So I bought The Last Remnant...

[Agent Dunham]

... and I figured I'd dump my experience here. I know DP wanted to know what I thought of it, though I'm only just at the very beginning.

ftr, PC version. 360 version is total shit, I hear. Click them thumbnails, son, you know you want to. Ignore any obvious compression, I just plain can't be fagged setting up lossless.



Settings:
Resolution: 1280x1024
(General)
Character textures: High
World textures: Medium
Shadow textures: 50% (it's a slider, I've got it set at the halfway point)
Other textures: Medium
(Battle)
DoF: On
Character model LoD: High
Shadows: High

The first thing I notice is that it doesn't necessarily look any better or worse than FFXIII, just different aesthetically. In terms of the character face textures, its closer to the kind of painted look that FFXII had, and looking at the credits, there's some shared texture artists there. I didn't see any AA options, but I haven't found the aliasing to be particularly horrendous, maybe hair looks a bit dodgy at times. There's texture pop-in that I can lessen by messing with the ini file, but I haven't done that yet and it's literally around a second when an area is first loaded. Since taking these screenshots, I've played with the settings related to shadows because they were giving me a bit of grief. Framerate drops sporadically to about 20-25FPS for approximately 1-1.5 seconds. I expected this going in, knowing that the 360 version doesn't understand the meaning of "stable framerate" and that the PC version was patched after launch to improve performance. The letterboxing kind of bums me out in terms of completely wasting real estate, but I'll live. For a 2008/2009 ported JRPG on PC, it still looks pretty good.





So now, here's a bit of context. TLR came out in 360 in November 2008. FFXIII came out on PS3 in December 2009. So XIII had about a year on TLR. TLR is on UE3, which apparently didn't have especially well-developed Japanese support at the time. XIII probably had a bigger budget, a custom engine and all the bells and whistles associated with being Square Enix's baby. My point is, HD towns. (I know, it's been more than two years, but it's still a fucking retarded thing to say, "HD towns are hard"...)






I will allow a concession, because TLR utilises zones that are accessed via a map, these four shots are taken across two separate zones in the same town, so it's not like it's one huge area. Nevertheless, it is still a town and it is still in HD, so suck my dick.

I'm still not sure what to make of a battle system, you are in all of two battles before being told to go to Athlum for some hot story nonsense. It's not typical of the genre, it's more strategic. You command groups instead of individual characters and each of the members in that group gets one action each turn. With attacks, there's occasionally (according to the demo, anyway, I haven't come across it in the full game) a QTE to boost damage. The Morale gauge determines the effectiveness of attacks (higher means stronger attacks) and defence (lower equals weaker defence). There's some AI brainwork going on. For example, if you choose to heal for a turn, then your characters will heal each other until a certain point and if there's still some who haven't acted yet, they'll return to attacking automatically. It's quite neat.

Sorry, I don't have any battle screenshots at the moment because I was far too busy trying to figure out how the fuck battles even work to take any. THAT LEARNING CURVE, BRO. And like I said, there's only been two so far.

So that's my first 90-odd minutes, according to Steam. Which isn't fair, since about a third of that was spent pissfarting around setting up my controller, another 10 minutes messing with the settings, some cutscenes and a handful of tutorials.

[Agustazz]

I might give this a try. I didn't know it was for PC.
Yeah, I live under a rock.

[Oracle]

I was thinking about giving this a whirl. But I'd get it for the 360, which now worries me.

[Ethan]

Everyone's always known the "hd towns are hard" bit was pure bull anyway.

[Ramenzilla]

I couldn't finish this game, granted I played it on the 360 and the frame rate is abysmal on it.
The battle system was...frustrating. The difficulty spike towards the middle to end was so extreme and hard to manage with the battle system they used. The ideas were ok, the execution was not. I wasn't really invested in the story either. *shrug*

I liked the one soldier girl in green at least...and the character models were pretty.

[PhoenixSun]

I had this on the 360. BIGGEST MISTAKE OF MY LIFE. Everything that Ramen and Shannon have said was true. I tried to be invested in the game. I really tried. but the story was awful, the battle system made little sense, and not even all the way through the first disk yet and I got sick of it.

Em, do not torture your 360 with this

[Death Penalty]

Hm. That game's actually a lot better looking than I would have expected it to be. The aesthetic style pleases me as well, and most times to me that's a lot more important than the actual technical prowess of the game.

My reservations at this point completely lie with the story and the battle system. Story is just something I've come to be very leery of in every JRPG. It's like the genre just can't deliver now like Western games or even non-JRPG Japanese games can. And the battle system certainly looks unique, but that doesn't mean good. Keep the impressions coming!

[Mike]

...How much is this to get off of Steam?

