[Multiplatform] The Last Remnant: Life at 12 frames a second is a beautiful thing.

I'll admit I never realised they were preset by weapon, I assumed it was a coincidence I was getting a lot of "A" triggers (I have a lot of sword users). That's going to help a lot...

The only time I reorganise my unions if after getting beaten by a boss or rare monster or if there's a bunch of similar randoms in a group, such as the Evil Eyes in Lavafender. I wouldn't want to fight more than one at once but regrouping into a couple of hard units really helps taking them down, as does using formations with a high mystic defence.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

The only secret guild I've unlocked is in the city northwest of Athlum, where you hire Violet after doing a couple of story missions for some old guy in the pub. There are about 3 guild quests in there though that involve killing the monsters you find in the path west of the Sandsea and the Numor mines, all of which seemed to give out new formations, Scattershot, Cascade and another one I think.

I'm not sure if Violet or Gabrial give you any quests after you recruit them because I've not managed to find either hanging around a town, unlike Baulson and Loki who are available to chat to in Athlum.

I'm crap at remembering the names of characters and places in games.

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

Yeah, you get much more frequent/better stat boosts with a big battle chain. Your chain goes up quicker if you fight multiple enemies too so if you're stat boosting it's better to start off linking multiple crap enemy unions to build the chain up then go for individual big guys to maximise the opportunity to get stat advances. I was doing that kinda while doing the quest in the desert where you have to read the numbers on the posts in a certain order, just fighting everything I saw. Ended up with a chain of 260 odd and pretty much all the active units were getting stat boosts after every fight.

Caedmon is stupid powerful, doing the same damage with a normal attack as Rush does with Devils Due (I'm using twin katanas at the moment) and having that completely over the top Silencer art. Also yes, two halberds looks wicked.

I went down from four unions of three to three of four as they were getting wiped out a bit too quickly. Mainly in the first quest in Darken forest where you unlock some geezer who's name starts with "R" as an available leader, the boss at the end was sa big union of frogs, a union of little bird things and some double-hard tree monsters. The unions of 3 just didn't have the HP to last out the rounds so now I've got Rush and Caedmon as all-rounders, Pagus and Blocter together as a magic/healing unit and Baulson on his own with some seriously tough soldiers as the hardcore physical union.

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

Do you know if you have to have the leaders in your active party to trigger their individual quests or is it enough to have recruited them? I'm using Caedmon and Loki a fair bit but not as the leaders of their own units, I wasn't sure if that would make a difference either.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I know that characters you don't use learn new skills in the background to keep up but do their stats not increase too? I'm sure when I used Torgal for the first time in ages he'd not only learned a bunch of four-arm skills and changed from swords to axes but didn't seem to be overly weak compared to everyone else.

Also has anyone tried dropping someone then re-recruiting them later? If so, do they improve over time or stay exactly as you left them?

Most amazing jew boots

My BR is 55 as of last night and I'm starting to find the random fights a little too easy. Whilst the level increases for the monsters upgrades the level of their skills, it doesn't make them do any more damage really or be able to soak any up. It's not like I've been grinding particularly though, just doing a shitload of side quests without advancing the plot any. I'm currently doing the quest to get back Hannah's sister and the fight against a load of bugs when you first meet her was over in a single Permafrost spell from Rush.

I'm currently leaning towards making Ruch a wizard rather than an allrounder, if only for the big area of effect spells being more useful than a single-union powerful battle art.

This game's going to take me forever to finish but I love it.

How ya doing, buddy?

I think I'm just about done with the sidequests on disc 1 now at BR 64. There might be a couple more that'll activate when I advance the story a bit though.

Does anyone know any good tips for getting the Dominator to spawn in Blackdale? He was there the second time I ever visited the area (And kicked my arse) so I figured I'd come back later and get him but now the fucker won't spawn and I'm getting a little bored of killing those pointless spiders on the way to him.

If there's one thing I'd change about this game it's every big bird monster having a turn-one curse ability. If you're just fighting one it's fine, just send in a lone leader to soak it up and hold back the rest of your unions but when you go to fight a Skylord and there's three split into two unions, you're basically losing half your team before you start and predictably, get murdered. Do you ever get an Art that cures curse?

