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

The secret guild that I have unlocked is in Celapelais, that Swords thing where you can recruit Violet at 12k. Also observed that most of the recruited party members can be found in the city they were recruited.

Personally, when I got the Defender, I ended Disc 1. My only regret is doing shit for Haruko.

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

Originally Posted by Rotorblade

Also, to anyone who cares about the story enough to talk about it, I had a flashback to Beerfest after the last story mission I played:

Spoiler:

I liked Emma a lot as a character... so why they decided to make it obvious they're going to kill her, do so, and then replace her with a far more annoying sounding look alike, is beyond me. Wagrum and his boss also strike as typical Saturday morning cartoon villains, just to round out the disappointments. The story is pretty typical, but those are things I really don't care to see in my RPGs. I get that it's simple, but some things shouldn't be THAT simple.

Spoiler:

Yeah, who didn't see that one coming? The thing that bothered me is that my Emma was my most powerful character, and Emmy came into the group a lot less powerful than Emma was. My Emma had a lot of arts learned and leveled up, had the highest strength stat in my party, and had 75/76 atk weapons. At least Emmy doesn't wear that goofy hat though, I can be thankful for that much.

Right now, I am battle rank 60~, can use 6 leaders per battle, and 5 unions. Until the most recent story event, I had been using a Rush+Emma union, a Loki union, a Nora union, and a David union. Now that I can use 6 leaders and 5 unions, I have added a Caedmon union, in addition to a small adjustment to a previous unit, referenced in the spoiler. Caedmon is powerful, but enemies seem to dodge or block his attacks more frequently than anyone else's. Loki is extremely powerful, and knows a poison gas spell that is awesome. Nora is basically a girl version of Loki at this point, and David is well rounded, with good attack, good mystic, and good recovery skills. I dominate battles for the most part, with the only exceptions being some boss fights or rare monster fights, but I haven't lost one of those in a long time. I did just scrape by with one union alive, with under 300 hp in a big quest boss fight though.

Since my groups are powerful enough to basically be able to one hit kill enemy unions when I use a combat art, I am having difficulty improving certain characters' arts, so it seems that I am at the point where I need to scale down my battle party and do a little grinding, just to get a couple of people caught up.

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I liked the hat :/

Spoiler:

I think what I'm most irritated by is that Emma looked battle hardened. Her design was decent, with the scars and the worn age. Her daughter sounds annoying as shit and doesn't have any of that look to her that says "I'm not a typical female in a typical JRPG." The skirt kills me, since her mother had one but also had like stockings or some such underneath. Oh well, can't win 'em all.

I'm rounding out character quests on Disc 1. It turns out that they're Battle Rank and Time unlocked. I used Caedmon for a decent chunk of time and he finally spoke to me in Balterosa(sp?) to unlock part 1 of his leader specific quest. I'm probably going to keep him since he has high magic and strength, with some amazingly powerful evocations for someone who's supposed to be an all-rounder. Plus, dual wielding halberds > 4 Swords.

Also, a good piece of information I found, stat growth is apparently preset for many Union Leaders and Units. The Battle Chain plays a heavy factor in developing your party members. So not getting ambushed and fighting as many enemies as possible before leaving an area is vital for getting those stat boosts/skill upgrades.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

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

Yeah, I knew about the battle chain piece. I very rarely get ambushed. Like maybe twice the entire time I've been playing, so it was not uncommon for me to regularly finish dungeons with the chain count over 150, with half of my characters getting some form of stat growth after each fight.

Apparently, if you complete all three of Caedmon's quests, you unlock another special guild, in Elysion this time. His first quest was the one that got me the 30 enemies in one battle achievement too. I think the second fight was over 35 bad guys, this time throwing in a couple of giant, powerful birds at the end, instead of just the little, soft jhanas.

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

Did you get all of those quests one after another, russ? I've only gotten part 1 and if I could get an idea of how long it takes to get the next 2, that'd be great.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I got part one, then I ran around doing a whole bunch of other quests and eventually was given the opportunity to do part two. It may have been triggered by advancing the story, but I'm not 100% sure. It took a while for the second part to show up, at any rate. I'm still waiting on part three right now.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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.

FELIPE NO

They just have to be in your reserves, but having them as active members helps a bit, Shin.

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

Currently at Battle Rank 85 and improving stats from characters I never use (i.e Rhagoh, Loki, Nora and the generals Blocter and Pagus).

Current roster is the usual (away from the main story ones): Rhagoh, Glenys, Gabriel, Loki, Nora, Violet, Caedmon and Jager.

Also considering dropping a few of 'em AFTER their individual quests are finished and recruiting new faces such as Allan (after Torgal's quest in Royotia), Paris (after Lavafender), Darian (Elysion - Mephina quest), Sheryl (Crookfen and Fornstrand) and that one Yama dude who`s a Legendary Specialist (about 55k on recruit). Just figuring out what quests are near completion so I can dispose some dudes.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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?

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From what I have observed, dormant party members level up progressively slower than their active counterparts. Sure, they learn new skills and gain new weapons but the damage output only increased a little (I could be majorly wrong though). Hope this helped, Shin.

Also since I want to fight the Fallen, I have reverted to an old save file. Back in Disc 1, at BR 68. Recruiting Caedmon after doing a couple of quests to boost my BR up tp 75-ish, if I am lucky.

