Originally posted August 24th, 2019. Edited and re-posted here for archival purposes.
I was one of those people waiting for the PS3 version for what seemed a lifetime. Once it hit PC, I put about 15-20 hours into it before eventually falling away from it. I’ll blame FFXIV for that. It sat unplayed on my system for years and rarely ever crossed my mind until the remaster was announced. The remaster was a chance for me to reset and try again. I was already in the renewed mindset of tinkering with a complex battle system after Resonance of Fate’s remaster on PS4/PC. Completing Resonance of Fate gave me a lot of energy and confidence to tackle the monstrous Kawazu game – The Last Remnant.
First off, TLR is a big game. While it doesn’t track your playtime, I’d wager I put about 80 hours or more into it. Though the game is big, it comes off as even bigger than it initially appears. This is due half of the game being completely optional. Sidequests seem to make up the bulk of the game. You could mainline the story and miss questlines, towns, entire regions, and lore if you didn’t poke around talking to everyone.
While having so much discoverable content, in modern times it just becomes a large spreedsheet of sidequests and what areas they unlock. I imagine the Availability Of Side Quests wiki page has 10-20 times the traffic of any other page. That said, with the way games work nowadays, I wasn’t really turned off by the wall of checklisted content. I feel like I always had something to go after without the game telling me to do it. I’m sure some people will be turned off by it, but I was surprisingly ok with it.
Graphically, it looks great. The remaster features an upgrade from the Unreal 3 to Unreal 4 engine and it shows in a lot of cases. Some people might miss the older engine’s lighting, but I felt it was an improvement from what I could actually recall. My only disappointment was that the glittery dust when an enemy dies doesn’t look as pretty anymore. Perhaps that’s for the best. Presentation wise, it has a slick UI that has…most of the info you need.
Dozens of hours in, I was still stumbling around some parts of the menus and UI to find what I wanted to know. I’m sure I knew it prior, but it dawned on me a few days ago that I could swap the view to see what moves the party would use. This was a relief as I’d been counting AP costs to see if a certain move would come out. I wish there was a better way to display that, but I’d say the fault was mostly on my end as I’m sure the game told me PRESS BUTTON, SEE MOVES in a similarly blatant manner.
On the subject of moves, I’ll shift into talk about the battle system. This is the best part of the game (tied with music, I suppose.) Every battle feels like a grand conflict. From a small group of 5 troops to 18 party members scattered in various groups, each conflict just felt so… big. The enemies were always varied in types and sizes, so I never felt like I was doing the same fight twice. I never got that feeling like I did in FFX where I’m doing the same move to the same enemy for the same effect. It was a lot of fun shifting my soldiers around to form unions, putting them into formations that played to their strengths, and allowing them to work with one another to get the most out of their abilities. I found myself building entire unions for the same of one particularly crushing move at times, then shuffling it around to fill a role such as a tanky, hard hitting melee squad that would run interference.
Near the end of the game, I had three main strike-forces and one support force. Each strike-force had the ability to withstand hard hits, dish out big damage, do a bit of support and minor healing when needed, as well as be quick and mobile. It was nice to have a strike-force that I tailored myself. My fourth unit was my wildcard of support. They were practically a group of doctors sitting on a nuclear arsenal. Most encounters, I was able to deadlock three groups of enemies and let my fourth unit standby and heal as needed. At times, they’d suffer a flurry of attacks but they were always able to hold their own. They were nigh invincible with an absurd healing output, ability to revive, and buff spells. The best part? They had two nukes that I could use when the right conditions were met. The number of battles that I ended with a single spell was quite astounding. Both spells – Megalore and Blackout – were army killers.
At the end of the game, I didn’t do all of the content. I’d say I did maybe 90% of it and I was short a few quests that were frankly too long for me to engage with by the time I reached them. It’s not that they’re bad, I just wanted to move onto a different game and come back for a replay at some point to build the perfect units with the right skills. I was missing a lot of moves that I think would have made my life much easier. Combat oft relies heavily on morale – both unit and overall army moral – to gauge the strength of blows and general effectiveness of your unions combat.
In most encounters, I had very low morale and was constantly beaten down with spells that crushed it even further. Yet I persevered, fighting back to a clutch victory or simply turning the tables and stomping the enemy into the dirt. I had pages upon pages of stat boosts being given out at the end of fights, so I felt like every single battle count. I fought everything stronger than me and often in huge linked battles. The number of struggling back and forth battles I went through was absurd, but also exhilarating. Pulling my entire force back from the brink of death and counter-attacking with incredibly powerful blasts was quite fun. I felt like I was often the underdog, toppling the giants of the world.