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

I finally finished disk 1 last night having completed all the side quests and with a slightly over the top BR of 75 after beating the last boss. I'm now paranoid that I didn't do something that will mean I'll miss a sidequest on disk 2. I'm pretty sure I got everything but I read somewhere that you have to have recruited Glynis on disk 1 to get her quest to activate on disk 2 and I didn't. I've now rushed straight out to recuit her so hopefully I'll be ok as I've not seen anywhere else mention she has to be recruited on the first disk, just that she has to be recruited. I think I've got all the quest-giving leaders I can have on the team at present so rather than worry about it, I'll plow on and see what happens.

Even though the team is rather over-powered, I was still picking up a lot of advances while nosing around the lower levels of the Numor mines although the monsters there didn't seem all that tough (With the exception of the Greater Demons I accidentally ran into that wiped me out in three turns). I found the Dominator after about 40 minutes of running in and out of Blackdale and handed him his arse but apart from him I've not gone out of my way to complete any guild tasks, you seem to pass most of them just through playing the game and completing quests anyway.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I think it's still a TBA 2009 at present.

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I'd be lying if I said I paid much attention to my stats. Each of my four man unions has about 2,500 hp though and Baulson is currently doing around 10,000 damage with a Thunderclap, Pagus around 5,000 with a Spark. Matey at the end of disk 1 was hitting us for about 400 damage an attack (When he hit), Hells Gate was only doing around 250 damage per attack and I killed it in six turns, including a first turn of saving up APs, a second turn of killing all the smaller monsters (Pagus and David both used Blackout, unsurprisingly David's killed everything) and then just hitting it hard until it died. I only had to heal once I think. Heh, when I fought the Dominator it was only doing around 40 damage per hit to me, I probably could have taken it on a little earlier.

I reckon my team could be a lot more powerful for their rank, I spent a fair bit of time fighting weak enemies while doing sidequests so didn't really maximise the stat advancement potential but I've not had any problems killing anything so far. The Ancient Dragon I killed first time and the two generals you fight when they attack Athlon were stupidly easy. I've also probably put too many leaders onto Mystic arts, having only really Gabriel, Torgal and Baulson as pure Combat types (And even then Torgal and Gabe know a few higher level spells) but I'll probably tell Glynis to go Combat Arts when she asks.

I think if you set up the right soldiers in your unions and don't just rush into the fights, your stats are of secondary importance to your tactics though. Once I learned to hold people back to raise their APs and use them for healing I pretty much stopped getting killed and having a dedicated three man Blackout team means you basically never get swamped by multiple weak enemies.

I think if I were to play through again, I'd have a stupidly powerful team based on what I've learned so far but then rpgs are often like that, you don't learn the nuances of the system until it's too late to capitalise on them.

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

Yeah, the fact you can use all leaders was apparently always the idea but the graphical limitations of the 360 meant they had to introduce the generic looking soldiers. Now you can have 18 leaders in your active battle party which means people might actually use some of the non-story leaders and that the game will be a shit load easier, unless they've beefed up the badguys a bit.

Reports so far suggest the loading times are seconds, if that and the game looks pretty amazing if you've got a decent setup.

Personally, I'm not going to bother getting the PC version (Still not finished the 360 one although my team is close to max stats now which will leave a couple of hours of finishing the story and months of hunting rare monsters) but I'd recommend this to anyone who was going to get the 360 one but was put off by the technical issues. It's a top game and worth a look.

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

I'd have thought the PS3 version will be a port of the 360 release rather than the PC one though and the gameplay tweaks they've made to the PC version have, by all accounts really improved the game. If you can run the PC version, I'd plump for that over the PS3 port.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Given that they struggled to get the engine to work properly on 360, it's perhaps not surprising that the PS3 version is struggling then. I'd be amazed if they managed to get an all-leader battle party running on a PS3 like in the PC version without severely cutting down the character models. I know it can chuck around polygons better than a 360 but not that much better.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?