The Last Remnant Review

The Last Remnant is the latest rpg from SquareEnix and is currently available for 360 and PC with plans to release it on PS3 at some point next year when Microsoft get bored of paying to keep it exclusive. It is something of a departure from the usual Squeenix fare, having been designed, in their words as "An rpg for the whole world" or in other words, an attempt to appeal to a wider range of Western gamers than the speccy nerds who normally get all gay for Squeenix rpgs.

This attempt at globalisation appears to have been overlooked by the plot writers who have gone down the tried and tested jrpg route of a young male protagonist who has some mystic destiny he's unaware of who bands together with a bunch of warriors from a free-thinking and liberal but rather small city-state in an attempt initialy to rescue his sister and later to save the world from an all-powerful megalomaniac. So far so Japan and despite a couple of see-them-coming-a-mile-off plot twists, the story is one that you'll have heard several times before, probably as many times as you've played jrpgs in fact. In common with a lot of other rpgs out there, especially Square ones, the world is inhabited by a number of powerful beings called remnants which act as guardians to the various sity states and it is control of these remnants that the aforementioned megalomaniac is after. Luckily, it turns out there's a bunch of uncontrolled ones hidden around the world so he will not be getting everything his own way.

So the story and setting are pretty standard but let's face it, who ever plays jrpgs for the story?

What sets The Last Remnant apart is the battle system. Normally in an rpg you'll control a core of between four and six characters out of a slightly larger pool and during fights, your lot line up one side, the bad guys line up the other side and you pick specific commands from a list which tells your team what to do. You pick attacks your enemies are weak against, try to heal your team and that's it as far as tactics goes. In TLR, you do have a core of main characters, called leaders and of these, a number are dumped into your party as part of the storyline but you can also recruit others at guilds throughout the world. There are a number of generic ones and a few special characters you unlock through completeing quests. This is not all though because rather than fighting as individuals, your party members fight as part of groups known as unions. To facilitate this you can also recruit a number of soldiers, essentially the same as leaders but with less advancement scope and flexibilty (Plus fewer character models). Depending on your progress through the game, you can organise your posse into up to five unions of up to five members each (Although you never get to field 25 people at once) with at least one leader required in each union. You also set the formation the union will adopt with each different one granting different bonuses such as extra defence or attack power.

Another branch away from traditional rpg methodology is that the player can only adjust the equipment of the main character, Rush. Everyone else in your team, both leaders and soldiers pick their own equipment and improve it by helping themselves to the spoils of battle every now and then. Whilst this at first might seem to indicate a lack of adaptability in the preparation of your team, I personally find that not having three hundred different weapons and accesories to kit out your party with makes it much easier to organise your inventory and it's rare (For me at least) to use anything other than the best equipment available for your team at any given time anyway so the game just saves you from having to switch the latest stuff in yourself all the time.

Basic weapons can be bought in shops and upgraded using the various things left behind by monsters after fights and found lying around the game world. You can also purchase more advanced weapons either by selling a lot of stuff to shops (Increasing your trade level) or by making them, again from bits of monsters. You also find items at certain points by harvesting them using a little armoured chap called Mr Diggs whose skills increase through use, allowing you to harvest better and more items at once.

Your characters fight using either magic (Called Mystic Arts) or combat techniques (Go on, have a guess. Yep, Combat Arts) and you have some influence over what they use. Arts are learned and improved through use so if you use a lot of magic, you learn more and better magic. Also, your team will occasionally ask you whether they should focus on magic or combat or whether to learn a new skill tree. Focusing on one thing means you learn it faster, spreading your skills around means you're more flexible.

So you have a bunch of different characters and each has a mix of different skills and this is where the massive customisation of TLR becomes apparent. In combat, your different unions essentially act as a different character each and you can build them up to suit your purposes. You might have a hardcore combat union led by a combat specialist with other combat specialist soldiers in a formation that maximises offensive power. You might have a magic using group on a similar basis. Maybe you'll add a soldier with healing magic to give your units a chance to recover at the cost of some offensive power or you might pick a couple of fighters, a mage and a healer to keep yourself flexible. The combinations are literally endless and I honestly believe there's not neccessarily a "Right" way to organise things, which leads us on to the combat itself...

