The Last Remnant

I'm a huge fan of the final fantasy games which quite honestly makes this game so irritating. It lokksazing, the storyline's good but the combat system makes it unplayable. You band your characters up in groups called unions, choosing a formation and who stands where, then all your choices end and you just pick from a random list of commands for them. You can pick a target to attack but then you often find yourself intercepted by a different opponent. Usually a weaker one which one of your characters kills with one blow leaving all your other attacks wasted, the strong creature that you wanted to attack then goes on to chew up one of your other unions. It's irritating to say the least. I've put in around twenty hours on this game but I find it so frustrating that I really don't think I'll finish it.

I purchased this game just before Christmas, and still find myself playing it now - its a real life eater. The Last Remnant will eat up your hours and constantly keep you looking for more and better in whatever facet of the game to wish to pursue.

I particularly enjoy the new unit system. Gone are the days of issuing commands via the menu system character by character. Instead, you control a whole unit, consisting or up to five characters. I believe that later in the game you can control five units; all with potentially five characters in each - thats thirty characters on screen! Of course this comes with a downside, manifesting itself as laggy response times and slow loading in between game sequences. If you intend to play this game, make sure you install to the Xbox harddrive or you could be waiting minutes between load screens.

Another slight gripe spawns from the -in my opinion- flawed technical aspects of the game. Some bosses appear to have attacks that wipe out your Battle Rank 90 characters in a few truns; and I'm not talking the special super powerful monsters here, I mean the standard story line ones. The game also sometimes fails to give you the option to heal etc for no other reason than....well......you tell me?

Overall I am very much enjoying this game, and would recommend it to any RGP fan who has a healthly dose of patience and doesn't mind their characters dying a few times. However, due to the techinal flaws and slow loading I have to give it four stars.

Okay so I just beat this game last night, so I think I should provide input for those wondering whether to buy it.

First of all, if you like easy games you can just breeze through, i'd think again because you will not find this sort of gameplay on The Last Remnant, in my opinion I think this game is aimed at hardcore RPG game players.

As you may have read complaints on other reviews, the bosses are difficult and are often linked together with no saves and in some cases in the SAME battle not giving you chance to heal but this all adds to the difficulty and the strategy aspect.

So first I'll start with the story

I was irritated at first with the storyline, as you can imagine from the title, the game is about Remnants but unless my concentration dipped somewhere, they never actually tell you what remnants are or why they are so important, yes, you know they are big powerful "things" but thats about as much as you get for a while.. but once it is revealed what they are, how they are, where they came from, their significance etc. etc. the story kind of.. falls into place and becomes very enjoyable and you do start to connect with the characters will.

The graphics are exceptional and consistant between roaming and battle, the occasional cutscene has improved graphics but it doesn't feel like a difference, which is enjoyable. The cutscenes themselves are extraordinary, without throwing in spoilers, somewhere in the game there is a one on one sword fight which i WISH i could watch again without having to play the game over.

Gameplay is great and even if you avoided any sidequests you're still looking at a lengthy game but sidequests are very beneficial in this game which you sometimes don't find in RPG's. Some provide you with equipment, others characters and also you can find new battle formations (which i will mention later) which are great.

Along with main quests and side quests, there are also guild tasks. The guilds are the places you find extra "main" party members. there are 3 different guilds and each holds a list of taks eg: "collect 3 dragon eggs" or "defeat the spiritlord" - and upon completion you get a reward, again as with sidequests, formations, items, money etc.

Now, onto the most important part of the game: The battle system.

I have to say, it is very confusing to begin with but stick with it because it will soon become one of the best battle systems you have ever played on.

One of the main differences from other RPG's and infact other Square Enix's, is that your party limit is not 3, 4, 5.. not even 10.. infact you eventually reach 18 active members with (thinking from memory) at least 30-40 to switch through and more to hire at guilds or soldier places.

Firstly, there are 2 types of units, "Battle Leaders" and "Soldiers"

Battle Leaders are your main characters and members you win from quests or hire from guilds. The main difference between Battle Leaders and soldiers, is that they level up even if they are not currently active but to what degree I don't know. They also have more dialogue and personality ie. Torgal will say "thankyou" if you heal him whilst a an old aquaintance of his from a guild might say "that was not necessary". However you can only use a set amount of Battle Leaders as they are significantly stronger than soldiers and the limit to how many you can use rises through the game.

Soldiers fill the rest of your party and become available later on in the game. You have a list of over 100 to choose from with varying races, stats, weapons and abilities and can become very strong if you keep them with you.

All the units talk during the battle which is a great addition but as i said leaders have personality's.

The days of worrying if all your members have the best gear is over, they brng their own gear and search for items to improve it.. after a battle if they see a drop that would improve their weapons they will ask for it.

The battle setup itself is very exciting, you fight as unions of 1-5 members each eg. my setup was 5 - 5 - 4 - 4 (members in each union) and instead of choosing individual actions for the characters to take, you make a group decision eg:

Attack with Combat arts:
Member 1 - Attack
Member 2 - Smash
Member 3 - Acala's Wrath
Member 4 - Attack
Member 5 - Attack

or

Attack with Mystic arts:
Member 1 - Wind Shear
Member 2 - Spark
Member 3 - Caustic Blast
Member 4 - Attack
Member 5 - Attack

as you can see some members, if they don't have an ability or not enough AP (attack points, which accumilate through the battle) do the standard attack.. but they sometimes automatically "re-assess" depending on the fight situation, for example, if you complete a critical chance chain (which are very common, where you press a certain button to increase an attacks power) the last member may do this:

attack -> reassess -> Mighty Smash

So if you were thinking "wow, 18 members, must be very easy" think again.. This game throws the hardest and lengthiest battles at you i have ever experienced and they only get harder and longer as the game progresses thanks to the "Battle Rank" system.

The game has no experience points, instead your individual stats and battle rank will rise independantly and Battle Rank is the one to watch.

Battle Rank, is kind of like "Game Difficulty" in disguise, the higher your rank, the harder the monsters and bosses get but i wouldn't let that put you off cos you need to have good stats to beat any of the bosses. as i mentioned, some link and alot enjoy doing multiple AoE (area of effect) spells. There is one boss in particular which stresses everyone out and as i've seen on a forum, takes many people multiple tries.

The enemies are adaptive and do not use just one attack, if you use lots of magic they might silence you and if you go to raise an ally from the dead they will try to intercept you.

Boss battles can last up to half an hour and even regular battles can be lengthy depending on how many you have drawn into battle or if they have the cavalry call skill which i HATED which brings more enemy unions into battle.

Finally, each union can be set in different formations which you can unlock through the game.. for example.. "Battle Crown" is an ideal Melee union formation, it raises attack and defence. While Mystic Shield, you guessed it, is great for magic casters.

I could literally go on about the game for ages but I will leave the rest up to you.. If you love RPG's and equally love a challenge buy it now.. if you enjoy games you can complete with your eyes shut, i'd think again.

One down point is the jumpiness in battles due to the vast ammount of information being processed but you soon re-adjust to it and don't notice it.. my suggestion is to install the game to hard drive. Each Disk is roughly 6GB and if you don't have 12GB space you can install disk1 play that and then disk2

five out of five and praying for either a sequel or a game with a similar battle system