While in said combat, a fantastic symphony of guitars, drums, horns, and strings are blazing in the background. This game has one of the best and energetic OSTs I’ve heard in a long time. The soundtrack shifts as the tide of battle turns, going from chugging and ominous heavy metal when you’re on the ropes to some high speed power metal when you’re cutting the enemy in twain and reducing them to naught but dust to be blown away. There are some real standout tracks that sound like they’d come straight off of a Guilty Gear soundtrack. It really shines as a highlight of the game, especially if you’re a fan of rock, metal, or intense music in general. Town themes are quaint and charming with their own sense of emotion to them. Underground themes fit well with the myriad caves you’re traversing.
Continuing on with the aural front, the overall sound is great but what stands out to me are the sound effects themselves. Hearing sword clanging in the background in fights, explosions rattling the earth, and even the janky mechanical clicking of large summoned creatures engaging in combat was a treat. Paired with the visuals, the grand battles, and the overall ‘bigness’ of the battlefield, I really enjoyed the collective package. While combat is round-based, the combatants are actively clashing with the enemy that they’re deadlocked with. It adds more life to the battlefield, rather than standing around waiting to get hit. It was just a little touch, but it made every encounter feel fluid and alive. Additionally, when you selected what to do and saw your character performing the move, it felt like it was just one of the few attacks they’d thrown out during the encounter. There was a rhythm and flow to it that I really appreciated.
While I’ve praised the game a lot, there are some shortcomings. I suppose the first one would be that the game is very Wiki Friendly, almost to the point that a Wiki or a Guide are almost required. Perhaps I didn’t dig deep enough into menus, but there are times when characters will ask for parts of enemies and I’ve not a clue where to even start looking. You can also lead your characters into classes/roles you may not want them to go down just by letting them be. You’re encouraged to turn off arts or styles to help a character focus on one thing, but unless someone told you that… it’d be quite difficult to know.
To add onto that, you never really know what character will excel at what, which arts are the best against which types of monsters, or why certain schools of magic are inherently weak and useless. I went through the game trying to tinker around and tailor my army to fill rolls, but I also skipped over stuff or just never found it. To this day, I don’t know where to get materials for traps. As far as I’m aware, they’re useless anyways in comparison to the big mystic and combat arts.
Regarding the characters, some received a lot of development while others didn’t receive much. Sidequests added a lot of backstory to Pagus, Torgal, and Emma as well as entire quest chains revolved around appeasing certain characters. However, some side characters got little of the light shined on them, leaving me with some questions regarding the Sykes family. I enjoyed Rush and Irina’s interactions, but then again any interaction with Rush is a treat. He’s a delightfully dumb young man who has a good heart. He wears his emotions on his sleeve and speaks his mind. Sure, what he says can come off as stupid or ignorant of the situation, but he means well and is a sincere person in every aspect. He’s a great character who doesn’t fit the typical protagonist role that he’s been thrust into.
Another character who I felt was quite strong was David, the Maquis of Athlum, who only wanted the best for his people. He was charming, charismatic, and a decisive leader when faced with adversity. All the way until to the end, I felt he was a strong pillar in the games story and he carried through with it. He’s a man of the people, and it shows. For the rest of the characters, my army was certainly full of a lot of my favorites, but I did have some characters I don’t necessarily care for that filled a good role. I will say that Darien – a character made to be absurdly annoying and self centered – is probably my favorite character. He’s such a little bastard that it’s hard to hate him. The thing that made me think “I love this little gremlin” was when he finally got an item he wanted from an enemy and simply screamed maniacally. The voice actor did a wonderful job with him.
I’ll round this up by saying that The Last Remnant is a truly great game. I had a lot of fun with it. The combat is a blast when you get your head wrapped around all that it asks of you, the OST is a blazing aural rush, and the concept is both fun and ambitious. There was some things it could do better, but I think it’s well worth the time and energy put in. It’s grand, it’s rewarding, and its a nice step away from the typical world of RPGs. I’ve heard many great things about it from SaGa fans and people enjoy Kawazu’s work.
As someone who’s not really messed with any of the SaGa games much (I’ll correct this some point in the near future), it was still a fun game that delivered on many fronts. It’s a difficult game to just play blind, but I think it’s well worth giving a look. Just be prepared to spend some time in the wiki to ensure you see all of the world. It’ll surely pay off.
