6 months ago
When gamers think of platforms to play their Japanese role playing games (JRPGs) it is of little surpise that the PC isn't high on anybody's list. Publisher Square-Enix has released their JRPG title The Last Remnant for computer as well as home console and it's a nice little nugget for the often ignored platform for the genre.
The Last Remnant tells the story of Rush Sykes, the son of a pair of important researchers who are studying mystical and powerful artifacts known as remnants. In the backstory, Rush's younger sister Irina gets kidnapped by a big winged baddy leaving the youth to quest after her in hopes of rescuing her from her captors. The seemingly fluid storyline moves away from the rescue mission premice as its main theme as a character named the Conqueror emerges. The Conqueror has the unique ability to command any remnant and, after an uneasy peace, a war of both politics and of arms envelopes the land.
As a leading man in an epic JRPG such as this, Rush is lacking in appeal. Thankfully Square gave him plenty of supporting characters; several of them more likeable and interesting that the youth. The same could be said for the voice acting: the supporting cast seems to have that stregnth over Rush as well.
Most RPGs, whether Asian or Western, typically rely on the protagonist as the main vessle for the story and focus of the game. Thankfully, The Last Remnant does not do this. While this is how it is at the beginning of the game, the focus migrates to the much more interesting Conqueror and his deep, dark secrets. Having a character as raveled up as The Conqueror makes for an interesting and enjoyable 60+ hours of gameplay that Rush couldn't achieve at his best. Outside of the main storyline are a number of side quests that take players to various locations and provide some sub-storyline elements that add to the experience.
Visually The Last Remnant looks pretty good, though it could be much better had the computer the game was tested on had a better graphics card (The PC used has a 512MB nVidia card). Even thoug the machine's graphical processing power was somewhat limited, most everything still looked pretty good. Animations were mostly smooth and most all of the textures looked good. Shadowing effects are a bit of a system drain and don't look so good when they're dumbed-down, but not having them would take away from the visual experience. Every one of the environments that the game takes place in were all excellently designed whether it be one of the very impressive cities or a dark, cold cave. While PC games with an extreme eye for precice detail might make a complaint here, there is little wrong in the graphics department.
The same could be said for the gameplay had it not been for the battle system. It's different, and just different enouh that it's hard to tell if it's likable or not. It is rather deep and intricate, but it's also combersome and clunky at times. Instead of controlling individual party members throught a skirmish gamers control entire units of both soldiers and leaders (called in-game as unions) and give that union general orders as a whole. Combat is turn-based as no actions take place until after the battle menu system has been gone through and actions chosen. Once initiated, the battle will auto-play until the next round where the entire ordeal is done all over again. While characters/unions have hit points to mind, the real win-or-loss condition is a party's morale. Morale plays like a game of tug-of-war whereas the more morale a union has over its opponent, the better that union will perform. It takes a while to get used to and some gamers may never quite get the grasp of it.
Players have a couple of options when it comes to controls for The Last Remnant. By default, the keyboard and mouse are chosen with preset (but changable) hotkeys for most actions. The other two options are an Xbox360 controler (via USB) and a generic gamepad. After trying the game using the default keyboard setup with little satisfaction, the third generic gamepad option was selected which made things much more comfortable.
One final bright spot for this title is the audio presentation. As mentioned earlier, Rush doesn't have the strongest voice-acting performace but most every other voiced character picks up the slack. The game's script, while ackward at times, is more good than bad and the soundtrack is up to the very high standards that Square has been holding itself up to since the days of Final Fantasy IV and Chrono Trigger.
For fans of Square-Enix's products or just JRPGs in general, The Last Remnant comes highly recommended. Those gamers should just make sure that their computer is up to the task of running the game with any sense of quality.
Final Game Guys Grade: B
The Last Remnant is rated "M for Mature" by the ESRB.
For a system comparison, see the system specs for the PC used for this review below compared to the minimum system requirements for this title.
Minimum System Requirements: AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+ or
Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 (2GHz) CPU, NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT 256MB graphics card, 1536MB RAM, and Windows XP SP2 / Windows Vista SP1.
Game Guys PC used for review: Intel Core 2 Duo E4700 (2.6GHz) CPU, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 512MB graphics card, 4096MB RAM, and Windows XP SP3.
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