The Last Remnant Review

By Keza MacDonald Published 22 November, 2008

Dregs on a bit.

Version tested: Xbox 360

Disappointingly for a game so vocal about throwing JRPG conventions out of the window, The Last Remnant suffers from one of the classic problems of the genre: an extremely slow start, made even slower by an astounding amount of loading. It's a good four hours before you're allowed access to anything interesting like combat and equipment customisation, and in the meantime you'll spend a lot of time staring at the five-to-seven-second splash loading screen that pops up every single time you start a fight, finish a fight, go into and out of buildings, encounter a cut-scene or walk more than twenty paces in a town. Even after so much loading, the game suffers from basic technical problems like shocking texture pop-in and juddering frame-rate, even in the tutorial battles.

One 12GB hard-disk install later and things have improved, but it's far from perfect. Load times are down to two or three seconds, and the in-battle slowdown restricted to conflicts of more than about thirty combatants. But the texture pop-in is still cringeworthily noticeable, the camera still goes mental in buildings to the extent that you have to spend five seconds turning it around before you can leave through the door that you're standing right in front of, and the old-fashioned animation and tearing in cut-scenes is still a definite problem. In a game where you spend as much time just watching as you do in Last Remnant, these presentation problems strip the sheen from what should rightfully be a rich spectacle, elevating them from mildly irritating to a crushing disappointment.

It's certainly not all bad news on the presentation side, however. The Last Remnant's visual design is generally very good, with characters whose distinctive appearance and facial expressiveness render them far more appealing than their serene, airbrushed counterparts elsewhere in the genre. The story and voice acting hold your attention, although as usual the English voice-overs aren't quite up to the standard of the Japanese - particularly in the case of main character Rush Sykes and the Marquis of Athlum (an American doing an English voice that veers between cockney and aristocrat in an amusing way, according to Friend of Eurogamer Simon Parkin).

'The Last Remnant' Screenshot 1

We still don't know why all Squenix RPGs use random German location names.

Rush is also incessantly energetic, insisting on calling Marquis David 'Dave' within ten minutes of meeting him. Meanwhile, the characters' general battle cries are slightly inane, although the Japanese ("We're FIGHTING these guys!", "I'm OK!") is marginally less annoying than the English ("Let's kick some A!"). Typically for Square-Enix, though, the high standard of direction and general production makes the game's important cut-scenes worth looking forward to regardless. There are moments - usually during the cut-scenes or wandering around in an impressive outdoor area - when the game looks quite beautiful, but unfortunately it almost always goes sharply downhill as soon as anything taxing starts happening on-screen.

It's a massive shame, because after the first seven or eight hours the combat really opens up into something nuanced and compelling. It's turn-based, but instead of controlling individuals you direct an army of anywhere between about five and thirty characters, organised into separate 'unions' or five or so, which share communal action- and hit-points. Give a union an order - all-out attack, watch yourselves, use a fighting or magic skill - and everyone within that unit executes that command to the best of their abilities. You spend most of the battle watching things play out in a cinematic series of animations, the camera swooping between unions and enemies as the battle runs its course.

'The Last Remnant' Screenshot 2

Don't be afraid of all the words. This menu is actually where you'll be having most of your fun.

Give a union the 'Fighting Arts' command, for instance, and the union leader - usually a main character - performs a special move, whilst others perform normal attacks. Command 'Watch yourselves', and perhaps two characters will attack whilst others use healing spells or items. You find yourself playing a role halfway between combatant and strategist, issuing general commands to the unions and occasionally jumping in with a quick-time button-press to achieve a critical hit or block.

At first you feel completely out of control, especially when you're accompanied by 'guest' unions who operate entirely under their own steam, but the longer you play, the more options and customisation possibilities arise. As soon as you have a reasonable selection of characters under your control, playing around with union leaders and formations affects everything from hit-points to available commands, and has a huge impact on the battles themselves, especially boss fights.

The union concept works extremely well, although more fastidious players will take issue with how little control you have over specific actions. For instance, to prevent magic users from getting killed instantly as soon as anything decides to attack them you just place them in a union with stronger units. You have to keep positioning in mind - getting too close to enemy units puts your own union in 'lockdown', meaning that they cannot attack any other union, and you have to be careful not to leave your unions open to attacks from the side or behind through careless commands.

