True, fluid, 2D art style is something that has had its fad pass for video games.  For a while it wasn’t uncommon to see a title like Guacamelee or another title from Vanillaware popping up, and it was a sad day when that time had passed.  Thankfully the tower defense/brawler title, The Last Friend, is here to remind us how wonderful this style of art can be.

Many tower defense titles, at this point, take some kind of inspiration from Plants vs. Zombies, a tactic that is understandable as it is one of the most successful entries ever to that field.  The Last Friend follows suit, with ever increasing amounts of towers, or dogs with machine guns, that can be placed to block enemies.  This takes place on a set number of lanes, as with PvZ, with enemies proceeding forward to attack the player’s side.  All extremely by the numbers for this type of game.

Where the title does change things up is that there are brawler elements included, as the cursor that is used to select where turret-dogs are placed is also probably the best fighting in the entire game.  The character has a moveset that rewards the use of combos and while this does have some substance to it, it does stop before becoming anything that most people would call “deep mechanics.” The entire game can be played with someone else, although at the time of writing I have not had the pleasure of doing so.

It should, also, be briefly mentioned that there are reports of various glitches popping up during the gameplay.  While I have not experienced any of them, it appears that they are not uncommon – but mostly not something that is in anyway game breaking, normally just having to quit out of the title and restart it to fix the issue..  These are also issues that can easily be patched out of the game without issue.

The Last Friend is a great title, that has experienced a slightly rocky launch.  The saddest part of that statement is that it is almost expected in this day for a game to come out as such.  While most of these issues can be ignored, as a tower defense/brawler game is rare enough – this title lets you pet the dogs.  It is worth picking up, but even more worth it if you were to find it on a Steam Sale.