The Last Remnant

"I started at 9 and counted down the more I played this game"

When I first started playing The Last Remnant I thought it was great: A solid J-RPG with an interesting system and story. At the time I was also unemployed and had lots of free time to play it.

That was more than three months ago and I've primarily played only this game. It is waaaay too long and has a weapons development system that has absolutely thousands of components too many. I've spent hours trying to hunt down rare monsters (there seems to be about a 1/100 chance they show up) to capture them (another 1/100 chance you'll actually capture instead of kill them) just to get one component (a 1/100 chance you'll get the one you need). So that's like a 1/10^8 chance you'll find the component you need. Thankfully this game doesn't have a game time count...I don't want to know how many hours I've wasted in repetitive side quests, failed rare monster searches and failed component hunts.

If you're unemployed or a student, I'd say this game will take you three months to finish (playing this game only) with all the pointless side quests, guild quests and searching for rare monsters and components. If you're employed full-time and single, I'd guess six months. If you have a family I could easily imagine this game taking a year. That's too long! With all the great games that are out there people just don't have the time to fight the same old monster battles over and over for 100+ hours!

I'm at the last boss, and this is a true example of what the problem is with The Last Remnant. To get to the last boss you have to go through three dungeons. If you leave with a transporter, you have to start all over again. A dungeon in this game can take 3 days to get through with 1 hour of gameplay a day. So that's like 9 hours to get to the boss (it actually can't be that long...more like 5). Then I fought the last bosses for an hour only to get smeared towards the end. Now I'm going to have to spend weeks completing DLC sidequests to buff my characters up and repeat those 3 dungeons. Again it's not worth it. My copy of Resident 5 has come in, I'm loving it, and I'm thinking of just giving up on The Last Remnant and selling it because I've wasted too much time on it.

The Good:
Graphics
Story and Setting
Interesting battle system

The Bad:
The length of the game including sidequests, weapons and character development
The battle system gets repetitive and boring (so boring that I listen to my iPod while playing)
The frame rates and jumpiness
The load times
In a story about war between nations and a Conqueror sweeping across the land with his army all you do is fight monsters over and over

If I had reviewed this game in the first month I had it, I would have given it a 9. But The Last Remnant...you have wasted too much of my life so you're getting a 5!

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 04/20/09

Game Release: The Last Remnant (US, 11/20/08)