The Xbox 360’s first couple of years of being released had been a struggle, not just due to the hardware problems of the console but because after the first few console exclusives and general releases on the console, we were seeing a very familiar pattern of shooters. Developers knew that they would sell on the console, a low risk rate of losing money due to high development costs. More recently however - talking 2007 onwards - we’re seeing a sudden increase in JRPGs of the likes, in consecutive order a few of these are Blue Dragon, Eternal Sonata, Lost Odyssey and now a first release partnership with Square Enix. These are some of Microsoft’s attempts at aiming at a broader audience and – according to sales recently – it seems to be working.

And now, with the first title since the partnership with Microsoft, The Last Remnant sees itself first on Microsoft’s Xbox 360. Is Square Enix able to prove itself as a true multi-platform supporter, or is Square Enix really falling behind in the already well defined ‘next generation’ era?

The Last Remnant is a story of hide and seek, in more ways than one unfortunately. The whole ‘backdrop’ of the game, shall we say, is based around the perception of Rush Sykes, who’s the character you’ll be controlling for the entirety of the story. Right at the start your sister gets kidnapped for reasons unknown, and you get caught up in conflicts of the struggles between races, remnants and deceivers, just trying to look for your sister. The experience is a bit of a rollercoaster, as it starts in the middle of a vertical drop since there’s no real introduction, and you’re basically thrown straight into the deep end. Then things steady off a little when you’ve worked out that you’re not meant to know why your sister has been captured. All of a sudden, out of nowhere you’re thrown into a huge battle, stumbling for the controls and learning the battle system (it’s a good job it's turn based). Not knowing why you’re fighting, you’re loosely taught how to play the game. Loosely in a sense that you’re told how to select an enemy and initiate an attack, whilst everything else gets told to you after it’s been encountered. At this point the first impressions aren’t looking too great. About an hour or so of playing, you realise its worthless trying to understand what the context of this fantasy world is. You’re too busy caught up in the fairly immersive character quest line which in the end is all about the search for your sister... phew!

However, this is a computer game, not a movie so we do expect an engaging and playable experience as well as a cinematic one.

Gameplay:

To briefly elaborate on what I mentioned earlier, the way the controls are taught to you are somewhat unacceptable, I think they went about the whole ‘trial and error’ school of teaching, which is fine for someone who prefers not to read/watch the preliminary, but there really should be a choice. And the complexity of the combat system in this game, it needs to ease the average player in as the first thirty minutes so of playing are the critical moments for attention grabbing.

Like many JRPG titles, The Last Remnant is a turn based game. Like many turn-based game developers at the moment, they have tried to slip in a whole new twist to the gameplay mechanics; commonly, trying to be a mix of real time and turn based. The Last Remnant is arguably turn based with a sprinkle of real-time features.

So, as normal you’ll be thrown into a battle mode when encountering an enemy. An enemy will have a number of statuses when in ‘exploratory’ mode (That’s what I’ll call the non action sequences for now on), unaware, of your presence, alert and passive modes. When an enemy is alert it will chase you and try to gain the upper-hand by attacking first, if it successfully hits you outside of the battle mode, they get the first set of turns when the battle mode begins. Battle mode will issue you with a set of attack oriented choices depending on the unit and circumstances of the battle.It allows you to choose your enemy and acquire bonuses from attacking the flank. However, the big twist here is that you won’t be fighting as a ‘singular’ unit, but instead you'll be fighting as a group. Before issuing any battle sequences you get to set the groups(called “unions”, in game), these merge your defence, hit points and attack points together, so you all fight and die as a unit. This has its obvious annoyances, but its tactical benefits as you can set formations allowing an increase of defence/attack depending on the unit types you have in the formation.

That’s the basics of it, and it will probably take you 3-4 hours to work out what’s going on, and the length of the whole game to master. As a whole, the combat seems like a mess, and to be honest to the inexperienced, turn based strategist it looks like a mess when playing it. Unless you’re completely uninterested and unconvinced by the turn-based mechanics of fighting, there’s a real sense of satisfaction to the battle system here. For one, it’s a lot quicker than your usual turn based RPGs. As long as you focus upon the right enemies and use the correct attacks the battles can end within 2-5 minutes of play. That point might entirely be preference, but to be stuck in a battle for ten minutes or more after unintentionally running into an enemy, it can become more than a tad frustrating.