As for equipment, you only have control over main character Rush's kit - every other union leader or character you recruit takes care of things themselves, never troubling you for more than an occasional share of the materials that you win from battles. Rather than levelling up, you strengthen unions through their actions; use a lot of Mystic Arts and they'll become more powerful, attack all the time and their strength will go up, use plenty of healing spells and those will become more effective. Once you get over the perceived lack of control, it's liberating. You're left to think about strategy rather than puzzling over the minutiae of equipment and specific spells in menus.

Although it's worryingly easy to breeze through the early part of the game by spamming Mystic Arts, especially as everyone is automatically fully healed after each fight, the battles get an awful lot harder very quickly. At first this takes you by surprise, and given that the game has no save points, it's important to remember to save before and after important battles to leave room for strategic experimentation. Being able to save anywhere is hugely useful, but the absence of save points contributes to a general lack of structure that characterises the game outside of the main battles.

'The Last Remnant' Screenshot 3

All that blurring can make you a bit motion sick. The slowdown doesn't help.

Here, The Last Remnant is decidedly lacklustre. The pacing is all over the place, and the quest design is awkward. You find yourself splitting your time between the story and random tasks from strangers in town pubs in order to buff your unions in preparation for a dungeon, but there's nothing approaching a quest log; once you've taken up a task, the game forces you to do it, even going so far as to teleport you to the appropriate location.

Several times, we encountered quests that consisted of nothing more than talking to a character for a while, being teleported to the appropriate place, walking a few steps in a particular direction, watching a cut-scene or fighting a battle, and then being teleported back. It breaks the flow and feels artificial. Wandering around towns in general is completely arbitrary - there's nothing organic about the way that the game progresses, and we often found ourselves wishing we could pick quests or acquire equipment through menus, a la Fire Emblem, so that we could spend more time fighting.

'The Last Remnant' Screenshot 4

Heroic Ramparts! LOOP CHANCE! (Nobody knows what this means.)

The dungeons, too, often go on for far too long, although the absence of random battles does rather alleviate that irritation. Sadly it still feels like a grinding slog a lot of the time, picking your way through easy fights, pointless side-quests and wandering around for a few hours in-between every excellent boss fight or hour of exciting story exposition.

The longer we've spent with The Last Remnant, the more we find ourselves wishing that it were a pure strategy RPG, because the more time you invest, the more interesting the battle system becomes - and, as a consequence, the more you begin to resent everything that prevents you enjoying it. It's a unique and compelling combat system buried beneath choppy pacing, too much wandering around, disappointing presentation problems and an awful lot of loading, and whether that's worth accepting depends largely on your tolerance or affection for long-winded self-indulgence, and whether you think 40 quid is a reasonable amount to pay for one superb idea cushioned by hours of grinding mediocrity.

6 / 10

Read the Eurogamer.net scoring policy
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About Keza MacDonald

Read more articles from Keza by visiting the Keza MacDonald archive page.

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Comments (79) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • smugla #1 3 years ago

    ok

  • kingofbergamo #2 3 years ago

    HA!!! I m the first one!! ;)

  • kingofbergamo #3 3 years ago

    lol shit!! he beat me by 17s!! u tit!!

  • SuperBas #4 3 years ago

    No wonder JRPG's don't do well on the 360 if all that's released is 6/10 material.

  • cardigait #5 3 years ago

    ouch! after infinite undiscovery, 2nd x360 sad jrpg in a row.
    luckily i'm still engaged with Lost Odyssey but i can't see many good alternatives after that...
    maybe Tales of Vesperia..

  • MrChuckles #6 3 years ago

    i expect i'll pick up all of them in the budget bin. No full price sale though.

  • Fernando #7 3 years ago

    wheres tales of vesperia namco ?:(

  • eisenhorn666 #8 3 years ago

    Well looks like square are just doing this so we all go wow when final fantasy comes out with a 9or 10/10. Its just a soften you up tactic, shame really was looking forward to this but FF13 will really be worth the wait (I hope)

  • dudefella #9 3 years ago

    Very disappointing, having looked forward to both Infinite Undiscovery and this with pretty high hopes. Oh well, there's always Star Ocean 4 to look forward to...

  • tomkuryakin #10 3 years ago

    This is a shame; I was hoping that this was going to be good. JRPGs seem to have lost their way recently. Lost Odyssey is the only one out currently that I would really like to play. Perhaps White Knight Chronicles will be as good as Level 5's games usually are? I don't hold out much hope for FFXIII because I got very bored of FFXII in the end.

