The Last Remnant

[alan_fatima]

Installing the game to hard drive goes a long way in eliminating the combat stutter. I've only got three units with three people in each at the moment, though, so the stutter may become noticable as my army grows. It'd be a good idea to install anyway, since the game goes to a load screen when changing areas/entering battles(i.e. often). You'll still get textures that haven't loaded, but it'll take 2-3 seconds for them to show up with it installed, seemed to be twice as much from the disc.

Combat has been called shallow. I think the IGN review said something along the lines of unit position doesn't seem to mean anything. That hasn't appeared to be the case so far. If you've got a unit near an enemy at the start of a battle, you're probably better off engaging that one, since it's more than likely going to be targetting you and getting to you before your unit can attack whoever is further away. That will result in an interference and make you lose some moral. Likewise, the enemy usually goes after the closest ally, so having them all go after your unit in the lead and intercepting them with your other units will get you a large moral advantage (and prevent your lead unit from being flanked).

I've been enjoying it a great deal so far. Combat, for me, is pretty fun. (I like the QTE stuff) Every half-dozen or so battles one of your characters will generally get a new ability or an upgrade to an old one, and you're constantly gathering materials to upgrade Rush's weaponry (everyone else will claim materials to auto-upgrade their weapons) Chaining monsters together increases your rewards, and I enjoy having only a handful of challenging, rewarding fights instead of many many more easy boring ones. Just...save often. I find myself looking for battles instead of avoiding them, more often than not. That's usually a pretty good sign.

The biggest problems I've seen so far is not being able to get your units to do what you want them to. For example, sometimes my healing unit won't be given the option to heal. Now, that may be my own fault since the leader is more an all-rounder instead of a dedicated healer type. (it might also be because one of the units heals via items and two via spells?)I enjoy figuring that kind of thing out for myself, but I'm sure I'm in the minority.

If you love old-school rpgs, enjoy wringing mastery out of needlessly complex systems, and have enough space on your hard drive for the game you might enjoy it as I've been enjoying it.

I'm approaching TLDR territory here (if I haven't passed it already) but I just want to say I love the choices you've got for Rush's weapons.

1-h weapons no shield: fastest, good chance to dodge
1-h weapon power grip (wielded with two hands) less speed, more power
1-h weapon/shield: fast, but with a chance to block (and then QTE a nasty shield bash)
Dual wield: most damaging, least dodge
2-handed weapons: second most damaging, decent dodge

1-h weapons: swords, katanas, axes, hammers
2-h weapons: great swords, great katanas, great axes, great hammers, polearms, wands

[B-Ri]

do you need to install both discs or can you do one at a time? I dont see myself buying the 120gb hdd anytime soon.

[alan_fatima]

One at a time.

[B-Ri]

i keep wanting to be optimistic that the PS3 version may somehow be superior (Apparently the japanese get UE3 optimization backwards), but then again they did seemingly screw up on a system thats been proven to handle it. Especially with its BF deal in 2 and a half hours....


...hrm....

[Seik]

Nice impression Alan. Your impressions have me considering picking this game up from Amazon. Through Sunday they have it on special for $40. Still slightly pricey for it though it seems. If it was like $30 or $25 I'd pick it up in an instant.

[mannerbot]

It's $30 at Amazon now.

[B-Ri]

thanks for letting me know, thankfully amazon is cool AND THEY WILL MOST LIKELY gimmie $10 back.

EDIT: nevermind, they regretfully informed me that they eliminated the 30-day price guarantee in september -_-

[Seik]

Fuck it. $30. I just bought it.

And booooo to Amazon for not refunding you your $10 B Ri. That was jank of them.

[AaronChance]

thanks for letting me know, thankfully amazon is cool AND THEY WILL MOST LIKELY gimmie $10 back.

EDIT: nevermind, they regretfully informed me that they eliminated the 30-day price guarantee in september -_-

Did you call them? Some people at least have gotten a refund by calling them, rather than just e-mail.

[B-Ri]

Did you call them? Some people at least have gotten a refund by calling them, rather than just e-mail.

called, i got routed over to India