The Last Remnant Review (Xbox 360)

If there’s one thing to call the Last Remnant, it’s the game that could have been. Or maybe the game that almost was. Hey, why not the game that never should have been, because it just isn’t.

Take arguably the best Publisher of RPG games, Square Enix, mix it with a rock solid game engine, the Unreal Engine 3, make it a robust 2 disc game and you should have the recipe for one awesome RPG.

Unfortunately, that just wasn’t the case for the Last Remnant. From the moment you begin playing the Last Remnant you’ll suffer through severe technical problems that will make you wish you had never bought the title. This is very sad, since underneath the technical overhead, there actually would have been a fun game with a lot of prospect.

Typical RPGs tend to be light on the graphics side during game play, before going all out for their cut scenes. It creates the movie style feeling we’ve come to love in this genre of games. But the cut scenes in The Last Remnant are anything but spectacular. The animations are clunky at best. Most of the characters move like robots, walking as though they’re suffering from a bad case of diarrhea. Of course, if the animation is bad in ‘what should’ be the most the most tightly animated portion of the game, then the rest of the game will no doubt suffer the same issues. And, it does.

Despite having the Unreal engine, The Last Remnant has a remarkably bad frame rate. It’s hard to tell if this was because the engine is just not suited for this type of game or if the developers just didn’t read through their software development kit documentation. As the battles progress in difficulty, and more characters appear, you’ll experience anything from lag to just missing textures on your characters faces. It becomes old very quickly.

One last thing to point out on the graphics side is that the text is unbearably small – especially in the battle scenes. You’ll find yourself straining to figure out what the heck is going on, as different messages and options appear during the battle phase. Plan on saving your game to the Xbox live Hard drive in order to get a tolerable experience.

The story of the Last Remnant is your typical damsel in distress tale. Rush’s sister has been kidnapped, and it sends him on a long quest to save her. Of course a single kidnapping could never be the full story in any RPG. Throughout the 2-disc adventure, you’ll find yourself intertwined in an intense political plot, while collecting artifacts known as remnants to power you up.

The main character, Rush, is a boring character at best, lacking any real personality. Luckily, the game’s focus will actually shift to the Conquerer, who is the villain of this story. The story has merit, but after 50 plus hours of gameplay you will find yourself unsatisfied. There are a lot of good ideas thrown together, but none of them really stand out to make this story overwhelmingly memorable. For instance, the best parts of the story come from side missions you’ll find in the local tavern/pub.

Since we’re on the subject of local pubs. It’s only fair to mention that the game lacks any real depth within individual towns. You’ll get the feeling that there aren’t really places to explore, just another town with its own pub and guild for hiring troops and unit leaders. Also, many NPC’s don’t add much to the game. It would be cool to hear what the locals are thinking about the government and remnants as you walk by. But, several NPCs are just floating around on the board and you will not be able to talk to them.

The battle system in The Last Remnant is based around a broader command system than you’re used to. Instead of controlling individual characters, you’ll control units of fighters. This means you will have to organize each unit by leader, classification and formation. At first this may seem annoying. You can’t control individual characters, so they just act on their own depending on whether you’ve asked them to heal, attack, or use magic. As the battles get bigger, this design becomes more relevant. You serve more as a general over a dozen or so units. Just plan your day around a single battle lasting an hour or two.

On a positive note, once a battle is over, all of your stats are replenished. So you don’t have to worry about going all out using up your AP (ability points). Also, you can save almost anywhere in the game which negates the archaic RPG save point “feature.”

A major downside to this title is the amount of load screens you’ll have to deal with. Any time you go from one action, location or battle to the next – you will have to suffer through another load screen. You can imagine this becoming more than a hassle if you plan on spending the full 50 or more hours tunneling through this title.

On the achievement side, there are pretty much only three big achievements for 160-200 gamer points, which will tick off most gamers who like that feeling of accomplishment. Bear in mind you won’t know what those are by looking at your Xbox dashboard. The descriptions of the achievements are vague at best.

On an overall positive note, the sound is absolutely stellar. The music score is epic, and a lot of attention was paid to making sure the users were engrossed in The Last Remnant through sound. Too bad, this attention to detail wasn’t adhered to on the game development side.

Overall The Last Remnant, could have been an excellent title had it sat through a year or two more of development. Unfortunately, in a get to market first environment the title will be forgotten in the annals of RPG history.