    Still, at least Fire Emblem DS is out in less than two weeks.

  • Steroyd #11 3 years ago

    Steroyd weeps at the state of JRPG's this generation. :(

    Oh and I forgot to add... Famitsu scored it a thirty eight LOOOOOOOOL.
    Edited by 1 at 22/11/08 @ 11:53

  • Mind_Open #12 3 years ago

    Well.......Star Ocean then

  • Triggerhappytel #13 3 years ago

    Anyone else agree with me that the last genuinely decent internally-developed console RPG Squeenix made was Kingdom Hearts?

    I didn't like Kingdom Hearts 2 and found FFXII dull and vapid. They really seemed to have dropped the ball recently.

  • miiiguel #14 3 years ago

    "wheres tales of vesperia namco ?"
    Right here! ta!

    Anyways, can EG play RPGs? that's the question...

  • Steroyd #15 3 years ago

    Anyone else agree with me that the last genuinely decent internally-developed console RPG Squeenix made was Kingdom Hearts?

    I thought FFVII:Crisis Core was alright, I was actually interested enough to finish it to the end, although I'm not sure if that's my FFVII remake hormones raging.

    But yeah after FFXII I don't have that blind faith that the next FF game will be that good anymore, how times have changed. :(

  • NotSoSlim #16 3 years ago

    Another shite one...great!! All hopes on Level 5 actually making a truly next gen jrpg

  • MavSkipper #17 3 years ago

    Bring back Squaresoft!!

  • shahkur #18 3 years ago

    To anyone who already has the game, how does it play on a SDTV? I heard the text is really small like in Dead Rising. Can someone confirm? That's the only thing stopping me from buying this.

  • Les #19 3 years ago

    "Oh and I forgot to add... Famitsu scored it a thirty eight LOOOOOOOOL."

    Didn't they love the mistwalker stuff as well? Different taste apparently.

  • drunkymonkey #20 3 years ago

    "Heroic Ramparts!"

    Hurray!

  • patchbox360 #21 3 years ago

    final fantasy 10 was the last really engaging rpg, since then nada, makes me appreciate the series more.

  • des #22 3 years ago

    Stick to the overrated fps Eurogamer.

  • Les #23 3 years ago

    "I didn't like Kingdom Hearts 2 and found FFXII dull and vapid."

    Loved KH2, was much better than part 1 IMO except for the silly 1-button QTEs. And its soundtrack is my favourite of any game.

    As for FF XII, guess I came halfway through when I accidentally wiped my saves and haven't been able to get myself to play it again. The story was rather convoluted and not really suitable for drop-in/drop-out play and that's the only way for me to stomach the grinding. I can't play RPGs for weeks, I need frequent breaks with real gameplay.

  • miiiguel #24 3 years ago

    @ shahkur: if you can give one hour to have a cofee, and re-set my TV to SD, I can help you.

  • siro #25 3 years ago

    Hmm... I thought this was going to be really good. Oh well, still have to play Eternal Sonata, Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, all sitting quietly on my shelf.

  • andywilkie35 #26 3 years ago

    @siro - those three rpgs you mentioned are all really good, I loved them

    I'm playing Last Remnant right now, haven't got too far so can't really comment but I gotta say that so far I'm not greatly impressed. Hoping it'll pick up, but I have full confidence that Star Ocean 4 and Tales of Vesperia will restore people's faith in JRPGs!

  • Monkey_Puncher #27 3 years ago

    Square = Shit

  • Linkified #28 3 years ago

    Square enix B team created a game using ue3 engine it turned out way better, maybe this reviewer hates jrpgs if so probs a bad idea by eg to put them on the review

  • CunningLinguist #29 3 years ago

    How the mighty have fallen. Hope FF 13 and Versus do better.

  • Turambar #30 3 years ago

    I suspect they are churning out these things on the cheap to make up development costs for their bigger projects.

  • Vanmunt #31 3 years ago

    Having bought this Thursday and taken it back Friday, I can say this game is truely a turkey. IU was playable, and at the end when it got into its stide quite enjoyable. This however this unfinished, rushed out dirge... Here's hoping White Knight is something special as SE have totally lost the plot.

  • creepylizard #32 3 years ago

    dudefella
    I wouldn't get your hopes up for star ocean sadly...

