gergroy

User Score
8.0

Presentation - 7.5
Gameplay - 8.0
Value - 8.5

Ok, so The Last Remnant puts you in a world full of huge artifacts of great power called remnants.  Basically, everything in the world is controlled by the people that control the remnants, so as you might imagine, people seeking power are also seeking remnants.  So, lets break this game down.

The story:

The story in this game is pretty good.  It isn't something amazing or all that mind boggling, but it serves it's purpose.  This might be a weaker part of the game.  It follows the path of a lot of jrpg's where the hero starts off trying to find his sister who has been abducted.  It doesn't really stray much from it's cliche plot line, but the plot does have some interesting twists and turns.  I like how they divided the game into 2 parts essentially.  The first disc actually has a pretty satisfying conclusion and they may have been able to just leave it at that and call it a game.  Although, it would have been really short and there would still be some unanswered questions, but what jrpg doesn't have unanswered questions at the end now-a-days?  When you start the second disc, it is like being given a fresh start, which worked really well.

Overall 7/10:  The story doesn't do anything new, but it did it's job and fit the game well.

The sound: 

Last Remnant has some great music in it.  Some of the best i have heard in rpg's.  The voice acting is ok, it isn't laughably bad like final fantasy X, but i wouldn't say this is top notch quality either.  However, for a jrpg, the english voice acting did exceed my expecatations.

overall 8/10:  Great music and ok voice acting which is better than expected.

Gameplay:

This is probably the hardest thing to rate.  First of all, I will adress the technical problems this game has.  This game has a terrible problem with frame rate and texture pop in.  To the point that it becomes very hard to play, especially given that the battles have timed button presses and the failing frame rate makes it really hard to push those buttons on time.  However, there is a simple solution to this, install the game on the hardrive.  After I installed the game, the frame rate and texture pop in was almost non existent, still there but not that big of a deal.  So for the purpose of this review, I'm going to review it based on the game being installed on the hardrive.  If it isn't installed, I would take 3 points off of my overall score. 

Ok, as far as the battle system, the game has a very unique and very satisfying approach.  In this game you form unions, which is basically squads of soldiers that you command to fight in massive battles.  Every fight in this game is essentially a large scale battle with around 20 to 60 guys involved (including both sides) and sometimes more.  You have these unions go in formations that will effect their attack, defense, etc.  While attacking you can also move them into flanking and rear attacks which will do more damage.  So, basically, there is a lot of strategy involved, which is awesome.  This style is great and I could almost call it perfect if they hadn't taken control away from you.  Now, when I say they take control away from you, I mean it.  Your characters will all learn certain abilities and attacks over time, but you will only have access to those abilities when the game wants to give the option.  So instead of choosing from all the possible attacks or actions that you know, the game will only give you about 4 options.  So, one example of why this is bad is if your union is badly damaged and you want to heal, but for some reason the game didn't want to give you that option.  It can be very annoying and frustrating, especially when you consider how mind numbingly difficult this game is.  This isn't a simple rpg that you can just pick up and play casually, you need to invest time in leveling up  your characters.  Even with your characters leveled up, the boss's frequently have very cheap attacks that can take you out in one turn easily.

Now, I know this sounds negative so far, but really this is a fun game.  The battles, although they can be frustrating, are incredibly fun.  The level of thought and strategy that you have to put into it is much more than your typical rpg.  If you can get past the steep difficulty and play the game, you will enjoy it. 

Overall gameplay 8/10: The game is hard and not having the ability to choose all of your skills when you want is frustrating, but level of strategy and depth in this game makes up for these faults.

Overall 8/10:

The game is good, good sound work, innovative combat, and an ok story.  It fails to be great due to some weird design choices in the combat and it's cliche story, but definetly a game worth checking out for RPG fans.  Although, I can't really recommend it to a casual audience, way to hard.