There are no random battles in TLR. Monsters can be seen on the screen and are engaged by running up to them and pulling the right trigger. Several can be engaged at once by pressing the right bumper which gives you a short time to run around and tag all the ones you want to fight at once, giving you greater rewards but equally, making the fight that much tougher. You can avoid the monsters but some chase after you and if you're attacked by a monster you've not engaged yourself they get a free turn against you and you start from a low morale point and lose your battle chain (More on them in a sec). There are normally a few types on monster in each area and what looks like a single monster on the main screen might well represent two or three unions of multiple monsters in a fight so grouping several together can quickly see you massively outnumbered.

Rather than oldschool lining up either side, the fights take place on an open battlefield. You choose which enemy union to attack and give a general command to each union, which then determines the individual moves of the units in that union. For example, a basic attack command will see them all just attack, telling them to "Use combat arts" will see the leader and possibly some of the soldiers use combat arts while the others attack. There are a lot of variations such as healing others while attacking, using all your most powerful moves, using special abilities and so on. Whilst there is an element of luck to the commands available on any given turn, the overall morale of your party, represented by a bar at the top of the screen, has a big effect and it's rare for the commands you need to not show up. You can view the exact moves each unit is going to make based on your command and depending on the situation, you can micro-manage to this level or just give general orders (If you're fighting weak monsters and don't really care exactly how your guys kill them). Use of Arts is limited by a union's action points, a total based on the units in that union that regenerates slightly each turn.

So once the orders are issued, the fighting starts. Your unions attempt to engage their allotted targets although quicker enemy unions might get to them first and tie them up. When two opposing unions engage it is called a deadlock. If either of these two unions attempts to change target or perform a non-combat command, the deadlock is broken and the other union gets a free hit in for additional damage. If a second union attempts to engage a deadlocked union they are flanking it and again, hit for extra damage with no danger of a reply. Once you get the hang of this system you realise the massive tactical depth, especially when fighting large boss monsters. You can set up a tank union to soak up damage and dish it out while holding the enemy in deadlock which leaves your others free to heal or cast spells from range. Once they get a bit injured, you can send in another unit to hold deadlock while the first ones can retreat safely to recover. In other fights you might have your tank unit deadlocking one enemy to hold them at bay while the others gang up on another, flanking them for a quick kill before aiding the others. Compared to the vast majority of jrpgs, this game makes you think about what you're doing, rather than just casting fire spells at the ice monsters, spamming heal spells and so on. The fights are pretty tough too, if you're not careful you can engage too many enemies at once and quickly find all your unions getting flanked and fucked up with no breathing room to heal, especially as the enemies scale to your level (To some extent anyway, their skills improve but they don't get too much stronger. You can still be surprised by what you thought was a weak unit that's got a high level skill though sometimes). Oh yeah, also to stop you getting too bored during the fights, critical hits are activated through button presses to match on-screen prompts. You can automate this system if you enjoy getting bored or have no timing skills but you're missing out on another layer of tactical depth if you do (You might not want to critical hit a monster and kill it if your next unit is about to cast a spell that hits everything on the battlefield that won't get cast if the monster is dead for example).

But what is an awesome battle system without a decent setting to drop it into? The world of TLR is hardcore fantasy, swords and magic and people who look like cats. As I said at the beginning, the story is nothing special but you'll actually spend very little time following it anyway. The bulk of your time will most likely be spent completeing the multitude of side-quests that are available. You meet someone in a pub, they hire you and off you go, being dropped straight in to the area you need to be in. The quests are generally find this, or kill this monster but some require a fair bit of thought and they all take a while (Some up to an hour each, if not more). Rewards are generally in the form of items or money although some will open up new areas or make new characters available to recruit. It's through the quests too that you get a better feel for the main character. Rather than being some young kid who arbitrarily decides to take on the world's biggest psychopath, you see him helping people out, gaining a reputation around the world and generally developing from an annoying little shit to becoming more, well, hero-like I guess.

