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Strategy games as of late for the consoles have been rather lacking. After recent yawns such as “Infinite Undiscovery” and “Tales of Vesperia,” a new game has entered the arena. Developed by Square Enix, “The Last Remnant” takes forms of strategy and role-playing genres and meshes them into one. While the story is a bit, okay it leaves a lot to be desired, the strategy and tactics part of it work just fine.
Taking control of Rush, the game’s main character, players are immediately forced into battle for the first time. You are in charge of multiple groups of units, better known as unions, and have options to attack. Each has its own benefits as well as disadvantages, but at this early stage in the game it matters not what you do.
After a simple battle, more of the story of revealed. Rush is looking for his sister who was taken from him by a flying witch-like creature. He managed to survive after being attacked by a talisman that activated a mysterious power which killed everything around him. His sister is gone, and he makes out for an adventure to find her.
Rush manages to enlist the help of a local king, David, to aid him in his journey. Gamers are taken to various levels around the town to teach them about the basics, including a journey to a pub.
The pub is the centralized focus of the game, as it lets you find quests and people who need help with something. Sometimes it’s a trip to another town to deliver a letter or to kill a certain monster. You also gain rewards for successfully completing them, which range from gold to rare items. Sadly though the game informs you that it’s possible for characters to join your union, but after doing roughly thirty quests only one person joined.
Players are then sent on various trips throughout the lands to find out more information about where Rush’s sister went, who kidnapped her, and more of a story about something known as a remnant which wasn’t found out after about 15 hours of game play.
One of the game’s strong points is the fact that it strongly pushes the strategy aspect, much different than past role-playing games for consoles. Gone are the days where you can randomly hit buttons or use attacks and still win every fight without getting harmed.
You are given the option of having a maximum number of five people in a group, and a maximum number of stronger characters known as leaders to occupy them. Later in the game players can choose to have soldiers join the group at their peril to fill the last few slots.
For each character that joins, his health adds to the cumulative total of the group as well as their stats, so in essence you can create a fairly strong group right off the bat. Right? Wrong. The game punishes players by giving you fairly weak leaders at the start, and limits how many people you can have at one time.
At the very start, you are only allowed a paltry four leaders at once in all your unions, of which you can only have three and a maximum number of soldiers at ten. For a decent portion of the game, you are restricted to this which is a giant shame. Your team will most likely consist of three unions with three people in it total. Why give players the option to create teams but then punish people?
The battle system is also a breath of fresh air, as it implies more strategy than one might assume at first glance. Players are thrust onto a battle field when initiating a fight, and the unions square off against other unions. If you choose to fight a union a mile away, you can get intercepted. That is bad, because the enemy has blocked you from advancing and now attacks you first and can damage you more than if you attacked them normally.
This allows players to strategize which units to attack, as the closest is usually the best and you risk little by moving only a little bit. But on a positive note you can intercept enemies as well. The more unions is usually the best, as sometimes you can fight more than seven enemies at once, which becomes cumbersome on the battle field.
Difficulty wise, “The Last Remnant” is a mixed bag. For the first few boss fights, the game is fairly simple. However there is one battle that is near impossible to win unless it’s by a sheer force of luck.
The fight consists of your team versus a boss that is hilariously weak but has two additional unions that have enemies that have ten times the health you do and have insane abilities. They have the ability to curse you, which can either kill you outright or stop you from attacking all together. There’s also no way to prevent this, as the game has set patterns for what the two unions do. After nearly four hours of trying to beat the boss, I was forced to literally suicide two unions and buff up one main union to kill the lead union and end the battle.
Oddly enough though, after that fight there are only a few more fights that cause trouble. The next boss battles are a joke compared to the previously mentioned fight, as they lasted no more than two turns against my group.
In closing....
“The Last Remnant” isn’t for everyone, but anyone who is a fan of strategy games should pick it up. The game has a lot of extra stuff to tackle even though the story is confusing and downright awful. This is a different type of role-playing game, and should be taken as such. Anyone weary of a purchase should wait for the inevitable price drop in a few months.
Taking control of Rush, the game’s main character, players are immediately forced into battle for the first time. You are in charge of multiple groups of units, better known as unions, and have options to attack. Each has its own benefits as well as disadvantages, but at this early stage in the game it matters not what you do.
After a simple battle, more of the story of revealed. Rush is looking for his sister who was taken from him by a flying witch-like creature. He managed to survive after being attacked by a talisman that activated a mysterious power which killed everything around him. His sister is gone, and he makes out for an adventure to find her.
Rush manages to enlist the help of a local king, David, to aid him in his journey. Gamers are taken to various levels around the town to teach them about the basics, including a journey to a pub.
The pub is the centralized focus of the game, as it lets you find quests and people who need help with something. Sometimes it’s a trip to another town to deliver a letter or to kill a certain monster. You also gain rewards for successfully completing them, which range from gold to rare items. Sadly though the game informs you that it’s possible for characters to join your union, but after doing roughly thirty quests only one person joined.
Players are then sent on various trips throughout the lands to find out more information about where Rush’s sister went, who kidnapped her, and more of a story about something known as a remnant which wasn’t found out after about 15 hours of game play.
One of the game’s strong points is the fact that it strongly pushes the strategy aspect, much different than past role-playing games for consoles. Gone are the days where you can randomly hit buttons or use attacks and still win every fight without getting harmed.
You are given the option of having a maximum number of five people in a group, and a maximum number of stronger characters known as leaders to occupy them. Later in the game players can choose to have soldiers join the group at their peril to fill the last few slots.
For each character that joins, his health adds to the cumulative total of the group as well as their stats, so in essence you can create a fairly strong group right off the bat. Right? Wrong. The game punishes players by giving you fairly weak leaders at the start, and limits how many people you can have at one time.
At the very start, you are only allowed a paltry four leaders at once in all your unions, of which you can only have three and a maximum number of soldiers at ten. For a decent portion of the game, you are restricted to this which is a giant shame. Your team will most likely consist of three unions with three people in it total. Why give players the option to create teams but then punish people?
The battle system is also a breath of fresh air, as it implies more strategy than one might assume at first glance. Players are thrust onto a battle field when initiating a fight, and the unions square off against other unions. If you choose to fight a union a mile away, you can get intercepted. That is bad, because the enemy has blocked you from advancing and now attacks you first and can damage you more than if you attacked them normally.
This allows players to strategize which units to attack, as the closest is usually the best and you risk little by moving only a little bit. But on a positive note you can intercept enemies as well. The more unions is usually the best, as sometimes you can fight more than seven enemies at once, which becomes cumbersome on the battle field.
Difficulty wise, “The Last Remnant” is a mixed bag. For the first few boss fights, the game is fairly simple. However there is one battle that is near impossible to win unless it’s by a sheer force of luck.
The fight consists of your team versus a boss that is hilariously weak but has two additional unions that have enemies that have ten times the health you do and have insane abilities. They have the ability to curse you, which can either kill you outright or stop you from attacking all together. There’s also no way to prevent this, as the game has set patterns for what the two unions do. After nearly four hours of trying to beat the boss, I was forced to literally suicide two unions and buff up one main union to kill the lead union and end the battle.
Oddly enough though, after that fight there are only a few more fights that cause trouble. The next boss battles are a joke compared to the previously mentioned fight, as they lasted no more than two turns against my group.
In closing....
“The Last Remnant” isn’t for everyone, but anyone who is a fan of strategy games should pick it up. The game has a lot of extra stuff to tackle even though the story is confusing and downright awful. This is a different type of role-playing game, and should be taken as such. Anyone weary of a purchase should wait for the inevitable price drop in a few months.
