Last Remnant

Did anyone try this game? it looks like it was just released for PC, it has strategical battles and an "epic" JRPG story,,, no idea if it's any good....

There's a thread in the News forum.

http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6746

Good game - if you like turn based combat.

I love turnbased combat in most games, but I did not enjoy it in last Remnant. It sometimes felt like there was too much luck involved, and the battles quickly became repetitive.

It is, at its heart, a JRPG, and if you enjoy those then it is possible that you will enjoy this game. I'm not a big fan of JRPGs (there are exceptions, I did enjoy Xenogears), so take my view on the game for what it is.

Fnord said:

I'm not a big fan of JRPGs (there are exceptions, I did enjoy Xenogears), so take my view on the game for what it is.

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I played through Xenogears about 10 years ago. Epic game, but it was a bit long in the tooth towards the end. The story was a bit confusing at times as well.

I used to love JRPGs when I was younger though.. probably played at least 100 between the NES, SMS, SNES, and Genesis/Mega Drive.

Got it a few days ago in Steam's sale. Enjoying it so far. Battles look good (you select your options, and then watch the video of the battle as your actions unfold.
One thing I don't really like is that you only equip your character. You recruit other people, but they have their own equipment and upgrade on their own.
I like it that it's a jRPG, without jRPG's shortcomings (my main issues with jRPGs are: frequent random encounters, grind, only save in save-points... all of which are not present in this game so far).

JDR13 said:

I played through Xenogears about 10 years ago. Epic game, but it was a bit long in the tooth towards the end. The story was a bit confusing at times as well.

I used to love JRPGs when I was younger though.. probably played at least 100 between the NES, SMS, SNES, and Genesis/Mega Drive.

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Same here. I got the chance to play an imported copy of it back in 02, I think (the game was never officially released here), and I enjoyed more prominent SNES ones, when the SNES was the console to own, plus a handful of PS1 JRPGs, but no JRPG, apart from Xenogears, has left me with a lasting impression. The last remnant & tales of symphonia are the only two "modern" JRPGs that I have spent some time with, and while tales of symphonia was entertaining, in a rather lighthearted way, it is not a game that I really feel like playing again.

Xenogears was never properly finished, the later areas were rather unpolished, and the entire second disc felt like it was rushed to meet a release date (anyone who has played it will know what I'm talking about). A shame really, the story in Xenogears was really interesting, at least to those with a bit of knowledge about the major religions.

I tried the demo a few years back and I could not for the life of me get the control scheme to work properly with mouse and keyboard and this was before I owned a gamepad. I'm not sure if they've patched it since then, but I have very little patience with poor controls.

Merlock said:

I tried the demo a few years back and I could not for the life of me get the control scheme to work properly with mouse and keyboard and this was before I owned a gamepad. I'm not sure if they've patched it since then, but I have very little patience with poor controls.

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You can switch the control keys to PC-keyboard settings.

Merlock said:

I tried the demo a few years back and I could not for the life of me get the control scheme to work properly with mouse and keyboard and this was before I owned a gamepad. I'm not sure if they've patched it since then, but I have very little patience with poor controls.

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Before you even start the game, go to the options and I think in the 3rd or 4th tab you change the controller to keyboard, and it's perfectly playable (I'm playing with mouse/keyboard and not missing having a controller at all)

This game was created by Square Enix, so you can guess how it looks like.

Since everyone do know that I'm a fan of the J-RPG games, I can express some good and bad opinions to it.

I can't hide the fact that S-E is known for the shitty long loading times in each area.

The good part for it was the unique battle system of many groups with 1 to 5 people per group and the intense boss fights. I was almost done with the boss fight with one of the bosses in the dungeon just before the end(can't remember its name, but it was a huge one like an egg and threw some deadly attacks), which was almost 50-50 the possibillity to be defeated or to beat this thing.

The bad bart of it were the loading times, as I mentioned earlier, and the political war. The Last Remnant was copied the politican war from Final Fantasy XII. I liked the idea of the game to have supernatural phenomena and stuff, but not the political wars.

In comparison with PC and XBOX 360, the PC edition is better due of the frame-down from the X360, as I heard from another forums.

I'd grade it to 7.0/10.

Speaking of the controller, there's the option to switch the controller to keyboard/mouse. You need to go to the option menu at the main menu to switch it. That's also the bad part of it, because it was ported from X360 to PC.

Eh? Loading times for each area are, like, three seconds. Barely enough time to take a quick gulp from my cup. At least on the PC version. And yes, the PC version is far superior when it comes to gameplay.

