The Last Remnant is the most recent RPG from Square Enix and its aimed for both Japanese and Western audiences.

The Last Remnant

Plot of the Game is focused around family Sykes, mostly on their two children Rush and Irina. Basic plotline in the beginning of the game is that Irina gets kidnapped by a hooded man and Rush tries to find her. By accidents Rush meets a man named David and his Generals, they together try to find out where Irina is and why has she been kidnapped. The Plot is what it is, a basic RPG plot, nothing really shocking, alltough after hearing some of the cheezy lines Rush says about Irina I forced myself thinking Irina was her wife/girlfriend and ditched the whole ciblings thing. Without spoiling anything I´ll just say that the main bad guy of the game is really well done. He may be on the top five of bad guys in games, for me atleast.

The game looks really awesome on PC, at the cutscenes it really feels like watching an animated movie more than a game. The only thing that bothered me about the graphics was the physics engine and the way Square used it. Allmost every character had some swinging part on their costume that looked like it had a mind of its own. Its isnt a really big deal but it just sticks out. Voice acting is nicely done on most parts with a few character exeptions.

The combat is a mixed bag, everything looks great but the choises you make in combat dont seem to work out at all like you planned. If you assign a team to heal another group with low hp most of the time the team cant act before its too late. The combat actions seem to be too stiff so you end up using the same 1-3 characters main abilities even if your team has 12+ members. On the positive note I have to say the combat music specially is really well done. So my hat goes off to Tsuyoshi Sekito.

Basic Combat View

The gearing of other characters than your main character is really really awful. Instead of being able to equip items straight to characters they whine and moan about loot parts, which they use to upgrade the weapons without your control. Most of the time it goes smoothly but everytime you exit into the map screen every character missing one ingredient keeps reminding that they want the item, they dont give any indication what enemy drops ‘em or where the enemy can be found. Other bad thing about the character developement is when you exit into the map screen and a random person from your team asks if he should one learn in magic or melee. Two, only melee. Three, only magic. You cant check out the stats  of the character asking so if you havent checked them out before and memorised them you have to quess. If you choose wrong you have to load from previous quick save or save and pickup where you left out and do it again.

The difficulty of the game is another thing, most parts the game is really easy. To make it harder Square implemented a linking system, there isnt any random encounters but you can link enemy packs together for more challenge and more loot. The system works and is fun. Other side of the coin is the boss fights, they seem to scale way too much and most of the time you have to try a boss fight 5-6 times before getting a lucky break or head back and level your characters to get better skills. I dont mind trying a boss 5-6 times but I do when before the boss is a 7 minute cinematic that you cant skip.

The effort to make the game appeal more to the Western RPG fans shows. Some things work great but you almost can hear a dong sound when the Western influence kicks in (or something that Square thinks is Western). Like Rush calling David, Dave. Or two spoiled quest NPCs that curse alot and use words like ”Bitchfit”. Hairstyles seem… well ”emo” and many more.

In the end its a good game. If your a friend of the RPG genre I would definetly recommend this to you. At first certain systems seem really complicated or dont make much sence, but with the help of the internet and some try and error you’ll get the hang of it.

Overall score: 8,5/10

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