The Last Remnant Review
Last Remnant is a game that will try and re-create the idea and world of Final Fantasy XII and put its own twist on things. Trying to give you not just a character driven story, but also one that demands the whole world of Last Remnant's attention. Not without its flaws Last Remnant still delivers a great experience for those who give it time.
The story starts of with the introduction of the protagonist of the story Rush Sykes. Rush is seen running through a forest in search of his sister Irina. Eventually he makes get’s caught in a battlefield which ultimately his life forever. Being caught between the two warring factions, Rush eventually allies himself with David ruler of the state Athlum where in exchange of helping David he would in turn help search for Rush’s sister. This leads in the “rescue the princess” scenario. Fortunately this only covers only the first disc of the game. Eventually it turns into more of a political driven story focusing on The Conquer, a fearsome warrior that took over a country for the soul purpose of obtaining a Remnant. However his method of using brute force is not recognized by the surrounding countries and do not allow him to get one, which in turn leads The Conquer forcefully going around towns collecting Remnants of his own.
The story is progressed in a usual manner. You are given a task to do and enter a dungeon, once finished you are treated to more story which begins to unravel itself. It isn’t really a bad thing but the way the story is progressed sometimes leaves you feeling like your not being proper motivated.
Aside from doing the main story there are plenty of other quests to do. You can enter a local pub where many other people have things for you to do. Most of these quests simply have you going to a dungeon and either beating a boss, collecting an item or just defeating a certain number of enemy types. While at it’s core there isn’t much variety it still has a nice addition to escape from the main quest and take a breath from it all.
Graphically this game has a lot of interesting things going on. If there was a style or world they wanted to use as a base point it certainly came from the world Final Fantasy XII Ivalice. Everything from the Mediterranean feel of the world, style of clothing to the multiple races all have that Ivalice feel to it. Which isn’t a bad thing, Ivalice was a big world that had a lot of depth to it and being inspired by it isn’t a bad way to go.
By now everyone should of heard about the bad usage of the Unreal Engine 3.0 and really it isn’t as bad as people say. Sure there are some graphical jumps here and there but they don’t ruin the overall experience in the game. Load times aren’t horrendous as people may make it seem. Sure it’s not instantaneous but do you really have a problem waiting five seconds? The only time that these issues effect your experience is when engaged in the battle system.
The Battle System itself is rather unique. Instead of controller an individual character, you are given the choice to control up to four unions. In each union you form a party of up to five characters.Instead of giving specific orders to the group you are give are more broader term for each command. What it comes down to is just tell your union to either attack, attack with physical skills or attack with magic. This manner of command management will usually confuse first timers but those who have played Suikoden III can understand the structure. By generalizing the commands it makes it easier to issue commands to a large scale army the game is going for.
At certain points in the battle you are given some quick time vents that will either lead to you counter attacking an enemy or chaining attacks together with other Union members. It's a nice change of pace and it should keep you on your toes but there are some issues with this system. The first is that you have no control or indication when the quick time event will trigger so it get's frustrating. And secondly is the whole graphical issues this game has. Slowdowns happen pretty frequently during battles and most are due to the quick time events. Almost half the time a quick time event happens the frame rate can start to chug at a very slow pace. This leads to not knowing the proper timing of when to press said button. There was a point when I had to wait eight seconds until I could accurately press the corresponding button without it telling me I was too fast. This kind of ruins the pacing of the quick time events as you don't properly start to get a feel for when to press the corresponding button. If there ever was to be annoyed with the slowdowns it be here.
One other problem I had with the battle system was the strategy they implemented into the game. When Union 1 attacks Enemy Union 1 they enter a mode called dead-lock. In this mode they are only able to attack one another. You cannot attack another squad or fully heal yourself. If you do decide to break the dead lock you leave yourself vulnerable to a raid-lock. Raid-lock basically give the opposing Union a damage bonus which doesn't really help you. Now if Union Squad 2 were to come in and attack Enemy Squad 1 they would be the ones to give the bonus damage onto Enemy Squad 1. Of course then Enemy Squad 2 can interfere with Union Squads 2 attack and enter Interference which would give Enemy Squad 2 bonus damage. It's all very strategic but the problem is that you really have no clue who the enemy is planning to attack so deciding who to attack is really a shot in the dark. Some other method the Enemy AI decide to attack with is just purely focusing on one of your Unions as each Enemy Squad would be given more damage bonus. It's really cheap but doesn't happen very much.
Music in this game is done fairly well. The only problem I have is with the guitar riffs. I'm a big fan of keeping things authentic to the time period and I'm sure even with all tis magical power infront of them, they can't produce an electric guitar.
Voice acting in this game can very from good to bad. Johnny Bosch headlines as the lead character Rush Sykes with mixed results. A lot of judgment can normally go to the fact that most VA's aren't given enough time to forge a bond with the character with all the limited dialog they all have. There is a lot of talking in this game just more spread out between characters.
The world of The Last Remnant is a big bag of mixed results. The bag has a lot of good ideas but most are never drawn out properly. From the epic scale battles to the whole Ivalice influence this game just screams more development time.
