Is The Last Remnant any good?

[Flak Beard]

There is an easy mode, but you can't play through the extra dungeon after you beat the game (Seraphic Gate). Not sure if that's a big deal for you though

I love me some bonus dungeons, so I'll probably play Normal. I'm just looking out for my wife. She likes action RPGs as long as they are easy enough for her. She clocked in twice as many hours as me on Fable 2!

[MrPopo]

I hear a lot of the technical issues in the 360 version of Last Remnant, can be resolved by installing the disc to the HDD.

I've heard this as well, but I've never had a really good confirmation. Can anyone confirm that installing makes the various technical problems with the Last Remnant go away?

Lost Odyssey supposedly had a bunch of really bad loading sequences, but I've only played it in the installed form, and didn't have any problems. Is Last Remnant similar?

[sakicfan84]

I hear a lot of the technical issues in the 360 version of Last Remnant, can be resolved by installing the disc to the HDD.

I've heard this as well, but I've never had a really good confirmation. Can anyone confirm that installing makes the various technical problems with the Last Remnant go away?

Lost Odyssey supposedly had a bunch of really bad loading sequences, but I've only played it in the installed form, and didn't have any problems. Is Last Remnant similar?

I had tons of issues with Oblivion until I installed in on the HD. I kept getting disc unreadable errors despite the fact that there was barely any marks on the disk. I'm in the habit of installing all of the games I'm currently playing on the HD. At the very least it will help save the disk drive a little wear and tear, and in a lot of cases, it significantly improves the loading and game play.

[Flak Beard]

A couple things I was wondering about The Last Remnant...

Does it ever become overwhelming commanding so many units? Also, since it uses the UE engine... are we talking about grays and browns most of the time? Any colorful vistas?

[Tancred]

A couple things I was wondering about The Last Remnant...

Does it ever become overwhelming commanding so many units? Also, since it uses the UE engine... are we talking about grays and browns most of the time? Any colorful vistas?

Well Mirror's Edge used the Unreal 3 engine and that was pretty colorful. Polar opposite of Mass Effect and Gears of War.

[MrPopo]

Unreal Engine doesn't determine the color palette of the textures used. The fact that GoW and UT3 are modern shooters is what makes them grey and brown.

So I gave the demo on Steam a try, and here's my take.

1. Horrible keyboard support. Their mapping config is PC style, where it says "Ok" maps to Enter and "Party Menu" links to P. Normally this wouldn't be horrible, except all in-game prompts are still based on the 360 controller. Thus, you need to figure out that A maps to Ok, and Ok is mapped to Enter. Not good when they have timed events. Plus, the key bindings are all kinda based around an FPS scheme, where commands get a key who's letter attempts to evoke what you're doing, so it's a bunch of random keys. FF7 did the keyboard right. They mapped the numpad area to all the commands, and the in-game prompts listed the command, not the button. So the sequence would be [OK] [MENU] [CANCEL] instead of [X] [triangle] [O].

2. Load times are still atrocious. And this is on a PC, so it's a full install with no disc. There were loading screens after the battle, and not even good ones. It was a black screen with the Now Loading text on it.

It disappoints me, since the combat system is intruiging. But the technical problems remind me of the PSX FF Anthology ports, which suffered because of the load times. Once again, FF7 did a good job with its load times. The battle swirl, and the pan around the arena to give everything time to load. You were engaged by it, and it didn't feel like it was loading.

[weasels]

OK so i played more of the game and im actually enjoying it more now.

@ mr.popo. im not sure the loading times are that bad. im not sure really what most would consider bad for the pc due to me just recently haveing my PC updated allowing to play newer games. so i was wondering what a long loading time is to you so i know for future refrence.

personally i can with out a doubt say there is quite abit of loading. that i know for sure. but im tolerateing it so far and im more of a console gamer. i can confirm that the loading screens kinda suck and are still the same as you mention. me tolerating this game seems to be due to the larg amount of rpg's ive played. the demo is probally not as good as the finalized version but whos to say. its funny because the more i play the more i start to apprciate the game. ill keep updated with you guys if i find anything to hate or fully love.

[MrPopo]

I've been playing console RPGs since the SNES days. The initial ones didn't have load times, due to being on a cart. Then the PSX Final Fantasies came out, but they used techniques to mask their load times. The aforementioned FF7 battle swirl and pan around the battlefield. And then at the end they show the victory animation, which doesn't require any assets to be loaded but lets them start loading the world assets again. Lost Odyssey has a similar system where they show a few shots of the battlefield at the beginning and have a victory animation sequence at the end. Granted, I've heard that Lost Odyssey has pretty bad load times if you don't install it, but when installed you get an experience comperable to what you had in FF7 (minus the 2 minute long summons). The problem I have with Lost Odyssey is that their loading screens are blank screens; they don't try to hide the load times. In an RPG this ends up being very jarring, as you expect to get into battles very regularly. Similarly, when they ported the SNES Final Fantasies to the PSX you had similar loading issues, as those games were never designed with load times in mind.

Really, I'm not comparing Last Remnant's load times to any PC games, as the PC hasn't had the JRPG battles on a different screen style of RPG (minus FF7 and 8 ports). The only thing I was mentioning about the PC demo of Last Remnant is that the loading times for it would be no worse than on a 360 with the disc installed, and I felt that they were too long based on their presentation.

Honestly, I'll probably pick it up when the PS3 port hits, assuming there aren't any glaring issues of it running worse. There's always the potential that it might be better than the 360 version, and the PC port was handled horribly from a control standpoint. As I mentioned, the gameplay really intruiges me, but the loading times really turned me off from the experience.