  • NotSoSlim #33 3 years ago

    Roll on White Knight Chronicles. At least Level 5 dont release crap lol

  • Krelle #34 3 years ago

    (Some people think Famitsu is God, some are convinced that their reviews are "sponsored". I dont see myself in any camp (well, until today..))

    This got 38/40 last week. 2 perfect 10s and 2 nine's. WHich makes it the 4th bst rated game of 2008 together with LBP. (After MGS/Brawl/GTA4.) How the fuck?

    1. With such horrible loading times/technical problems, how can ANY game recieve a "perfect" 10?
    2. How much did MS pay them? ;c]

    @Keza:
    It says you played the japanese version. Are you fluent in japanese, or how did you go about playing this game?

    Edited by 1 at 22/11/08 @ 16:09

  • spookyzombie #35 3 years ago

    I'm quite enjoying this game. The combat is a welcome change compared to the usual RPG norm. I installed this onto my 360 and haven't experienced hideous loading times. I'd say Lost Odyssey takes longer to load battles/area's etc. I'm thinking this is somewhere between a 7/10 and 8/10, but I've taken to it as it's different.

  • FabricatedLunatic #36 3 years ago

    Lost Odyssey received a positive review and 8/10. Ditto Eternal Sonata and Valkria Chronicles. Persona 3 scored 9/10. Clearly, Eurogamer do not have a problem with JRPGs.

  • Keza #37 3 years ago

    Krelle: I do speak Japanese, and I live in Japan. Not quite fluent yet, but I'm working on it.

  • menage #38 3 years ago

    Great use of that UE3 right there SE. Guess someone forgot to mention it's only really useful when it's running down a corridor firing a shotgun:p

  • saku_luk #39 3 years ago

    x360 has all the best jrpgs !!!! so some say ;p

    Maybe we will be lucky and PC/PS3 version that will be released later will be fixed?

    lol right its square....

  • Law07 #40 3 years ago

    LOL ANOTHER FLOP

  • Chufty #41 3 years ago

    Don't forget squenix release games in Europe about 12 years after they come out in Japan. I hope Microsoft will slap them into shape on this one.

  • Steroyd #42 3 years ago

    Microsoft ain't going to do s***, they're ecstatic enough that SE is supporting their system at all and will bend over to their will.

    Although if last remenant does have texture pop ins loading and junk and this is with concentrating solely on the Xbox 360, then I fear what their games would be like if they were full blown multi-format one thing i've always appreciated from SE titles is the high level of polish from their games in general. :(
    Edited by 1 at 22/11/08 @ 18:26

  • Meho #43 3 years ago

    Very good review. I have spent something like seven or eight hours on The Last Remnant the last few days and I can relate to a lot of things said in the review. An excruciatingly slow start, made even harder by the insane amount of loading screens. Then there are cutscenes that are nice but really go on for far too long (especially as the writing is nowhere near as funny and witty as the authors apparently think - Rush calling David (and it's Da-AH-vid rather than plain ol' Da-ay-vid) Dave is simply not funny and a lot of the early cast is distinctly like second rate George Lucas doing second rate Final Fantasy) and the city exploration that is made unfriendly through the introduction of mandatory city map usage. Now, fine, it actually makes things quicker, but, here's the kicker, you CAN NOT access the map and fasttravel any time you want, you have to reach the edge of the particular area you're in for the map mode to be summoned. Pretty flippin' bad design choice if you ask me.

    The font size is REALLY small on a SD television set, notably harder to read than in the case of Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts, so be warned.

    The story and dialogues so far are really and I mean REALLY cliched. I wouldn't mind it so much if this was an old skool, 2D SNES or genesis JRPG where you basically get from point to point quickly and can click-click-click through most of it in a matter of seconds if you dislike it, therefore getting back to doing the fun stuff (i.e. exploration and combat). But here, you have to sit through long cutscenes and in the streets it's click this person, than click that person, read everyone's three lines of text and then walk to the next person etc. There is no way to make Rush run so exploring the city and talking to everyone is a bit of a pain in the ol' arse if you ask me.

    Then again, at least the game has a saner map system than Infinite Undiscovery which was, frankly AWFUL. But they share pop-in and framerate drops, so there.

