The game's fantasy world is a fresh new  take on the sword-and-sorcery genre, without the usual SF-style trappings often seen in JRPGs.

-Most of the game is set in Ruli, a peninsular bay home to a thriving merchant metropolis. Ruli has survived relatively unscathed from the war and devastation over on the main continent, and the city in its center is massive and filled with eerie, twisting  back alleys. It is run by Count Alganan, a cunning leader with shrewd political sense and a full knowledge of magic and its potential powers.  Seems like a potential problem to me.

-Mistwalker has revealed concept art of the main hero and heroine. Their names are as of yet unknown, but they are apparently members of Ruli's mercenary class, putting them pretty low on the social ladder.

Battles in The Last Story take place in realtime, but you're allowed to pause the action and enter commands manually if thats the way you want to handle things. Notable in the media shown off so far is the presence of "pointers," lines drawn outward from enemies indicating where their attention is currently focused. As the hero, you'll be able to gather enemy attention and divert them away from allies, useful for protecting spellcasters, who are known to be the low defense characters in games like this and ambushing monster hordes.

Whether or not this comes to the US is still unknown, but it did find its way into the May 2010 issue of Nintendo Power. I'd like to believe we'll get this game. Keep your fingers crossed.