Three years following the “Snake x Bullet Hell” title that was Last Command, CreSpirit and No Stuck Game Studio have brought us a new downloadable chapter in the form of Last Command: B-Side. If you haven’t read my review of that game, I recommend reading it before this one to get a better idea of what this game is about. This new DLC follows the conclusion of the story of the base game and is recommended to play after completing it.
Truth Had Gone
In Last Command: B-Side, you take the role of another silent protagonist Snake-like program named ABC this time, though they functionally are identical to PYTHON (outside of not being able to respond to NPCs with anything beyond a nod or headshake). The game once again takes place in a region of a completely digital world in the far-flung post-apocalypse future. ABC meets up with a girl (program) named Honest, and the two of them seek to help each other to try to escape a crumbling sector back to safety in Circuit City.
Honest was sort of a significant character in the base game, but she felt rather poorly handled and ended up rather shafted by the story. She appears in one scenario, several bad things happen, and she really isn’t given much development for any of it to really elicit a strong emotional connection nor reaction to the events that befall her. Putting her as the focal character of the DLC was definitely the right call in my opinion, as it offers an opportunity to amend a weak spot of the base game.
Last Command isn’t going to win any awards for story or character writing, but I appreciate a lot of what this DLC does with Honest. She’s actually given some time to be a proper character. You get some insight into her backstory and motivation as you go through your journey with her, and she’s still demonstrably shaken to an extent by everything that happened to her in the base game. There’s a lot going on; she seems not to know about herself and her purpose, and seeing it unravel makes for a surprisingly decent little mystery. It also has a surprisingly nice payoff near the end.
Another of my complaints with Last Command, the translation/localization, is better handled in the DLC as well. From what I could tell, the base game featured one translator and editor for its English localization, while the publishers opted for a dedicated localization agency for localization and quality assurance with the DLC. It’s not perfect, as there are a few typos here and there, but the script is noticeably cleaner and reads more naturally.
The rest of the story lines up a fair bit with how the original was handled. You find a lot of logs containing data about some long-abandoned programs, whom you often end up fighting. The journey is a bit more narrow in scope as there isn’t as much need to establish the “who” or “where” with characters when you’ve already beaten the main game. This works for what the DLC is trying to do, as it keeps the focus relatively contained, making this a complementary title to the main game rather than a vast expansion. It’s simple and it gets the job done.
Ideas Pack
I could easily run out of synonyms for the word “clever” trying to find all the words to gush about how fond I am of what Last Command does in translating its relatively simple concept into incredibly memorable boss designs. Any DLC for the game has a tough act to follow, but Last Command: B-Side makes it clear that the well of ideas is still plenty full.
There aren’t any entirely new mechanics to the DLC, though there are plenty of bosses that put a new spin on an existing attack or idea from the base game, which adds variation to something otherwise familiar. This DLC is about half the length of the main game, with a little over half the number of bosses (albeit some of them having quite small health bars). While it has its own little story which supplements that of the base game, the DLC really feels like a “boss pack” to continue to flex those creative muscles. Once again, there were several fights that I thought were spectacularly inventive and incredibly fun to play. In particular, I loved the cat and pirate bosses.
Like with the base game, you have four difficulties you can switch between at any time between bosses. I once again played on Expert difficulty, finding it adequately challenging even with my knowledge of some of the game’s more powerful mechanics. If I had to mention an area of shortcoming to the game and its difficulty, it would be in the final boss. There’s still a lot that’s really cool about that fight, but it does have a couple of phases I found to be more of an eyesore than anything I’ve seen in either the base game or the DLC (which were already borderline too much at times). This made the final boss longer than it felt it needed to be, providing one of the very few instances I felt the game just got to be “too much”. Though fairly rare, there are also some screens that are utterly full of flashy visual elements, so I recommend heeding the game’s warning if you have photosensitivity issues.
There aren’t a ton of new tracks to the soundtrack, but most of the new stuff is consistently of the same quality as the main game. There’s some hype and even some goofiness, but it’s all pretty good.
Finally, not to get too specific for spoiler reasons, but there are a couple of easter eggs in this game based on what you have in your software library on Steam. If you own CreSpirit’s other games like Rabi-Ribi or Tevi, and/or you own a fair bit of indie games in general, I recommend installing Last Command to the same drive as those because it’s pretty cute. This DLC launched on Steam but was delayed for Switch; I imagine this will also carry over.
Verdict
As a fan of the base game already, I love Last Command: B-Side for what it brings to the table. It alleviates some of the issues I had with the base game and offers plenty of content to be more than worth the 7 USD$ price tag. I firmly believe that one of the great strengths of indie games is the ability of creators to get creative with simple concepts and turn them into fulfilling and memorable experiences, and this DLC proves that the Last Command developers haven’t lost a step in this department over the last three years.
LAST COMMAND: B-SIDE IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for another indie game, you should check out our review of Gravity Circuit.
The writer played Last Command: B-Side on PC.
Been playing games since my papa gave me an NES controller in the early 90’s. I play games of almost all genres, but especially focus role-playing, action, and puzzle-platform games. Also an enjoyer of many niche things ranging from speedrunning to obscure music from all over the world.