    That there is no random combat is indeed a relief, altough many monsters out there will assault you before you register they are there so sometimes it makes no difference. An interesting thing is that the game gives you the opportunity to engage the monsters/ enemies in battle first and therefore gain the upper hand, but this is done through clicking the right trigger when close enough to the monster. I like this system (similar to The World Ends With You) however the game fails to register this press properly at least one time out of three. Therefore I ended up at a disadvantage in several battles even though I WAS pressing the bugger like crazy and the game's visual information told me I was doing it well...

    But, at least the battle system IS indeed the best part of the game. Yes, you sit and watch through most of it and the 'critical triggers' (in essence QTE's - forcing you to be attentive and press a proper button when prompted) are not the smartest way of ensuring a degree of interactivity but the strategic component of battling really looks like something one can sink her/his teeth into. Since the game is, as Keza says, pulling a lot of shortcuts for you, making exploration and crawling unnecessary, so you can focus on combat, it is indeed a good thing when you can actually spend a lot of time on strategising and getting ready for battles.

    However, in the early part of the game, battles are, how shall I put it, idiotically easy. I have not lost even one battle so far even though I was mostly lost when it came to strategising and certainly have missed most critical triggers. I am quite sure it gets tougher as you go on, and I look fowward to being able to force my mind to think strategically.

    Two other things that disappoint in the beginning: the inability to customize anything in early on (like, I have an inventory full of various components, but the guy who is supposed to open a workshop where I can presumably use these components to build stugg keeps telling me he'll open it soon) as well as the idea that you only walk around using Rush even though your party might have ten or twelve people. I mean, of course, later on in the game you have thirty odd people with you but still, seeing only Rush on screen kinda ruins the mood and makes it feel non=next gen or something.

  • Slim #44 3 years ago

    Sob.

  • drumbaby #45 3 years ago

    Xbox 3shitsy Exclusive!

  • clean515 #46 3 years ago

    I actually thought about buying that damm console just to get my JRPG fix.... Why is all JRPG's so horrible this gen ?!

  • JediMasterMalik #47 3 years ago

    Sounds like it could be a 7 on a good PC. :p

  • hiddenranbir #48 3 years ago

    So hopefully the PC version will kill the loading times.

    But also funny it's still a JRPG.

  • miiiguel #49 3 years ago

    Doesn't the new feature of installing the game, improve the loading times? Not worth it?

    I was thinking of installing it, and hoping for a major improvement - @UT3 it even improved the "pop-in" (or what it's called...).

    Well, and while I totaly disagree with Corfto, as I'm nor realy a fan of this kinda reviews (not calling the guy a baboon, that's for sure, though...), it focus itself too much on technical bits. And I think that that's one of the biggest diferences between Wastern and Eastern gamers. Just the other day a frien of mine from Singapore, who writes for Famitsu was commenting on western reviewers, and he made a funny comment "yeah those if those guys were reviewing Casablanca they would say it is rubish 'cos it's black and white".
    And then that reflect on the whole community. Pixel counting, frames per second, yada yada...
    Edited by 2 at 22/11/08 @ 22:54

  • MaxiSleep #50 3 years ago

    "yeah those if those guys were reviewing Casablanca they would say it is rubish 'cos it's black and white".
    And then that reflect on the whole community. Pixel counting, frames per second, yada yada...

    I really hate this type of argument. A game which cannot run smoothly or look good is like casablanca remade by adam sandler on a crap old vhs copy vs a remastered original casablanca on blue ray.

  • dudefella #51 3 years ago

    Have to agree with the sentiments that so far, JRPGs are rubbish this gen, and if they aren't, they're super traditional (Lost Odyssey). Everything but LO has been a massive disappointment, it seems, and even LO wasn't THAT great, it was merely good.

  • Gnort #52 3 years ago

    I don't know that JRPGs have got any worse this generation, I think maybe they've just failed to move along, and things we were happy to put up with a hardware generation ago (long load times, random battles, grind, spiky haired pubescent amnesiac heroes) no longer seem acceptable.

  • bonker #53 3 years ago

    ""yeah those if those guys were reviewing Casablanca they would say it is rubish 'cos it's black and white".
    And then that reflect on the whole community. Pixel counting, frames per second, yada yada... "

    Context:

    If the film was *supposed to be* in colour but ended up being black and white through the technical incompetence of the people creating the film then yes, it deserves to be dissed ...

