The Last Remnant

"A work-in-progress sold as a 'finished' product...."

The Last Remnant is a West-meets-East JRPG centered on a protagonist named Rush Sykes, his family and his friends going up against the mysterious conqueror in a world of powerful objects known as 'remnants'...

STORY (7/10)

One of the most appealing aspects to me of this game was the effort to create a story using both westernised and typical Japanese elements. As mentioned above, the story is fairly solid yet at times, somewhat disjointed. The characters are pretty average (the protagonist Rush Sykes is your boring, japanese stereotype save-the-world sort of character) yet the main individual likely to attract your attention is the Conqueror and his actions that lead the world of the 'Last Remnant' in to an all-out war. It's a decent story that will keep you playing over the game's 2 discs yet a bit more attention to detail is required when explaining some of the game's characters and events.

GAMEPLAY (6/10)

My main issue with this otherwise mostly good game is how the gameplay is just essentially underdeveloped. In this JRPG, combat is set out as a turn-based battle between your unions and enemy unions. Unions themselves are combinations of up to 5 characters who act collectively as one unit, all sharing the same collective HP and AP. It's an interesting setup yet certain flaws mar the real potential of this battle system. For example, the player lacks direct control over each individual unit, instead having to rely on randomised choices such as "play by the ear" or "take em all out!" that automatically choose the actions of your units in your union for you. The problem here is that certain combinations of attacks are simply more powerful than others and depending on your luck, the player may have access to special abilities from the first turn which all ultimately create a disproportionate sense of advantage/disadvantage over the entire battle. Another important feature of the combat system is the use of trigger events (button-timed sequences that when successful, execute a critical attack or defensive move) which help to keep the player stimulated over the typically long encounters throughout the game. However, these trigger events are diminished by the game's absolutely shocking frame rate to a point that pressing the right buttons becomes that much easier.

In addition, levelling up has been somewhat replaced by the Battle Rank (an extremely vague figure that sort of represents the main level of your entire party). You'll notice however that not once in the game is your battle rank mentioned or truly explained at all (you can 'only' see it right after a battle). As well, characters even are assigned to particular classes which also have absolutely no explanations from the manual or the game itself. In short, the experience just suffers from a lack of explanation for some of the gameplay's features which is frustrating due to the considerable difficulty of the game itself.

In spite of all this, Square Enix has still managed to create a game with in-depth and enjoyable gameplay due to the wide range of enemies, playable units, abilities and series of epic and tough battles. An extremely helpful aspect of the game is how sidequests are set out as accepting one automatically transports the player to and back from a quest's location. There are also numerous guild tasks to complete which tend to reward you with worthwhile treasure although the customisation system within the game can be quite vague with its component requirements.

GRAPHICS (6/10)

Quite honestly, the graphics for the Last Remnant are decent yet there are oddities in regards to some of the character's skin textures as seen in some of the FMV's. Overall however, the Unreal Engine 3 gets the job of decent, worthwhile graphics done yet the biggest issue with this engine is the FRAME RATE. The frame rate severely slows down gameplay during battles due to the amount of units on screen at a time. This issue just shows how rushed the production rate of this game was and can turn a player off with its laggy performance (downloading the game to the Xbox harddrive does improve performance). If you can work past this, then this game is beautiful enough as it is.

SOUND (9/10)

The music for this game is simply great. Even the opening music for the main menu and certain events/locations really helps to evoke the right mood within the player. The battle music however can get a bit old considering that the battles themselves take ages to finish so you'll hearing that particular tune for a fair bit. Quite honestly, the music and sounds are fitting and most people wouldn't have a real problem with either.




And there it is, my first review for this website. The Last Remnant had the potential to be a classic and even in its 'final' stage does it provide a long-lasting and entertaining journey. However, if the developers had a little more time to spend with the game, fixing its numerous bugs and paying more detail to some of the gameplay elements, then the Last Remnant could've been something special. Instead, we have something that is half-finished yet still worthwhile. Let's hope the future PS3 and PC releases address these problems in 2009.....

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/05/09

Game Release: The Last Remnant (AU, 11/21/08)