The Last Remnant

Last Remnant is a game I hard no expectations for, and little knowledge about. I honestly thought this game was a hack and slasher like Dynasty Warriors. When I jumped into the first battle, it felt closer to Lost Odyssey.

Another thing I vaguely remember about this game during the pre-launch hype was how it was suppose to appease Western audiences by adding more Western designs to it. I don't quite see that to be honest. I like that you can save the game at any point in the game. I also like how non-linear it was. Other than that, this is a purely Japanese game.

The only major problems I had with Last Remnant was the extremely boring battle system. I think I would have enjoyed it much more if the battles were shorter and more interactive. The loading problems needed more time too.

Otherwise, I liked the storyline, the massive amounts of sidequests that give you real rewards. I loved the loot, and a bunch of other things.

Hardly a perfect game, and not even close to the best 360 RPG.


----------Battle System----------
Last Remnant is a turn-based RPG. It's kind of unique in a way, I can't think of a game similar to it off the top of my head. The closest guess I can gather is a mix of Suikoden III and Grandia II. In Suikoden III, you have a group of 3 groups of 3 characters, and you can order each group commands and such. Last Remnant is similar to that, but you can hold 5 groups of 5 members (although the max amount of members is 18 overall). It's up to you how you want to divide those 18 characters.

Last Remnant is also unlike most RPGs in a way. You don't gain experience or levels in this game. It's similar to Chrono Cross, when you kill a monster that's strong, then you're characters will gain a little bit of HP or Strength. If you kill a weak monster, then you will get no upgrades. The more you use your special attacks, the stronger they will get.
Even though you can hold up to 18 characters at once (despite what the back of the box says), the only person on your team that you can upgrade equipment is Rush. He can equip new weapons, a possible shield, and 2 accessories.

The other characters do upgrade their weapons, but only if you use them in battle. For example, the more a character uses his sword, the greatest possibility it will upgrade a level. One thing I had to research, and I'm still not 100% certain in, is another way your characters upgrade. Occasionally Rush will give them accessories to equip, but really have no control over that. Other times your team members will steal loot from your kills, I guess this affects your chances of a weapon upgrade. This annoys me because they don't explain it at all in the game.

Each character has their own stats, but individual stats don't matter while in battle. A reason for this is each member in a group is added to a total of stats. For example, if you have 3 characters in a group, and they each have 300 HP, then that group has 900 HP. If you compared Last Remnant to any other turn-based RPG, then your entire group would be 1 person. If that makes any sense. Let's say one person in your group (with 300 HP) was hit with 500 HP attack, he will still survive, because that HP is taken from the group HP, and not the single character's.

Another thing that took me a while to figure out was how to get different moves in the game. Each move in the game is round based. So you set your moves, then you watch the battle unfold. You can't tell your group to fight a certain way. They only give you 5 somewhat vague attack commands. I didn't figure out until later that if you hit the X button, then you can see what moves the characters will use in that turn.

The move list that they give you applies to how much AP you have saved up, and how close you are to an enemy. There's a bit of a strategy to the game, but for the most part it feels like a guessing game.

The battle system is pretty boring though, because it's like watching a long drawn out battle for 15 minutes straight, then you get to hit your commands again. I would seriously hit random commands, put the controller down, fix a sandwich, and the battle was still going on.

The way they tried to make the battle system more interesting was by adding a stupid QTE event in battle. If you hit the right button at the right time, then you'll get bonus damage or you're parry an attack. It's hardly worth the effort.



----------Characters / Story----------
You play as Rush Sykes. Rush and his sister Irina are outside, picking flowers and enjoying life. They mostly live by themselves, as their parents are famous professors, learning the ways of the Remnants. Remants are giant monsters that guard the World, atleast that's what I gather.

As Rush and Irina get a message from their parents to go meet them, they are attacked by a strange gang, and kidnap Irina. Rush, all alone, goes on a quest to find Irina. This is until he bumps into Emma, a skilled swordswoman of the Athlum army during a scrimmish battle with monsters. Emma and Rush get lost in a cave, and as they make their way out, they reunite with the king of Athlum, Lord David.

Lord David, or "Dave" as Rush likes to call him, takes Rush under his wing. Rush temporarily joins Lord David's army to help find his sister.

----------Graphics----------
I'm still unsure about the graphics. I think they're a step above Infinite Undiscovery, but a step down from Lost Odyssey. The characters needed a little bit more detail to compete with Lost Odyssey. The locations just aren't that rememberable either. Most of the dungeons, towns, and fields look nearly the same. The NPCs are forgettable too. Even some of the characters that join your team lack imagination.

Another big problem with Last Remnant is the constant texture loads and occasional slow down. I played the game entirely on the harddrive, so I'm not sure how bad it is with just the disc running, but even with it installed, it annoyed me. Each time you load a cutscene or town or house, the character is usually loaded up first, but the backgrounds and everything else slowly but surely loads in. You can see the game load from a N64 game, to a PS2 game to finally a 360 game in the matter of 5 seconds. It's that bad.

The slow downs only occur during battle, but they weren't as distracting as most people claim. You can still notice them though.

The worst problem I had with Last Remnant was the constant load times. When the game loads, it flashes to a blank screen, then it goes into a Loading screen, then it goes to your next scene. Even then, as I mentioned above, it isn't entirely loaded. It's pretty frustrating.


----------Sound----------
The music is pretty good, and catchy. I love the battle theme, and especially the Guild theme. The voice work is pretty good too, although there was one character that annoyed me. I can't remember her name, but she was a young empress of the Celapaleis Empire. She was poorly recorded and poorly acted.


----------World Map----------
The world map is a standard menu map. They show you a simple flat map, with icons across it. All you have to do is pick a town or dungeon and you're off. Towns are also menus, which is a good and bad thing. For example, the loading times in this game sucks, even with it installed. Let's say you're at the entrance of the town. If you want to reach the next location in the town, you have to exit the town (load time) then enter the new section of town (load time). This is annoying, but it can speed things up if you want to go straight to the town's castle or whatever.

If you play this game linearly, and only stick with the storyline, you will be missing more than half of the locations in the game. That's why I took on most sidequests.


----------Time to Complete Game----------
???

I'm unsure of the total time, since they don't record it. I think I put atleast 50 hours into though. It's a fairly long game if you complete sidequests, and I did about 80% of them.

The ending was pretty cool.