[Agent Dunham]

29.99, but I bought it from Gamersgate for 7.50. It's a Steam key.

[Xenosagagirl3]

I played TLR for Xbox 360 in 2008 several months after its release and found it quite enjoyable. I am all about games that have good graphics and interesting stories and characters. The story was in my opinion very interesting and different from most games out there and the graphic were very good for when the game came out in 08. The battle system was very different then any other RPG I had played before. I found it very challenging in the beginning as it was a completely new type of battle system but after a while I got the hang of it and it became second nature for me like other games battle systems would be. I would highly recommend though either buying the strategy guide or getting one off the web. It really helps you get a good grasp on the battle system and how to approach certain battles in different ways which can really mean all the difference in winning and losing a battle. I have heard that some people get fed with the challenging battle system in the very beginning of the game and give up before really giving it a good shot and my guess is that they lacked the info of the guide to help them. Also the guide will give you really helpful tips for side quests to go on that will make your final boss battle tons easier if you have done them. I am not saying that it makes the final boss battle a piece of cake but it will lessen the blow a good bit. As for myself I did all the side quests except one. I found that made the battles easier as you got near the end of the game since you had gained tons of extra experience without having to do mindless grinding. That is not a requirement to play the game but it will be well worth the time spent.

I will say that the one down fall of the game was that one of the boss battles 3/4 of the way through the game lasts an exceedingly long time. That boss battle in my opinion is way harder then even the final boss battle. For this boss battle the battle field is filled with what appears to be never ending squads of enemies that took close to 45 mins for me to clear out and then in the same battle the boss for that section of the game would show up and he would take a good while to kill. In several cases he would be very close to death and then he would kill me and I would have to start all the way back to the point of spending 45 mins killing the minion squads again before I could get to him again. Luckily after a few times of doing this I was able to accomplish killing him and was rewarded with some action packed clip scenes that made up for the horrendously long battle. Fortunately that only really happens in this one boss battle. The rest of the games boss battles are no were near that long including the final battle thank goodness. But if you are going to play this game you should know that there are some medium sized length boss battles that will take a bit of time. Thankfully again not as long as that one boss battle though. Other then that one battle and getting the hang of the battle system in the beginning of the game it is a really fun game that is well worth the time spend getting used to those parts. In my opinion it has an amazingly interesting story that will leave you screaming for more and a very creative battle system. It is one of my favorite RPGs that has come out for the Xbox 360 system to date. I say this having played other 360 RPGs/JRPGs including Infinite Undiscovery, Magna Carta 2, Final Fantasy 13, Dragon Age Origins, and Mass Effect 1 and 2 (I will say Mass Effect 1 & 2 trumps TLR in terms of story but then again ME is a completely different type of RPG) So I would greatly recommend playing this game if you are not afraid of a bit of challenge and like games with interesting characters and storylines. If you have any questions in regards to this game shoot me a message and I will do my best to answer it.

[Agent Dunham]

My favourite character in the game so far is Bartender. He's a flaming homo. I'm not even kidding.







Unfortunately, I was too floored by his surprisingly blatant homosexuality to get a screenshot of him coming onto Rush. (If you don't know, Rush is the main character.)

I've done a couple of sidequests, but I'm not too fond of how it whisks you away to complete them right you pick them up. The woman who explained them to me mentioned something about leaving the area and what happens with the quest once you do, but I WAS ELECTED TO LEAD, NOT TO READ, so I don't actually know what she said. The two I've done haven't necessarily been interesting, they are just sidequests after all. I read that if you do all the side stuff, the final boss is superpowered. I don't think that's something I'll actually have to patience to work towards, but it's a neat idea. Especially rationalising it as, you can spend all that time doing mundane crap for people, but you're just giving Captain Evil time to get more power.

In times where the story doesn't give you a party, you can recruit some dudes from the guild but I'm more interested in the Guild Tasks. These are just constant objectives that you can fulfill as you play. I inadvertently completed two of them before I even knew they existed. You get rewards from them and stuff. There's kill x of y stuff and some related to character progression. It actually reminds me of the Book of 1000 in the .hack series only the rewards are actually useful and not arbitrary cosmetic shit that doesn't even apply to the game proper.

SO BATTLES. I'm starting to understand it now, but I'm... still not sure if I like it. I'm really not. I don't know if I'm having fun, I don't know if I find it satisfying, I just. don't. know.



This is the default view, you can see the status of your unions (I found out that that's what they're called, and the individual characters are units) so in this screen, one of my unions is poisoned. The dots are the number of units in the union. Your side is blue, enemies are red. The minimap shows the location of all unions on the field and the one you're targeting is circled.

