The Last Remnant

Cheerupemokid 15/04/09

As a starter, I’ve never had any experience of the Xbox version of the game, I’ve only played the steam version. Any “spoilers” you see here are pretty much within the first 30 minutes of the game.

The Last Remnant is a game that places you in the role of Rush Sykes, a stereotypical protagonist for anyone who is familiar with JRPGs. Rush is searching for his sister Irina, who was kidnapped by a mysterious character in black. While searching for his sister he is unfortunate to stumble into the middle of a battle between the Marquis of Athlum and a horde of monsters, and mistakes one of the female soldiers for his sister. After a rather large explosion on the battlefield he falls through the floor with said female soldier. After being mistaken for a spy it turns out Rush and his sister are the children of two of the worlds leading researchers, and their high status leads the Marquis of Athlum to grant Rush his protection and services. This is where the story starts as Rush begins his search for his sister with the aid of the Marquis of Athlum. The other key main plot device in the story is the whole “Remnant” theme. These are basically incredibly powerful things ranging from weapons, to giant creatures, to protective objects. They are meant to protect the people of the world. Of course it would turn out that there are some evil doers who would seek to use the power to cause havoc rather than do good, and Rush’s sister is somehow key to their plans.

My first flaw with the game is that Rush is not a lovable hero. He is an idiot in every sense of the word. He has the ruler of a city aiding him called David (pronounced Daveed), the Marquis of Athlum. Rush somehow fails to respect this and constantly calls the Marquis “Dave”. The amount of cut scenes you will watch where Rush does something impossibly idiotic will leave you wishing he simply gets a stomping. This flaw is minor however, as the game has a huge range of selectable individual hero’s to include in your small army. You are not forced to play with certain characters and can choose to fully ignore some should you wish to exclude them from your retinue. You can mix and match as you please, using your most hated for cannon fodder and putting your most beloved in the most powerful squad. Though it makes sense to use certain main characters over the lesser hero’s due to stats, it isn’t forced.

The combat system has tried to take a new approach, and though intuitive it falls down in certain areas. You can have up to 18 units (or characters), which may be spread across 6 squads, with a maximum of 5 characters per squad. The squads are fully customizable and come with a selection of formations that enhance and reduce certain stats to suit the squads preference. For instant “Bait and Hook” puts one unit of the squad at the front line to attract the attention of it’s opponents, while the remaining 4 units hang back and receive a Magic Attack bonus. You can also customize and control each of the units within a squad, advising it where it’s combat focus should be; melee, magic or a mixture. If you are concerned a unit is using skills it shouldn’t bother itself with you can ban it from using it, to make it focus on the skills you’d rather it had. The units will upgrade themselves automatically by asking you for items that drop to upgrade their equipment, improving their personal effectiveness. The effectiveness of the squad however is dependent on how well each unit fits into it’s role within the squads formation, for example a unit who prefers casting won’t give the squad many stat bonuses if it’s put on the front line. The overall management of squads and units is incredibly simple, as they tend to manage themselves, and the only real time needed is working out the unit composition of each individual squad which still gives the feel that you are having your own strategic input. The self-catering unit system does have it’s setbacks however. Should a unit wish to upgrade itself it will often ask you for loot at the end of a battle, however if you already have 50 of the item it needs, you can’t simply give the item to them from your backpack which has caused me a few hours of wasted grinding just so he can have 5 of an item that i already possess 50 of.

The simple squad management is also the combat systems main downfall. You can put as much thought and effort into setting up a squad as you like, but when it comes to the actual battles it still all comes down to luck at times. While in combat you can’t control individual units’ actions. Each squad gets a selection of actions with to choose from with the relevant AP cost listed next to it, and the units within the squad will act depending on which action you choose. This restricts your management and at times actually screws you over. At some points in the game you will be able to see the logical selection of skills depending on who’s in your squad, for instance if you are fighting a particularly hard monster you may want your jack of all trades to give you a light heal, followed by your 3 heavies to deal some damage while receiving the monsters hellish attack and finish up with your caster to renew you at the end of the turn with a big heal. Your only hope for this course of action is for either the “Hang in there!” or “Keep yourselves up!” option to be available. If they’re not available you either have to fully withdraw from the fight temporarily to heal which leaves you incredibly vulnerable as units not engaged in combat become subjected to “Raid Lock” if targetted which destroys your morale. There are obviously ways to minimize the chances of things going wrong for you using different strategies, but the top and bottom of it is the lack of control of units within the squads or selection of their skills can leave you raging when the necessary course of action is so glaringly obvious. My other gripe with the combat system is how it’s very uninvolved. Once you’ve chosen your course of action you simply have to sit and watch while your units perform the tasks, there’s no control once you’ve assigned actions and agreed for the turn to begin. To combat this they’ve thrown in Quick Time Events during the fighting, these events lead to “chains” and speed up the rest of the squads actions. The QTE’s are useful in that they either lead to bigger damage, or chaining them could result in that heal coming a bit earlier to save them as each successful QTE jumps the next allied unit in the queue to perform next. Most of the time though, especially when the fights aren’t challenging, they will be boring. There is a “speed” option available for those who just want to fast forward through trash mob fights. The final mechanic in the combat system is “Morale”. Morale basically influences how well your squads perform, high morale will lead to faster attacks, better defence and attack, while low morale will debuff you. Certain moves reduce enemy morale, such as flanking.

The content is one of the games main selling points for me though at times can be overwhelming. There are dozens of things to throw yourself into with the game. For anyone who’s ever played the Suikoden series and had a love of collecting every character possible, the Last Remnant will definately deliver, and go one further. There are hundreds of side quests available in pubs or through strangers that will often unlock a unique hero. Once unlocked many of the hero’s have their own side quests. If you fall in love with certain main characters, it’s nice that they often have a story behind them to pursue. There’s also a weapon crafting system that allows you farm materials to upgrade or create weapons. This is similar to many other RPGs where you go out, hunt monsters for drops or farm resource points for the relevant materials. The other characters upgrade their equipment in much the same way, and you’ll find yourself being nagged at constantly to go and farm them the required item. The only downside of there being so much sub-content is that it takes a lot of time, and when you take a break to pursue the sub-content you tend to become detached from the actual story and by the time you come back to continue the main plot you often wish there was a quick catch up session to bring you back to speed.

I’ve left my final complaint until the end, as I bought my version through steam and as such did not get a manual. I rarely look at manuals but this game has some mechanics that could really do with better explanation than what is given. The controls are also designed for a controller and as such don’t feel very comfortable with a keyboard and mouse. They are small issues however and are easy to adapt to.

In conclusion the Last Remnant is not without it’s flaws. For anyone who has played a JRPG the story line will feel very similar yet has managed to keep my attention. The less than likable hero is annoying to say the least but is combated with a huge selection of characters that you may actually like to fill your ranks with. The squad system needs thought and grants the player strategic control while being relatively simple to get to grips with, though at times the simplicity is it’s downfall. The units (or heroes) are easily managed and curbed to your ideals however constant nagging for items so they can be upgraded gets tiresome. The battle system is new and intuitive and the quick time events occasionally add excitement to the fighting scenes, though often you are left at the mercy of the squads AI as to what you can actually do with them. Overall though the game is enjoyable and entertaining despite the flaws presented, I would recommend it to anyone looking for a new RPG to throw themselves into. I haven’t been a fan of the RPG genre for some time and this has rekindled my interest.