  • TheJuriel #54 3 years ago

    Thanks, Meho, for a long comment. Always good to hear multiple perspectives.

    The game looks good enough... to get on the cheap, somewhere down the line. Ah well.

  • Steroyd #55 3 years ago

    I don't know that JRPGs have got any worse this generation, I think maybe they've just failed to move along, and things we were happy to put up with a hardware generation ago (long load times, random battles, grind, spiky haired pubescent amnesiac heroes) no longer seem acceptable.

    The leap from PS1 to PS2 was fine to me and that only consisted of improving load times, pop-ins/draw distance adding voices etc, it's almost like the genre has gone backwards from the PS2, so far i've poured nearly 200 hours in Persona 3 FES, so I think it's more to do with that JRPG's in general aren't hitting the stride that it was at on PS2 this generation... so far.

    With that said near the end of the PS2 era there were quite few lemons of JRPG's that I bought (and on PSP), so maybe that was a sign. :|

  • Widge #56 3 years ago

    I've seen 2 jRPGs which are interesting so far. Eternal Sonata, which while traditional is balanced out by its rather unique storyline, and Valkyria Chronicles, which is just all shades of awesome.

    Looking for Square to pull out the big guns with FFXIII and versus.

  • DarkBytes #57 3 years ago

    gah ,

    Cant help but agree , i just wish you would have got the review out sooner as I took a chance and got the game on friday.
    Complete waste of cash
    my bad

  • lolife.se #58 3 years ago

    Texture pop-in? UT3 engine? Say it ain't so! o_O

    Why the hell do they insist on using it, it's obviously crap as a production enhancing tool. Sure, Epic themselves make it work like a charm, but it seems nobody else does..

  • GamesConnoisseur #59 3 years ago

    Lost Odyssey, Eternal Sonata, Blue Dragon are certainly worthwhile JRPG on X360, Infinite Discovery despite a bad and slow start, did grow on me and the battle can be more entertaining when using the right levelled up skills and can make boss fights much more manageable.

    The Last Remmant is so far much more dissapointing and the ugly texture pop ins is far worse than the Infinite Discovery, as with Infinite, I hardly noticed them! Whereas with The Lost Remnant I see it IN every cutscence and every time after the loading ends! UT engine is terrible but how the hell did they manage GoW2 to be apparent pop in free?!!

    Only played the first couple of hours of LR, but already have low hope that it would be as pleasant to play as the first three JRPG I mentioned, yet to decide how Enchanted Arm compare to the Last Remnant!

    /Miiiguel, glad to see The Tales of Vesperia arrives safe and sound!

  • mkreku #60 3 years ago

    The last really good jRPG I've played is Dragon Quest 8: Journey of the Cursed King. Quite a while ago.

    Sigh.

  • JHuxley #61 3 years ago

    "and Valkyria Chronicles, which is just all shades of awesome"

    This. While it's not strictly a vanilla JRPG, it's easily the best I've played this generation. Sadly that might have as much to do with the competition than it does genuine quality, though.

    It's a shame it's not a Squenix/360 game, because I've seen adverts plastered all over TV for The Last Remnant when it scarcely deserves it. It just looks so unappealing to me.

  • ilmaestro #62 3 years ago

    Good to see EG coming up with a Japanese import review, after all - they never release these RPG things at the same time over here...

    Oh.

  • miiiguel #63 3 years ago

    yay GamesConneiseur! It did arrive, in perfect condition! Thx buddy!

    on ToV and LR: I thought they had more than 1 DVD..., I guess it's lighter on the cut-scenes than previous jRPGs..., or they found some ultra-super way to compress stuff?
    Edited by 1 at 23/11/08 @ 15:07

  • gooner871 #64 3 years ago

    Wow i think the reviewer must be slow or just sucks at games cause it maybe took me 1 hour to get into meaningful combat. This is also the case when he talks about camera issues...What?! if he can't find himeslef in those buildings than hes better off playing 2D games. The combat system is amazing and the framerate is a nuisance at best. 9/10

  • rommy667 #65 3 years ago

    Yawn Yawn,the only good square soft game is einhander oh wait i gota also give em secret of mana & chrono trigger on the snes........

  • NegativeZero #66 3 years ago

    @miiiguel: Tales of Vesperia's able to fit on one DVD because they do the vast majority of the cutscene stuff in-game. There's only a handful of full-blown FMV sequences and they're not very long. Plus they're anime-style 2D animation so they probably compress pretty well. Lots of areas of solid colour.