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

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?

Holy fuck, the Japanese guide for this game is 992 pages long. The Bradygames guide is apparently 301 pages and, obviously, nowhere near as comprehensive. I'm nowhere near my 360 to play the game, but I left off at BR 72 on Disc 1 with 41 Quests Completed. I'm not going to get the 42nd quest since I agreed with Roberto during his quests, but I guess the consolation is that I get him as a Party Leader if I so desire.

992 pages, jesus christ.

I was speaking idiomatically.

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 kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Do not reload your save as opposed to entering Blackdale and walking to Dominator's spawn location and then physically exiting if he doesn't appear. You have to do that over and over. I know of no other way to increase its spawn rate, as it took me about 45 minutes of entering and exiting to get the damn thing to show up. If you do get it to spawn, you can actually make it reappear by going 2 zones away from its area location and then coming back. Do not exit the dungeon if you're trying to get this to happen, obviously.

As for Curse, there's an accessory called the Wishing Coin you'll want. Its effect is debuff length - 2, that's about the best chance you've got if you actually want to survive Curse.

FELIPE NO

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.

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

On another note, is there any news on the release date of the ps3 version?

How ya doing, buddy?

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

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Originally Posted by Elfstar

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.

I thought my team was overpowered at that point as well. Unfortunately, shortly beyond the point where you are currently, the game laughed in my face. What kind of stats do your characters have right now at BR 75? The reason I ask is because my party at BR 80~ basically got obliterated during a certain boss fight, and I eventually just started the game over from scratch, armed with a better understanding of how the game works, and now at BR 40~, my characters have stats equal to their BR 80~ counterparts. And in Caedmon's case, his BR 40 stats dwarf the stats of my BR 80 Caedmon.

I have to complete a couple of side quests in my restart, but otherwise, I am about to assault the Nagapur aquaducts (which means I am knocking on the door of disc 2). I fully expect to embarrass The Gates of Hell this time around.

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

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.

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

Oh yeah, this was coming out on PC, wasn't it?

The Last Remnant, or "Holy Shit S-E Made A New IP," is a kind of strategical RPG in the way that battles flow like your typical RPG, but everything is squad and morale based. Get your A kicked, and you'll only get your A kicked further. Kick A and you will proceed to kick more A.

The story's about a guy named Rush who's trying to find his sister, while she's being experimented on for controlling war-machine "Remnants" or something. Rush, who has famous parents, is joined by a local ruler and his generals to find his sister while at the same time keep said ruler's lands safe.

The game came out on Xbox 360, but had no shortage of graphical problems. The PC version has addressed many of these (It runs great for me) and has even made some changes to the game. Changes include:

• Turbo Mode - Speed through battles if you think they're boring and are REALLY good at Critical Triggers.
• No leader units - Make unions with anyone
• Preview Equipment - View the model of the sword you're buying to see if it looks nifty.
• Dual Audio - Play the game in Holy Nipponese if you're a massive weeaboo.

The game is out in retail in Europe and North America, and comes out on April 9th in Japan. It must be activated via Steam, which can be done with the retail copy. If you buy it Steam's online store you'll have to wait until 4/9 for it to unlock, so if you did, sucks to be you.

System Requirements (From Steam)

Spoiler:

Minimum

Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP SP2/Vista® SP1 *1 *2
Processor: Intel® Core™2 Duo (2GHz) / AMD Athlon™ X2 (2GHz)
Memory: 1.5GB RAM
Hard Disk Space: 15GB Available HDD Space
Video Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600 VRAM 256MB or better *3
Sound Card: 100% DirectSound® compatible sound card (DirectX®9.0c or higher）
DirectX® Version: DirectX® 9.0c

Recommended

Operating System: Microsoft® Windows Vista® SP1 *1 *2
Processor: Intel® Core™2 Duo (2.4GHz or higher) / AMD Athlon™ X2 (2.4GHz or higher)
Memory: 2GB RAM
Hard Disk Space: 15GB Available HDD Space
Video Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 VRAM 512MB or better *3
Sound Card: 100% DirectSound® compatible sound card (DirectX®9.0c or higher）
DirectX® Version: DirectX® 10 (OS Default) *4
Supports Xbox 360® Controller for Windows®

*1 Windows® XP Professional x64 Edition and server-related OS are not supported.

*2 32-bit/64-bit are supported for Windows Vista®.

*3 Laptop versions and onboard video are not supported. Video cards that share the same VRAM as the main memory are not supported.

*4 The version used is DirectX® 9.0c.

I was speaking idiomatically.

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.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

It uses the Unreal 3 engine, so it'll run on mid-level hardware, just probably at medium-low settings. There's always the demo on Steam to try out if you're not sure, anyway.

I've got 4GB RAM, a Radeon HD 4850, and an i7 920 and I still have to run the thing on medium-high to keep a high framerate. I could probably put it on max and get 30FPS, but I'm a fag and always try for 60.

FELIPE NO

I tried the demo and I can play it on medium on my rig and the graphic a still beautiful but with some lag ehre and there in battle. The demo was really fun gameplay wise since there was no story at all in the demo but the little side mission were pretty fun to do.

I'll probaly pirate the game since my rig can't play it at it full potential until the ps3 version comes out if it's not cancelled...

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