For whatever reason, they worked hard on fixing up the gameplay but they barely did squat when porting the controls. They must have spent weeks if not months rebalancing the game yet they couldn't be bothered to let the mouse work on the main menu? Weird.

The game is definitely NOT into grinding. In fact, grinding will gimp you pretty bad and can even get you to a point where you don't really have any hope of winning. Completionists need not worry but, if you think you're going to make the game easy by running around for two days in one of the early dungeons, think again.

The combat is actually pretty deep. It may look like there's a lot of luck involved but this is one of those "luck favors the warrior" situations. Once you understand the combat system, you can manipulate what will happen in these battles quite a bit. Be sure to switch the display so it shows what each character will be trying to do and select different targets to help you work on the skills you want to improve.

Anyway, I posted a newbies guide up on Steam. Some of what I said wasn't accurate but other posters corrected me in follow-up posts.

Zloth said:

The game is definitely NOT into grinding. In fact, grinding will gimp you pretty bad and can even get you to a point where you don't really have any hope of winning. Completionists need not worry but, if you think you're going to make the game easy by running around for two days in one of the early dungeons, think again.

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How does the game gimp you if you grind? Is there some form of level-scaling involved? I'm just curious, as I've never heard of grinding gimping a party before.

The Last Remnant is build with intelligent level scaling.

HiddenX said:

The Last Remnant is build with intelligent level scaling.

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And what is intelligent level scaling, as opposed to other forms of level-scaling? I'm not familiar with Last Remnant.

Nerevarine said:

And what is intelligent level scaling, as opposed to other forms of level-scaling? I'm not familiar with Last Remnant.

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Intelligent level scaling as in - oh, you decided to do all the side quests, well I hope you didn't want to kill these bosses near the end of the game.

I'm lvl 82 right now - and I'm still having fun ...

I enjoyed the game quite a bit when it came out several years ago. Its quite winnable just by playing through normally. To get the really good stuff though you have grind in very specific ways. And you can gimp yourself pretty badly by grinding without any sort of plan. You really are better off not grind in this game which is refreshing in a jrpg.

You do have to run certain dungeons fighting certain mobs to get the best drops. To learn abilities like Whiteout and Blackhole/Galaxy for your captains you have to really spend time doing it. Again though there is no need to do that generally though unless you want to do all of the optional content.

Nerevarine said:

How does the game gimp you if you grind? Is there some form of level-scaling involved? I'm just curious, as I've never heard of grinding gimping a party before.

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The game is similar to the Elder Scrolls series in that each character has a set of skills and those improve with use. It also has an overall level for your party, which is what determines how hard the enemies are. Unlike Elder Scrolls, though, the two are independent. I'm not exactly sure of the mechanics but I think the gimping from grinding problem happens because grinding will result in you winning lots of battles very quickly, which means several of your party members will not get to act at all before the battle is done - so the party's level goes up while the skills stay the same.

The game gives you a nifty way to make battles harder, by the way. Rush has a "time compression" ability which slows enemies down for a short time. You can then run between them and link them in to a battle. This mechanic allows you to choose how many enemies you'll be fighting in the battle. More enemies means more party members will get to use their skills, which means more skill improvement. (Rewards are better, too.) Of course, if you get too many enemies at once, you get beaten. I found that part of the game to be really fun.

I think Figment might be alluding to the guild rare monster quests. Those definitely are a pain. Every time you enter a dungeon, it will randomly pick one of the dungeon's rare monsters to put in. The guilds of the game will reward you if you defeat certain rare monsters and sometimes those rewards are pretty important. Important enough that I would go in to the dungeon and, if I didn't see the rare monster where it was supposed to be, I would exit the dungeon (or reload) and enter the dungeon again. I had to do that over a dozen times in one case before the so & so popped up! I don't know if you would call that grinding but it was definitely NOT fun.

Zloth said:

The game is similar to the Elder Scrolls series in that each character has a set of skills and those improve with use. It also has an overall level for your party, which is what determines how hard the enemies are. Unlike Elder Scrolls, though, the two are independent. I'm not exactly sure of the mechanics but I think the gimping from grinding problem happens because grinding will result in you winning lots of battles very quickly, which means several of your party members will not get to act at all before the battle is done - so the party's level goes up while the skills stay the same.

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Ok, that makes sense now. Thanks for the explanation Zloth. I don't like level-scaling, but I can't fairly judge whether this system is a good idea or not since I haven't played the game yet.