Installing the game via the NXE helps matters a bit, but even without loading off of the disc Last Remnant suffers from a myriad of issues in the engine department. Installs do cut down the length of load times rather dramatically, though, which makes the game much more playable. Still, with the occasional freaky looking model, messed up animation, and chugging on-screen displays, I can’t help but think Square would have been better off waiting a few more months to release the game so that they could optimize it a bit better.

Square Enix’s other new attempt, the unique combat, worked out slightly better but it still has its issues. Rather than focus on one party of characters and cycle between them attacking, defending, using items, or what have you, the game instead groups people into unions, and you command each union rather than each unit. At max, you can control five unions with five characters each, giving you a grand total of 25 on the battlefield.

Unfortunately, in a likely attempt to make battles not take an hour each, the level of control given is rather limited. Instead of picking who does what with specific detail, you give each union a generic command like “attack” or “heal” and each individual in the union decides what to do. Sometimes it works out great; other times it doesn’t. It makes partaking in battles less involving, and in a combat-heavy game like Last Remnant that’s not a good thing at all.

If there’s one thing I love about the combat, it’s that you can string together enemy encounters into one massive, “Let’s just get this out of the way now!” fight. Like other recent RPGs, in this game there are no random encounters. You see a guy on the map, you touch him, and you fight. By holding a button, though, you can touch one guy, then another, then another, then another, and then fight them all on one battlefield. Later on in the game as your characters improve you can face dozens (or hundreds) of enemies at a time, and the more you string together the greater your reward. Combining into large groups does give the game more of an urgent and hands-on feel in combat, because even your limited strategy choices will play a large role in the outcome.

Thankfully, while the game struggles in the graphics department and doesn’t quite pull off what it hoped to in terms of combat, the sound is just as good as you’d expect from the famed developer. Music in the game is sweeping and fits the mood, and while the voice acting has some black spots on it, overall it’s a very believable cast right at home with the best of Square’s epics.

So where does The Last Remnant stand compared to other RPGs this gen? It’s hard to say. On one hand, the story and characters mostly appeal to the traditional JRPG gamer. On the other, the combat and general aesthetics are aimed toward a more worldwide/Western gamer and rather than focus on making one kind of game and making it good (the usual Square Enix way), the developers instead tried too hard to make it appeal to two widely different audiences.

A few changes to combat, more time spent working with Unreal Engine 3, and a few tweaks to the story would have made Last Remnant the game I was looking forward to when it was revealed. Instead, thanks to the technical issues and lackluster “new and innovative combat,” we have a game that doesn’t live up to the recent titles in either market.

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