Later on in the game, you’ll be starting to take part in larger battles, and of course these battles in nature will be even longer. But to point out here, the units are quicker to defeat, making singular decisions more satisfying in the outcome, although it may also mean you’ll die quicker.

Graphics:

What they say is true, a great game does not rely on great graphics. Great graphics, depending on the game, helps to bring the feelings of immersion, and realism. Great graphics may emphasise the artistic direction, but other than that, making it a prime judgment would be especially shallow. This is something you’re going to have to think about when playing The Last Remnant, it’s not exceptionally awful to look at, but you can tell they were trying to be groundbreaking with the Unreal Engine.

This is the first game created in the formidable but overused Unreal Engine by Square Enix, and probably a premature release. I say this because The Last Remnant has some major optimisation issues, if you’ve ever played Mass Effect then you might be able to relate. All the high detail textures will load in-game after loading times, inconsistently as well. Sometimes it will be instant and other times it will take a good five seconds or so. There is a major fluctuation in framerate, and it only seems to hit a solid pace while in exploratory mode, there are frame rate issues during the in-game cut-scenes and similar issues in the battle sequences. A number of units in a fight have been so bad at keeping up with the rendering that the game has come to a complete stop while it loads from the disc. This is unacceptable, and it’s lucky yet only circumstantial that we now have the option of installation, but because the game is on two discs I’d like to know how much space this game will take up on your hard-drive? Maybe too much for some.

Once you’ve pushed aside the technical hiccups of this title then you’ll start to enjoy the brilliant art style this game tries to show off. The characters and style choices are not out of the norm, like many JRPG titles they’re very well presented. The real eye candy of the game stems from the cities and environments. This hit me truly when I first encountered the city of Celestrial, true monumental structures, and phenomenal city architecture. It's mind blowing art like this which makes you think Lord of the Rings * 2, it’s almost impossible to conceive, and the amount of effort that’s gone into all this, yet you only get to see it really for a marginal amount of time, it’s such a shame.

Sound:

One of the only sections of the game which I find hard to pick any major issues with. The musical score holds up well to the elemental and magical theme of the game. Without falling too far into the world of art, the music almost tells the story for you. This still isn’t sufficient enough for letting Square Enix get away with the lack of a contextual explanation of what this world’s about, but it’s very much appreciated. The soundtrack is extensive, at least extensive enough not to get on your nerves due to hearing the same song over and over, for a game this vast in scope, it’s pretty unbelievable when you think about it and very much neglected as a quality. Every song and musical piece fits the current situation, and the odd overstated bit of drama that you’ll witness will have an exaggerated piece of music to go with it. It doesn’t come across cheesy, as you know the game is meant to be like that, it’s completely suited.

Longevity:

With so much going on with this game, it’s hard to even remember trivial things like length, at least it seems trivial with heavily involved games such as this. You know a game is immersive when it finishes unexpectedly, the Last Remnant is one of those titles. There is one typical quality of many JRPG games, and that length is rarely a problem, unless you don’t like games which are heavily comprehensive in content.

Overall:

This game is a very regrettable game to rate, not because it’s an awful game, but because it’s one of those titles that just has most of the qualities of an overly satisfying experience, but let’s itself down due to the excessive technical issues, silly design flaws and an inaccessible interface. A game that puts all its effort into an artistic masterpiece and a captivating storyline, but exhausts itself on first impressions and performance. You're left with a feeling that if the game had an extra few months to iron out the inconsistencies then it might just had fulfilled its easily reachable potential.

Because of these problems, the audience that The Last Remnant could have pulled in on the Xbox 360 are now most likely lost solely because of its learning curve and reasons previously mentioned. I’d recommend to anyone who’s into RPG’s to at least try The Last Remnant via a rent, you’ll probably won’t be able to complete it, but it’s the only way you’ll find out whether it’s a game you can enjoy while turning a blind eye to obvious downfalls.