Critical Trigger is the QTE thing I mentioned, which you can set to trigger automatically. I wouldn't say the timing on them is too great, but that could just be the fact that I'm not used to the 360 pad layout so even though it shows the face button in their layout and I've set up my pad to emulate that layout, I still have to think. Or maybe I'm just retarded, who knows. Probably the best thing is that don't occur solely while you're attacking. They can show up while you're being attacked and give you the chance to counterattack. That said, the rate at which counter QTEs pop up seems uselessly low, I've seen it maybe 5 times and crit ones have appeared maybe 50. But when you crit randomly anyway, I'm not sure why CT even exists, because it really does seem to just be a guaranteed crit so long as you hit the button at the right time.

I don't actually know what Turbo Mode does, it's never been explained to me, but it's been on this whole time, so now that I'm actually getting into the groove of things, I don't want to fuck things up by turning it off.

Chains are however many enemies you've defeated and I think it resets whenever you change zones, but it might just be when you return to town. I still don't know what it affects, barring the aforementioned Guild Tasks (one of the ones I completed was 10 Chain).



If you press X, you can see what each unit will do for the action you've selected, so it's not like you have to guess if you've done the right/effective thing. As I said at the beginning, if an action ends up being made redundant or in any way inappropriate by the time a unit acts, they may end up doing something else. Which is great when they decide to do something useful, but they decide to do nothing half the time.



There's a weapon upgrade system that I don't have access to yet and while you can't choose equipment for anyone other than Rush (unless you tweak the ini file, but there's issues related to that), they will upgrade their weapons. Provided you give them the components to do so, that is. When you get to the loot screen, they'll tell you that they want something and that item will be indicated. You can either keep it for yourself or give it to them. They won't be happy if you don't, but I don't think it has any long-lasting effect besides them not being able to upgrade their weapon.

Skills and magic are fairly simple, they level up from use. Some of them require items to perform so if you run out, you can't use that skill until you restock.



Generic RPG stats, Mys I think relates to the power of Mystic Arts (magic). Once again, there has been no explanation, so I don't understand the character-specific stats. I DON'T KNOW WHAT LOVE DOES, BUT OKAY. Maybe the problem is that I didn't read the manual. It's a horrible habit I've picked up this gen, not helped by the fact that publishers don't want to print them any more.

The areas I've been to have been fairly linear so far, but the demo took place in an open field area, so it might just be the first few hours. Or maybe the demo lied, which isn't too far-fetched, knowing Square Enix.

In terms of feel, the game is just so reminiscent of FFXII to me. It goes beyond just the texture artists, there's a lot of common names between the two at various levels. For example, one of the lead planners is apparently King Ivalice.

I'm wondering if the story has pacing issues, because it seems like a slow burn at the moment but I can't imagine it staying that way. I feel like I hit a point where there should have been a major progression, but it was all very vague and no one really seemed to care except for me and... nothing really happened. Everyone just kind of shrugged like "We'll just keep on doing what we were doing before." It feels very subdued, I guess. The world might be interesting. At least, the races are interesting. Frog rabbits, giant fish-men and a four-armed cat-man. Seriously. Four arms. Dual wield? Dual wield is for two-armed lesser beings. QUAD WIELD, MOTHERFUCKER.



I'm still not sure what to think of it. It feels like A Valley Without Wind all over again. I DON'T KNOW HOW I FEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

[zirain]

shoving me 2 cents worth in, i brought the game for xbox which is a huge mistake with long arse loading times, and while rush as a charater i found annoying at the start of the game, you kinda get used to him as he gets less bitch, as for the battle system, while there is a huge battle spike later on in the game i personally found the battle system great, its boring untill you get larger control over your party which doesnt happen for a while. my biggest gripe however was that i one of the cool features was you can make rush(the main charater) use any weapons you want and upgrading them requires items from monster kills, kind of simalar from the ffxii system only you know what you need before hand. my problem however was i picked dual swords for rush and at a point in the game i needed to get 3 of (somekind of item i forget) for an enemy, now i could ether got to this one place in the game which would take me 20 mins to get to and i would have to travel 5 mins every time i need to respawn the area where there was a 30% chance of ONE monster who had the item i needed appearing, who would then have a 5% chance of actually dropping the item i needed.

OR (and this is my gripe) i could by a key from the xbox store which would open the a door in the game which would let me into an area (which is allready installed in the game just not the key for it) where there were different monsters that dropped the item i needed commonly. i mean theres money grabbing and thats it.

[Zero Phoenix]

Well this was very insightful. I was interested in the game but never got around to buying it. It seems that was probably a good thing.

[Ramenzilla]

The battle system was very strange in my opinion. Not bad, not really good, just really different from anything I've experienced. If I remember correctly you couldn't really control when the healer character would heal or revive a fallen squad which gave me the biggest headache ever when you had to fight those 7 baddies (or however many).