I picked it up last December.The Last Remnant is Square Enix's second entry to the XBOX 360 after Infinite Undiscovery (not counting the previous FFXI MMORPG). It is a clear sign that SE is trying to gain foothold in the RPG genre in the XBOX 360.
In my opinion, I feel that SE should just focus their efforts on one or two solid titles rather than just flooding us with sub-par titles. If they want to create a new title (other than the FF series), they should put all the effort into it.
The Last Remnant felt more lemon than remnant for the first few ten hours of gameplay. The story is weak from the start to the end although it gets a bit more interesting in the middle but the excitement immediately dies off at the end of disc 1. There are many forgetable sidequests that can have you spend over 100 hours on it but the ending is only less than 10 minutes.
The game also over-promised and under-delivered with the back-cover stating "control a party of up to 25 characters simultaneously" but only allows you to control up to 18 characters in the actual game. SE has managed to pull it off as almost every review site out there states that we can control 5x5 (25) characters. SE is also quick to ammend the mistake by changing the statement to 18 characters for some countries.
The game really pushes the Unreal Engine to its limits with visible constant slowdown. It is recommended that you install the game into the harddisk for better performance. If you have a 20GB HDD like me, then you will only have space for one disc at a time.
The battle system of the game is unlike the usual JRPG - some people call it innovative but I call it restrictive. Nevertheless, SE must be applauded for trying something new. You do not control individual units but Unions that comprises of a leader and multiple units. You issue commands to the Unions. One restriction in the battle system is that you cannot freely choose how you want your Unions to act but you have to choose one out of five random options given to you.
This is frustrating at times - for example, when you need to heal yourself during critical times and the option is not available for you. You also can't pick what skills or spells your units should use in battle but to resolve to what is given from the random options. Sometimes, you will receive multiple redundant Attack options.
There are quick-time events during battle to keep the game interactive but honestly, I fell asleep uncountable times playing this game. Each battle is long and we need to endure all the character posing and attacking in slow-motion. After a while, I just turned on the Automatic settings and let the battle play itself while I surf the internet or do other stuff.
When it comes to equipment, the game only allows you to equip your main character. For the other leaders, they will randomly ask if they can borrow the equipment from you (indefinitely). The lack of being able to equip the leaders with the right weapon is somewhat disappointing but it frees you from micro-managing each leader.
As mentioned earlier, the game has lots of sidequests, mostly forgetable and some are missable. The game ties its achievements to completing these sidequests and missing a sidequest would mean that you either abandon the progress or give up the achievement.
The game's achievement is rather inappropriate in my opinion. It doesn't reward you for your progress but instead rewards you for silly things such as dismantling 300 items or 500 monsters. You could be playing for tens of hours without a single achievement unlocked.
Despite all the negative points in the game, there is just something in The Last Remnant that could keep you going - once you managed to get over it's weaknesses and accept it as something out of the norm. There are some notable interesting things in the game such as being able to take weapons apart for components and create weapons or accessories from components collected from battle.
There are also no gold rewarded for each battle but instead you are given components dropped from the monsters you have defeated. Occasionally, you will be able to capture the monster in whole to sell for a higher price or choose to split it for rare components. The leaders will occasionally ask for components to upgrade their weapons.
The handling of sidequests is straight-forward where you will be teleported to the required site to complete the quest without having you to search for it in the whole game world.
The graphics of the game is good and you may find yourself stopping to admire the scenery in the cities. There are not many high-quality CG cutscenses despite the game packs two discs. All cutscenes are done using in-game models.
The game music scores are not bad either. You will have the battle music playing inside your head after awhile. The voice acting is ok with some awkward censorship like "Let's kick some A" and "Oh-Am-Gee, Dub-Ber-Liu-Tee-Aff".
The game doesn't use a level system but instead settles for a Battle Rank and stat-upgrade system. Each unit gets his or her stats upgraded individually in (tough) battles and the enemy difficulty scale to your Battle Rank. Nevertheless, the traditional grinding for higher level (stats) strategy is still applicable in this game.
The sum it all, despite some short-comings, The Last Remnant is good if you need a JRPG-fix on the XBOX 360. If you do not own the other JRPGs i.e. Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon or Infinite Undiscovery, I will suggest you get those first and get this as The Last Resort. Or if you are not in a hurry, you may want to wait for Star Ocean instead.
You can see screenshots of the game from Gamespot.
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