The Last Remnant Comments by Keza MacDonald

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

So hopefully the PC version will kill the loading times.

But also funny it's still a JRPG.

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...

"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.

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.

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.

""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 ...

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.

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. :|

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.

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

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..

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!

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

Sigh.

"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.

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.

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?

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

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........

@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?

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.

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.

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.

Persona 3 really scored an 11?

Fallout 3 scored a 12?

OMFG! :p

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.

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.

Persona 3 really scored an 11?

Fallout 3 scored a 12?

OMFG! :p

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

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.

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.

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?

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

@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.

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