In Progress: The Last Remnant
This is the name I will use when I want to get down to brass tacks regarding a game that I plan on finishing, but am not far enough in to warrant a full review. For this example, I have chosen The Last Remnant, which is something a little difficult to be critical about because I am presently not very far in, though I have put in over a dozen hours already.
I should say that, for the record, I chose to wait for the PC version to come to Steam because I had heard of some of the terrible framerate issues plaguing the 360 version. For this reason, I will also try to record some of the scenes that I am talking about, so that it gives a clearer picture of the game.
The first Major Flaw thus far is easily the combat system. This actually breaks down as several smaller flaws, but they are all combat-related, so I’m grouping them together. In no particular order:
- Unions take almost too much planning to set up. A Union is a selection of 1 to 5 individual characters, that all share a max health pool in combat, and must be moved as one formation in combat. Each character in the Union has his or her own actions that can be performed, and gains benefits to these based on their positions in the formation. However…
- …the actions available in combat may or may not come about depending on where the Union is positioned in combat, whether they are flanked or otherwise outgunned, whether or not the damage taken has knocked one of the members out or not, and the status and positioning of other Unions, which means…
- …healing or reviving your other Union members is not as straight-forward as one would think. Careful planning must be executed to make that action even available to the characters with the skills, and even then, often it takes blind luck to be able to use the skills effectively. Furthermore…
- …healing or other defensive actions often lead to the other combat-ready and healthy Unions members doing nothing for that turn. Incredibly frustrating when you have four ready to deal heavy damage on a target they are flanking, but they cannot because the one healing character needs to save another Union from extinction. Apparently they cannot assault an enemy Union while their healer casts a spell? Ridiculous.
So far, this mechanic has caused me very little grief, mainly because I have had sufficient time to learn how to feel out the pace of combat, and I can redo the actions of all my Unions before ending my turn, to get the best results. Also, the “random” battles out in the world are mostly predictable, short of rare creatures, so there are few surprises.
That said, combat is extremely fast-paced, so that I often find myself going more by health bars than actually witnessing attacks as they happen. I have also set the quick-time events Critical Triggers to automatic when on the defensive, because I find the computer has a better chance of making the timer than I do.
As a Minor Flaw, the crafting system suffers from Guide Dang It, in that if you do not visit every NPC that can create an item, and keep some kind of documented list handy, there is no way of telling if a particular creature that you defeat should be split into components for creating items, or kept “whole” to sell to a vendor for lots of money. Most of the time, I have noticed, the second option is the most lucrative, but this is after hours of collecting the max (100) of generic horns, husks, and hides. It brings back memories of Final Fantasy Tactic’s poaching system which, I admit, I rarely used through all my hundreds of hours playing through the game. A great feature, if you really want rare items, and spend the extra time hunting down creatures all the while browsing a wiki.
On other notes, the audio is spectacular, as the game gives me the choice of going with original Japanese voice acting, along with subtitles, and the music is easily one of my favorite RPG scores. Tsuyoshi Sekito really brings his A-game in with the soundtrack, bringing the battles to life with truly hair-raising guitar riffs over epic orchestral scores. I would gush more about how it has some of the best rock themes since the “Be Just or be Dead” from Guilty Gear, or Shimomura’s “The Darkness Nova”.
Graphics-wise, the game utilizes the Unreal engine, which is - in my opinion - one of the worst next-gen graphics engines for anything that has to look stylized. I say this because it seems that, to me, it makes everything shiny and the anti-aliasing leaves a lot to be desired of. But I will say that, at least for me, the game play stays smooth during frantic battles, even with dozens of combatants on the field and lots of graphical effects going on. Loading times are no huge concern, though maps tend to be very open and large, and sometimes it can be hard to see exactly where you need to be going.
Overall, I cannot wait to finish this, and give the story elements a proper once-over, but for now, it has my interest; just not a lot of my time!
