Game: The Last Remnant
Published by: Square-Enix
Developed by: Square-Enix
Formats: Xbox360 Played: Xbox360

Its been a while since I reviewed any games and there are two reasons for this, the first is that I have gone through my yearly phase of not feeling like playing any games at all and secondly I kept playing this game for 60Hours plus.
The Last Remnant is another great RPG from Square-Enix. Instead of going through the story I thought I would just focus on the battle system and some other points of interest.

The battle system works different from previous RPG’s and you only have to only ever worry about equipping one character but you get lots!
Instead of having a lot of characters and only being able to equip 3-4 of them at a time in this game you have up to about 25 characters which you can change around all the time and play with around 15 of them in separate parties but all onscreen.
You can have up to 5 in one group but you must have 1 leader and the rest can be soldiers which you can pick up in some of the towns. Leaders can be bought from Guilds which are dotted around in most of the towns and later on there are special Guilds. As you progress through the story you equip more and more characters and what makes this game different is that every battle is more like a war then facing random enemies.
For Example I have 3 teams of 4 and 1 team of 3. I have 2 leaders in teams A and B and one each in the other teams. When you enter a battle you get options for each team rather then any individual characters although some special attacks will only require one of your leaders in that team and when selected you will know that only that character will use it.
As you walk along the maps you can see all the enemies on the screen and you can draw them in with a touch of a button. If you draw in an enemy and defeat it your chain will go up so long as you are in the same area and every enemy you defeat you have attacked first. If you don’t draw in enemies you could be attacked first, this gives them the advantage and you lose your chain. Chains are good for gaining more money and better items at the end of each battle. You can also run past enemies by slowing down time but this can only be used for a limited period of time.
There are lots of bosses dotted around each level and also there are bigger bosses in the story and side quests.
Side quests are great for gaining money, equipment and gaining EXP but the Enemies in the story will also gain EXP as you do so this is unnecessary if you just want to play through the story.
The Towns are not as good as Final Fantasy towns and all shops can be found in the main street. Each town has separate areas you have to visit through a map screen featuring pubs, guilds, shops, a castle or palace and other places of interest or caves.
The map is pretty big and the game is played over two disks but it’s the side quests that will clock hours and not so much the story. I have played through doing all the side quests so I can not tell you how quick it would be to just go through the story on its own but it is worth levelling up to obtain better weapons, more money and EXP.
The bosses seem to be easier in the side quests then the ones in the story although I have read that because I levelled up so much the Bosses in the story have also levelled up gaining new and more powerful moves. I have yet to finish this game and currently on the final boss who can kick my ass with one super move which destroys all my characters. You will find that there is a lot of randomness in this game and that is what brings my score down on this game. Sometimes you ask the game to heal your characters and they will attack first then heal or you will ask them to bring your characters back to life but you can’t tell them which ones to bring back so they might bring back the ones you didn’t want. Even more annoying is later you can use a summon but when the summon dies it is still on screen so you might bring it back instead of your own team and the same goes for healing and this can cost you time and cant be avoided.

There are also some bosses that will take control of your party, this can be annoying as your possessed party can take you out with one hit and what’s more annoying is that sometimes it will not give you the option to bring them back which makes it hard to continue.

All in all though the graphics are stunning, the story is above average and the gameplay when it works in your favour works very well. I will say one more bad point and that is sometimes you might have to go through lots and lots of enemies and then face a boss (sometimes two one after another) and it wont give you an option to save which means if you lose you might have to go through 30mins-1hour of gameplay again and maybe again!

7/10