    I personally don't think that JRPGs this generation are bad - it's just that we're not very far into the generation yet, and that a lot of the JRPGs being pushed heavily aren't very good. There's been some decent ones, but you really need to have access to all the various platforms (PS2, PS3, PSP & 360 really) in order to be able to get to them all.

    Personally I got royally sick of Namco dicking us around with Tales of Vesperia and imported a Japanese 360 + the Asian English release. I don't regret it for a second - luckily I got in just before the world economy tanked, though. But then, I absolutely love the (good) Tales games.

    I can't help but think that maybe the reason that Namco are sitting on Vesperia's PAL release (aside from the fact they're a bunch of assholes and they hate us all) is that they want to release it on PS3 here to ensure they have enough of a market to sell it to, and they've signed a 6-12 month exclusivity with MS. I mean, it's pretty much a guarantee that all these various 360-exclusive JRPGs are timed exclusives.

    On topic: the 'union' concept here sounds a heck of a lot like Unions in Yggdra Union on PSP. Anyone played both and able to tell me if that's the case?

  • Kryon #67 3 years ago

    To be fair, Square have been shit since Hironobu Sakaguchi left to form Mistwalker. I mean FFXII, WTF was that utter shit about? Even Blue Dragon was more enjoyable IMHO.

  • Steroyd #68 3 years ago

    FFXII had two different directors/producers on it the first guy had to bail because he was sick.

    I don't know FFX and KH were alright but both their storylines had wtf endings to a certain degree.

  • michaelius #69 3 years ago

    xbox 3shitsy Exclusive!

    Actually no it's also coming to PS3 later and maybe even PC :)

    I think I'll wait for pc release.

    And guys remember that you can safely add +2 to any score of RPG reviewed here which doesn't use shooter style controls.

  • Steroyd #70 3 years ago

    Persona 3 really scored an 11?

    Fallout 3 scored a 12?

    OMFG! :p

  • spiderfan2099 #71 3 years ago

    I just got this game Friday and was really unimpressed for the first four or five hours playing. I have to agree with a lot of the stuff in this review so far, although I think that it's much better than Lost Odyssey which played like a JRPG from 1998. This has a lot of new ideas, a really great battle system (which admittedly takes a long time to get up and running, maybe 4-6 hours). It does feel a little bit like a prequel trilogy version of Final Fantasy though, if they'd put more story into the game and got rid of the city and world maps then it'd be really great. As it stands I'm not disappointed, but I was anticipating a better game.

    @Meho: You don't have to run to the exits of every zone in city map, you can just press the "Back" button to go from zone to City Map or from City Map to World Map. Personally I think if they just linked all the zones together to make real cities, even if they were smaller, it would improve the game tenfold.

  • spiderfan2099 #72 3 years ago

    I also forgot to say that I loved FFXII and honestly can't see what everyone is talking about when they say they don't like it. My save has over 150 hours of play-time on FFXII and I've enjoyed every single one.

  • michaelius #73 3 years ago

    Persona 3 really scored an 11?

    Fallout 3 scored a 12?

    OMFG! :p

    Since when Fallout 3 doesn't use shooter controls? :)

  • shogo10 #74 3 years ago

    I personally wouldn't put too much hope on the pc version to solve all of the technical issues, as consoles ports of jrpgs have never fared all that well on pc. I really wouldn't trust a jrpg dev to make a decent pc port as the two don't go hand in hand and rarely ever have.

  • Azazel #75 3 years ago

    This thread drags on and on. Find me in the dungon to the north. You will know it when you see it, yes... I think you will know.

  • beastmaster #76 3 years ago

    So, is Lost Od the best Jap RPG on the 260 then? I've not got one yet and quite fancy getting hold of one. Or it it worth waiting till Star Ocean comes along?

  • Galvanizer #77 3 years ago

    It's a good game. I'd give it an 8 if it wasn't for the technical flaws.

  • NegativeZero #78 3 years ago

    @beastmaster: in terms of games available in PAL right now, yes it probably is - though Eternal Sonata gives it a decent run since it has a much more interesting combat system and is less annoyingly difficult.

  • itsfuzzy #79 3 years ago

    Eternal Sonata the only decent JRPG on the 360. And that had many flaws. Mainly the Temple of Union. Depressing