From an aesthetic point of view, the game looks great, the music is good enough not to get annoying when you end up listening to the same tune for hours (The music in the desert is particularly great, probably my nomination for next year's BSC, the "About to win a battle" music is particularly poor, being one of those naff 80's metal efforts the Japs seem so fond of), the voice acting is surprisingly good with a minimum of American accents and the weird pronounciations and timbre that entails (Although one character, Davide, can't decide if he's English or Australian, I suspect it's an American actor trying to do cockney), the cutscenes are as gorgeous as you'd expect from Square and the thing is generally well presented. The game does suffer from some pretty savage pop-in of textures although it's not quite as bad as Mass Effect and there is some slow-down during the fights although this seems to have improved since downloading the dlc (Which is free and adds some more badass monsters and an extra area) and to be honest, I don't even notice it any more. There are also some pretty long loading times to sit through but I'm told these are vastly reduced by installing the game to the hard drive and you get stuff to read during them and they're not so long as to ruin the game anyway.

So yeah, to sum up, The Last Remnant looks great, sounds great and if you like a bit of item grinding and wish that rpgs had a battle system that rewards thought rather than patience and a high boredom threshold then you should buy this game. It's the best rpg I've played in a very long time and I hope this battle system will find it's way to other games as for me, this is as important a development as ATB guages were, if not far, far more so.

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I have to say, it's the battle system that intrigues me most and why I decided to grab this in the January sales. I certainly hope that Japanese developers start mixing up the combat in RPGs a bit, though on evidence it seems they are.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

What kept me going is maxing the Battle Rank. Also nominating the boss theme from this game; shit is AWESOME.

Certainly needs more RPGs similar to this one. My only gripe is that any enemy can botch the entire party altogether due to instant-kill moves or continually hitting the leader. But otherwise, really addicting.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Terminus

My only gripe is that any enemy can botch the entire party altogether due to instant-kill moves or continually hitting the leader. But otherwise, really addicting.

Yeah, you can get killed pretty swift like that but it happens slightly less than in SMT:Nocturne where an instant death attack on the main guy means game over and towards the end a lot of the monsters use death attacks. That's one of my other all time favourite rpgs though, I guess I'm a sucker for the tough ones.

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

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?

Originally Posted by Bradylama

I watched a guy play this game

It's actually pretty fun if you are playing it and know what you're doing. Union setups are a blast as soon as you start busting out Synchro magic and Battle Skills. The long battles just mean you better not be there if you have anything planned, but it isn't anything like, say, a 10 hour instance with fags on WoW.

Moreover, battles are usually only about attrition if you come in unprepared and feel like pressing your luck.

As for the OCD stuff, there's nothing saying you have to do every single side quest in the game. Moreover, no one plays that shit for the story unless they care, and the extra formations and items you get are rather nice to have.

You're way too caught up in the meta game, Brady.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Truly life, is the ultimate meta game.

How ya doing, buddy?

Troll post is trolllllllllllllll post.

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

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?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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.

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.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

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

Before this spirals way out of control I think Brady is arguing a more subjective "I don't get this" point of view more than a "This game sucks because I think it does" point of view.

I would just add, though, that not everyone enjoys a strategy game that requires months of practice to be any good at. A game like Starcraft or something (first example off the top of my head) with its 50 bajillion units just overwhelms me and confuses the fuck out of me, while Last Remnant's system feels like something I can manage.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that in general while some people can enjoy games with ridiculous amounts of depth, like you seem to, others find that too complicated and prefer what you end up viewing as too simple, Brady.

P.S. I think the biggest barrier to taking the initial post seriously was that whole "I watched someone play it for 6 hours, here is my opinion about how I think no one could possibly want to play it for a long period of time" bit.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Bradylama

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.

Because your friend probably didn't press "X" in combat, you believe that the commands are just vague. Doing so would have allowed him to see what all of his units were going to do. Moreover, how many units you have and what you have that unit perform determines what they do in battle. Each unit can have a specific function, strength, and weakness based on what leaders are in command, what units support that leader, and what formation they are in.

The further you get in the game and the more you understand about it, the more you'll realize that this shit isn't random and is fairly complex and engaging.

If it's a really convoluted version of solitaire and you've already said you don't like the sound of it, then what specifically do you want to know about the game? Just to address your previous issue. some folks don't play RPGs for the story, a really shocker I know but did it ever dawn on you that some folks just enjoy creating a plan and setting it in motion and appreciate the way these games allow it? For the one talking about "lol why so serious", you're really thinking entirely too much about something you refuse to participate in.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

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

Quote:

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?

