Thank you Winking for sending us a review code!

A self-described mashup of “Snake and bullet hell”, Last Command pits you in a futuristic world of artificial intelligence which has gone sentient. You figure out that humanity has fallen in this world, and are accompanied by a Program named Fei. She doesn’t understand her Last Command (a mission given to each Program), and wants you to investigate why the Iron Guard Knights (her organization) are acting erratically. This piles into a deeper narrative, where you’ll try and defeat evil viruses that corrupt those around you.

Honestly, the story is one of the weaker points of Last Command, as a lot of it feels like a generic “save the world plot.” You can speak with your friendly Support Program as well as Fei and some other characters throughout the game, but I felt like the conversations didn’t feel tight enough to hold my interest. In addition, the localization of the English version has typos throughout, which aren’t a dealbreaker but still very noticeable.

However, the best part of Last Command are the battle stages. The meat of gameplay has you dashing to avoid obstacles and analyzing (i.e. shooting) said data at the enemy in question. In true Snake gameplay, you’ll traverse a 2D plane in order to collect your ammo. While you can analyze your data at any time, maxing out your collection cache will allow you to activate overdrive mode, which will pump out your data quicker. While it’s optimal to do this, as you collect more data, your character gets wider (as Snake avatars do), which means you’re easier to hit. While only hitting your main dot hitbox can decrease your energy, if a projectile hits your tail, you will lose collected data and have to scoop it up again. There is a way you can stop on demand, but you’ll still need to predict the movements of everything around you. After analyzing your enemy, you’ll need to touch their heart in the center in order to keep your progress set, otherwise your attacks won’t do anything after a while. After reaching 100%, a countdown will start where you will need to dash into the enemy’s heart in order to deal out an attack and start another phase.

Complicating these stages are a horde of enemies, each with different bullet patterns and attack types. While you’ll mostly dash out of the way to avoid red attacks, you’ll want to dash into purple ones, with blue and orange attack types forcing you to either stop or move if you don’t want to get hit. If I had to compare Last Command to any mechanic, it would be Undertale’s defense sequences, where you would need to avoid different obstacles when it was the enemy’s turn. Here, it’s a lovely blend of attacking and evading. Each enemy feels like a boss and offers different ways of defeating it.

One of my favorite encounters is with an enemy that forces you to solve quick math problems to survive its attacks (by landing in a safe zone based on the answer given). It helps that most of these encounters also come with some unique music, and it was always fun dying and trying again to figure out strategies to defeat each stage. Additionally, there is some gorgeous pixel art during these fights, and the game performs perfectly regardless of playing docked or undocked. The game controls perfectly during these stages, and with the hectic action coming from all sides, I’m glad that none of my deaths were due to an errant control scheme.

I would have wholeheartedly recommended Last Command if it just consisted of the amazingly handcrafted shoot-em-up stages, but unfortunately, a lot of the game is full of padding. The hub world of the game is a chore to traverse, as there are plenty of platforming areas here where the Snake way of moving feels cumbersome. There’s no penalty for getting hit, and moving in these areas doesn’t feel quite as fast as it should. Controls and stability also take a hit here, since it’s here where I kept experiencing random collisions and framerate drops.

It doesn’t help that this hub world constitutes around half the gameplay time, and it just feels like a waste. I understand the world here to be barren for story reasons, but with only a few NPCs and the only reason for exploring more than you have to is because you’ll need to grab modules here (modifications that will help you in the shoot-em-up portions). I would rather have a 2-3 hour experience of purely amazing shoot-em-up battles rather than a 6-hour slog that includes avoiding red-colored boxes. This latter portion of Last Command sours the experience for me somewhat, but there’s still enough to power through the whole game.

In terms of content, there is some usage of the word “d*mn”, and some text boxes are censored (in context, it’s due to Programs corrupting); stronger language isn’t explicitly detailed, but one could fill in the gaps. One of the supporting characters uses imagery of Taoism (such as Yin-Yang symbols) and is initially seen as a positive force (though gets corrupted later on and is seen in the corresponding stage’s attacks). There is also violence depicted, though it is pixelated and computerized, with no realistic depictions of gore present.

Overall, Last Command is something to experience if just for the shoot-em-up portions. I just wish there was a way to skip the second half of platforming challenges.