With the recent influx of great games coming out, who has time for another RPG? That's right, me. With my marathon Gears runthrough, the on/off again relationship I have with L4D, and my decision to put Legendary off to the side for a while, I have time for another RPG. I also apparently have time for Chrono Trigger too, but that's for another day. Today I come to inform you about my initial impressions of The Last Remnant, a new Squeenix property, and one very recently released. Does it live up to the greatness of it's predecessors, or is it just the new mediocrity?

Let's start off simply, and by simply I mean this is the first game released so far where it feels like they were waiting for the NXE's ability to install the game to the hard drive to make it playable. That's right, for the first hour or so I was playing from the disc, and it was slow almost to the point of unplayable. I'm not talking about the "running around" stuff though, I'm talking about the "cut-scenes and gameplay" portions. Not to mention the loading screens, basically an addendum to the instructions with descriptions of battle conditions and explanations, which pop up way too often and, until I installed the disc, took way too long to load. After installing the disc(that's right, only disc 1 installed, not the whole game), the load times improved dramatically, the framerate gathered itself(more) together, and the cut-scenes sped up to the point where they had more flow and less pauses between them, making them seem less comical than before. If this game was delayed so it could be released after NXE so it could be playable, I fear for future games and those without a large hard drive.



Still, it's a gorgeous game, and you can definitely see where the processing power is going. It looks good, but like all Unreal Engine games, it kind of looks like most of the others when it comes to cities and towns and the ilk. Call it "Gears of Swords" maybe. The enemies look good, and the battle scenes can get intense with three or four friendly "units" on your side, and four or five enemy "units" across from you. With each "unit" holding up to five characters, battles can get complicated visually. More on the "units" and specificities of the battle system later. You can see the enemies on the maps, but so far the maps have been semi-unimpressive, with large open areas of green outside, and tight corridors of grey and brown indoors. The cut-scene and spell effects however look fantastic, and they've impressed me with the battle lead-in "oil and water" effect.

Getting back to the "how-to" of the battle system, it's not too hard to learn, but the way it's introduced and set up is initially confusing. Instead of playing as individual characters the battle system is set up to where you play groups deemed units, consisting of a leader and up to four squad members. You can put the teams into different formations to up attack, defense, magic attack, or long-range(so far), and when you select for them to attack, they all attack an opponents unit individually. However, the unit's hit points are all tied together, so it doesn't matter if one member of the team is getting hit harder than another. You start off with units of both sides set up tactically, with a small map in the upper right letting you know where the starting positions of each group are shown with arrows of different colors. Accordingly you can assign each group an enemy group to attack, and you can attack with a basic attack, a special attack, or a mystic attack, with pre-emptive healing and standing by an occasional option. After assigning each team a target, the battle automatically occurs, with each side running up and attacking the other side. When two units collide, they assume "deadlocked" status, meaning that neither side can turn away or really do anything until the opposing unit is defeated. Other units can "flank" these deadlocked units to do more damage, and even "raidlock" them by attacking from afar. You can also "intercept" or be "interfered" with while moving to attack a target, which switches your focus from the group targeted to the group that got in your way.

Also in play is a special attack part of battles, where you can increase the morale of your units, as well as attack consecutively before the enemy gets a chance to attack. These are accomplished by a "ring" coming down from all sides of the screen to a black and white version of the buttons on the controller. The ring closes in on the buttons, and all one has to do is to figure out which button to press when the ring gets there. Before I installed this was a nightmare, as the frame rate moved too unpredictably to get a good judgement on it, but afterwards it was just enough to keep you paying attention during battles, lest you miss out on the chance to finish off an enemy early. Adds to the tension in a close fight, and makes you feel unstoppable in an easy fight.



As I said earlier, you can see the enemies on the field prior to engaging them in battle. In this way you can run up to them and initiate battle before they attack you, gaining a slight advantage on them. You can also group enemies to fight, which will chain them together and increase your "chain attack," effectively increasing your chances for better items and components. That's right, another game with a billion knick-knacks for you to collect to upgrade your armor and weapons. Except here not only you are collecting things, but your teammates are as well. So after battles you have to decide if you're keeping the spoils or if you're going to let your buddies have it.

The only problem I've had with the battle system is that it's made for group fighting, and there've been portions of the game where you go it alone. Fighting groups of enemies that share a health bar is hard for one fighter alone, and even if you recruit help it still leaves you as two individual fighters against groupings of enemies. I've died quite a few times due to not planning ahead or overreaching myself. Maybe because of this reason you heal completely after every battle. I do kinda dig the healing after each round, because it takes away the necessity of stopping after each battle, healing everyone, having to make unnecessary trips to town after several battles to re-up on healing supplies, and lathering, rinsing, and repeating. You can go all out in every battle and not have to worry about running out of HP or AP, and that's actually a pretty nice feeling. Another thing that helps out is that you can save anywhere the party menu comes up, so pretty much anywhere. The only downside to the save anywhere function is that there is no autosave, so if you go two hours without saving and die, you have to make up that two hours to get back to where you were.



So now that all that "gameplay" stuff is out of the way let's move on to the main selling point in most peoples eyes, the story. Well, let me tell you, if this is the Japanese's attempt to tell a more Westernized story, and the main character is supposed to represent that, the Japanese are making fun of us. The main character, a Rush Sykes, is the dumbest kid I've ever played as. Stupid kid, as I'll refer to him from now on until he shows me an inkling of brains, is rushing off to find his sister as the quest begins. Shenanigans ensue, and you end up meeting the stereotypical metrosexual Marquis, an older scarred up general, a large muppet, Kermit the frog, and a furry, but the furry has four arms and swords, so he's pretty cool. To be honest, I just now am starting to get involved in the story, and I've played a good six to eight hours into it. It's equaled out to about half story, half learning the game mechanics, and it's slowly getting better than how it started out. There's still a lot that needs to get fleshed out, but so far the pacing has been less uneven than I'd expected. Except you know that guy in the red jacket, the "bad-ass" dude? Haven't seen him yet.

So, long story short, I'm still unsure about this game. It has the potential to be really good, but it also has the potential to be really bad. I'm willing to invest the time into it to see, but if you're already backed up by the recent onslaught, you may want to wait until after the holidays to play. Besides, who needs RPG's when there are zombies to kill? Well, besides me...