Last I checked, I played for...well, fun. Seems like a decent reward to me. Not really needing to show off my phat loots or any of that. I enjoy the union system, the general combat flow, and learning how to create the most efficient damage dealing team. I found the combat in this relatively refreshing all things considered, and I just flat out play it because I derive enjoyment from it.

Quote:

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 main problem with the game is that it really lacks any sort of proper tutorial, and I assume you and your friend had the same problem many reviewers did. There are ways of knowing what moves will come out, influence what command sets you get, and the order things are done in. The game just gives you no information on how to do these things and you mostly pick it up from either forums or FAQs.

Quote:

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 can think of tonnes that would keep me interested too, but the point is I'm not going to watch someone else play it for a number of hours and draw judgment when I'm not entirely sure if there's nothing there in the first place.

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

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

The Last Remnant is a next generation laserdisc game in the current generation of VHS gaming as we know it (VHS gaming). It is about seven camels on a quest for whipped cream to put on their brownies. In the opening cut scene (rumoured to have cost the studio money) we discover the evil Harold Haggs placing each brownie in the fridge without any sort of protective cling wrap, drying them of their rich, brownie HP restoring goodness.

When the camels come home that evening from a hectic two-steps-left-two-steps-right day at the market to their now completely ruined lives, they make various noises before meeting with the priest at the town fair. He informs them there is nothing he can do for the brownies, before giving the camels a complete history lesson about their once peaceful planet.

"There may be whipped cream spread lightly on the floor in the caves but the caves have monsters in them there has been an increase in monsters since about four seconds ago I fear they may attack the town one day it's dangerous to go alone tackle this"

After defeating the Charlie McFootball, the camels carefully peel his skin off and tape it to their faces; the perfect disguise to fool the town guard who is under direct orders from Charlie McFootball to only let Charlie McFootball in and out of town. As a result of this, everyone including the guard was murdered several days ago by the guard after he commited suicide. The camels stare at each other with passion and make more noises. Will they discover whipped cream won't do much? Will th

The game is essentially played like a video game, much like a mix between S.T.U.N Runner and Zork. In various situations things will happen and you'll need to press buttons on the controller. For the most part only one button is needed, but it is sold separately. The graphics are displayed on the television, but you will need a television that is capable of displaying graphics otherwise you won't be able to appreciate the beauty of the graphics on your television. It supports a render display of up to 1080snowboarding gigaflops, but the frame rate takes a slight dip here, going backwards until you eventually reach the title screen.

The music has been composed by Gertrude (of Robin's Basket Factory of Desire and Running Moon Defender X: Planet Rebirth fame) and sounds just like music, it's stunning and suits the need for music very well. The original Japanese voice acting has thankfully been kept, with English-friendly Japanese subtitles for everyone to follow along with. Camels sound cooler in their native tongue.

If you've ever played The Last Remnant, I recommend you give The Last Remnant a shot.

FELIPE NO

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.

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

Yeah, that's me. Making up excuses to convince myself and other people I like the game, trying to hide my huge shame in purchasing it. STAY OUT OF MY HEAD CHARLES.

You're certainly not trolling, right?

why the hell am I taking the bait?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

It was 30 bucks at Amazon when I bought it, actually. The same argument can be levied against any Japanese RPG. Brady's whole argument here is "I dun like this kind of game, how can you like it."

We eat what we like, Oklahoma.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

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).

Brady, I take back anything I said about you trying to be objective because you're making it incredibly clear that you're just projecting your own opinions onto the rest of us. You watched someone play the game for 6 hours, and you seem to be incapable of processing that maybe that means he, I don't know, likes the game? I know I'm bored as fuck watching people at school play Magic: the Gathering, but you don't see me telling them that they shouldn't play it because I don't think it's fun, do you?

Are you trying to be a hypocrite, or does it just come naturally?

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His friend didn't like the game, Mo0. His story is that they both didn't like it.

How ya doing, buddy?

Oh, I misread the original post. Apologies.

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?

I realize there's a lot of turn-based or tick-based or pizza-based strategy games out there. The point about the depth turning people off still stands, I think. Doesn't matter what turn system the game uses if there's 5,000 different unit types to memorize.

FELIPE NO

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

How ya doing, buddy?

Well, go for it! I'd love to be recommended a game that's deep without being overwhelming to new players.

Jam it back in, in the dark.