The Last Remnant Review

I watched a guy play this game for 6 hours and I can say that the battles are way too long in this game. I'm sure it's engaging if you're playing the game in the same way that kicking rocks is engaging. As an outside observer, I couldn't see this as anything but a waste of time, and the hideous story can only be made salvageable if you have a bunch of guys with nothing better to do willing to MST3K the fuck out of it like we did. Except we had nothing better to do because we were iced in for two days.

If I lost a 45 minute battle I would seriously be raging, and the amount of sidequesting in this game would just be too much. A game can't be built on sidequesting and hold interest unless those sidequests are actually interesting. Not run around a mansion killing a bunch of monsters and watching the boss fly away 5 times before you can finally kill the boss and get 4 lines of worthless throwaway dialogue.

The guy who played the game was ready to move on, and I don't see how anybody other than obsessive compulsive completists wouldn't feel the same after 50 hours of sidequesting only to get shat on by the plot monster.

Also that black dude is hella racist. =/

How ya doing, buddy?

Truly life, is the ultimate meta game.

How ya doing, buddy?

Ok I'll stop trying to make funny posts about video games, they're very serious and we wouldn't want to ruin front page discussion with humor words.

What I'm wondering but didn't want to touch on is this:

Quote:

Moreover, no one plays that shit for the story unless they care

Why wouldn't you care? What kind of masochistic sociopath plays games from a genre whose main selling point is the story-driven experience and doesn't care about the story?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Pick a name and stick with it, Skills.

I wouldn't be so annoyed if they were actually humorous, but when it's 10 times worse than the largest troll shit seen on 4chan it starts to get annoying.

Perhaps with all the time you spend on 4chan you could teach me something about quality posting.

Quote:

Also what he's saying is you very easily could not give a shit about the story and be playing the thing for the gameplay mechanics alone, since it's certainly engaging enough. I know I absolutely HATE the main character and couldn't give two shits about the story in TLR, but I'm playing it because I enjoy the combat system's intricacies enough to continue through it.

This is where I become more concerned about the "meta-game." What's the point in playing a single-player game with endlessly repetitive battles that take on average 20-50 minutes to complete when there's no reward other than leveling up characters you hate (and yes I know you just "level up" stats) and getting digital items which you can't show off to friends?

The only thing intricate about the combat system seems to be its scale. Mostly you just set general commands and wait for maybe the special move that never comes when you want it, then sit back for 5 minutes while all your individual npcs do their poses before performing moves before the individual npcs of the enemy do their poses before doing their moves and your next turn comes around. I'm getting bored just thinking about it.

The tactical overlay map and flanking/lockdowns seem interesting but I just don't see how you could play 50-100 hours of that unless you were seriously hurting for a time sink. If you want to play a game that's tactically engaging with a story you don't have to care about there's a ton of strategy games I know you haven't played that I could recommend which would keep you busy for months coming to terms with all their intricacies.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Pick a name and stick with it, Skills.

Please no TL;DR dog pic horseshit bombs please, I'm rather fond of a back and forth like this.

Well you're not getting one, I don't do quote wars.

I understand you're having fun, I'm saying you can have the same kind of fun playing strategy games instead of a crappy RPG. I'm not even fully convinced that you can actually have fun watching guys move around waiting for quicktime events (the guy who was playing didn't have any real problems, he understood what commands would trigger hexes or what have you).

Like I said, it's engaging in the same sense that kicking rocks is engaging. It's something you do because you have nothing better and were dumb enough to pay 60 USD for it. If you're seriously excited about watching anime outfits whup up on retextured lobster monsters with no regard for any context, you need to seriously expand your cultural horizons.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Yeah we were iced in for two days, made it a social event.

Mo0, there's more to strategy gaming than RTSes. I don't even like Starcraft.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

And here I was going to recommend a game with 4 unit types. =/

How ya doing, buddy?

Jagged Alliance 2
Silent Storm
Those are mostly PC games so I guess if you haven't played Front Mission those are pretty good.

Now if you aren't afraid of having to do some reading or just diving in head first you could pick pretty much any Paradox Interactive game that isn't Rome and it'll be good.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Only pros play EUII. EU3 is where all the honeys go to get they Crusader Kings import on. (plus you can move units in the political map)

Only problem is it's kinda ugly, plus going from historical simulator to historical sandbox takes out a lot of the neat events you could get, like winning the 100 Years War as England.

Jam it back in, in the dark.