Reviews

Big shoutout to the devs for an awesome game! I didn’t have much time to play yet (only a few minutes in), but I’m already impressed. The battles are engaging, and the artwork, music, and atmosphere are absolutely top-notch. I’m really looking forward to diving deeper into it because what I’ve seen so far is fantastic!

I really want to recommend this game, but small QOL things just make it the difference between enjoying this and struggling with it. I've only played an hour and a bit of the game so far and I feel like this still needs a little more time in the oven. I'd want to compare this game to something like Cuphead, but with a metroidvania twist and I really enjoy that concept. I've collectively played +100 hours Cuphead on both Xbox and PC, and have no real issues with playing that and thoroughly enjoy it. One great thing I like about Cuphead is the access to being able to rebind inputs on a gamepad (or keyboard, but I use controller in this case). I didn't enjoy the original controls and rebound them to my liking to make it a more comfortable and enjoyable experience. I've managed to play through it multiple times using these controls and have loved every minute playing it (less when it comes down to S ranking everything). This leads me to my [b] Main [/b] problem with this game... The controls you get are the one's you're stuck with. At first I thought it wouldn't be too much of a problem and I'd get used to them, but I didn't want to continue playing if I won't enjoy the controls. I did try keyboard controls and my only comment on them is it's like talking with your hands (the Italian way), but you're hands are upside down and stuck in a crowded train. Fingers clenched together attempting to play the game... not the greatest [b] Default [/b] key binds in my opinion, but I digress. After messing around for ~20 mins in the game trying to get Steam Input to work, it took changing the controller inputs to be read as keystrokes to fix only some of my problems. When I was trying to shoot air-bound enemies, I kept going to use the right stick to aim without moving and could only sort of do it when I rebound LT to stop, then use the right stick to aim. It worked, but the problem is something like this would've been preferred in the game as standard (this could just be down to personal preference though, but wanted to mention it anyway). One small nit pick that isn't to do with rebinding controls, but is to do with how the game controls (and probably would just have to get used to it) is the jumping. It feels off for some reason and I'm not sure how to put my finger on it other than the arc that you jump doesn't feel either consistent or feels too sudden with faster angular movement mid-air. Apart from that, actual control of your character feels pretty good. On a side note, after defeating one of the bosses (The one with the propeller hand and throws the floating bombs), there really wasn't a great deal of feedback onto how far into the fight I was. There didn't really feel like there was anything showing how well I was doing and how close I was to defeating them. At least some kind of phase change or boss health bar, or at least some indication from the boss itself to show you're doing some damage to them (probably getting progressively angrier / damaged as the fight goes on). I've never made a review this long before, but I wanted to for this game because of how much I want this to work. I love the idea of it and it feels like it could be a great game, especially from only a 2 crew dev team! You guy's have done a great job with it, and implore you to keep up the great work. There's so much this game is capable of and you're the ones to make it happen! I will keep this game in my wishlist in the meantime and hope for some more updates to this game, especially one to add some kind of support for controller / keyboard rebinding. Keep up the great work, and hope to come back to this game soon!