The Last Remnant - Honest Review

This game (Last Remnant) had been in the circulation since Playstation 3. Last Remnant is a game created by Square Enix and was released for X-Box 360 (in 2008) and Microsoft Windows (in 2009). The Playstation 3 released was announced but later was cancelled. A remastered version was released for Playstation 4 (in December 2018) and for Nintendo Switch in 2019. 

This game was in my radar for a long time as I have rarely played RPG games which Square Enix makes which are outside the Final Fantasy titles. And considering how the last two FF titles (13 and 15) were somewhat lacking and largely disappointing to myself, and I wasn't expecting the latest ones to be any better, I thought I could give The Last Remnant a try since I believed that Square Enix made older games better to play than the new one. I wish I had not.

The game is set in a (nameless) World which are shared by various humans and non-human creatures. Mitras (the humans), Yamas (fish-like people who have high affinity to melee attacks), Qsitis (small reptilians who seems to have a high affinity to magic) and Sovanis (felines with four arms who has affinity to speed). The Remnants are magical artifacts which, when bound to a Lord of a Land, could perform powerful feats. This in return will allow the Lord of the Land to carve out his own kingdom for himself. This theme is very similar to what we already seen in games like Final Fantasy 13 and 15 and the use of the Crystals. I really wish Square Enix could get some fresh ideas for their plots. This is getting too old by game standards. 

You will be playing as Rush Skyes, in search for his kidnapped sister (Irina) and eventually meet up with other characters such as Da-vid (it supposed to be David (one word) but they pronounce it as Da - Vid, which sound is very classical) and his generals. You can recruits dozens more through the guild or through storyline to create your own personal army. 

Maximum recruit-able members are 30, if not mistaken but I have only reached up to 12. Which means you are able to recruit up to 30 members (you will get a trophy for it), BUT you can only put 18 characters in 5-member per squad. So basically the Maths here is - 30 (Max), 18 (playable) in 3 - 5 squad (with 5 members max each). Which means at max, you can only get four squads (5 members in the first three squads and 3 in the fourth squad) and twelve other members will have to sit the battles out until you swap them. Oh, and each members brings their own stats which influence the overall HP, Magic, AP and defense of the squad overall. If one member of the squad dies, the whole squad dies as well. 

The World map is filled with city-states, many of them have their own Lords who had bounded with Remnants which protects, nurtures and even teaches its occupants (like in the city of Melphina where Qsitis lives in large amount and learns Magic from their Remnant). There are some cities which has Lord but no Remnants to be bound with. 

However, the game will not simply reveal all these places for you unless it is linked by the plot. In most situations, you need to explore the dungeons and the main World to find hidden paths and forks in the road which will lead you elsewhere. In a positive note, such design in the World map is refreshing where it could allow the players to actively explore their game World instead of waiting for it to be revealed. You could not know what to find in a new place and that adds more excitement. 

However, the idea of fighting the same sort of enemies in most of these places quickly makes it boring to even try and find new places to begin with. Part of the fun of RPG games are the fact that you could find and fight new enemies to test your might, level up and get more loots. Most enemies in new areas are similar to what you have already fought before.

The graphics are not as great as what you could imagine, which I'm not surprised since the game did came out in 2008, nearly 15 years ago. But over all, the game is good enough for today's standards, graphical vice. I did not find any music which could stand out in the game. Then again, this is a Square Enix game and music does not seems to be a very important aspect in their games lately.

Now we will go into the deeper part of the game, and I will not mince words when I say I'm quite disappointed in this game. If I had one word for the game design of this game, it could be - "Frankenstenish". Literally means that the game looked like something a group of people who do not communicate well with each other, designed and created their own separate module and then threw it into a single mixture and got it working together using some duct tape. Seriously, that was what it felt to me. 

First of all, this is an RPG game. So why is Rush the ONLY character whose status (his equipment) which you can change? You can literally recruits dozens of mercenaries and soldiers to your party and yet, you cannot tweak any of their status? I knew games from previous generations (like the Suikoden Series which came all the way to the similar age of this game like Suikoden 5 and Tactics) where you had 108 characters and you can check and tweak each and every one of those characters. So Square Enix - what is your excuse here?

Speaking of status - the abilities of the characters (including Rush). Where the hell is it? I have no idea how the character learns abilities, or even what abilities they can learn. There is no access to the abilities during the battle and you have to rely on luck (and prayer) that the character will perform the ability during the battle (like healing and reviving the fallen character) and I have only learned much later that some of these abilities are dependent on certain (healing) items to perform - but was not mentioned ANYWHERE in the game. What is the use of your ability and learning them if you have to use items? Couldn't it be easier for all the characters to just use items on equal manner? 

The game also have an AP (Action Point) system where the higher the APs are, the better chance you have for the characters to perform a certain action (such as getting Da-Vid to use his Gae bong attack which could be quite devastating). The problem here is, the game go and wreck that (especially during boss fights) by lowering the morale of your party, which means that even if you managed to increase your AP (which can be increase by putting the characters in a standby phase where they do not perform any actions), with a low morale, many of the abilities and skills could not be accessible for them and they could only perform regular attacks or magical attacks. In another word, the game specifically sabotages its own battle mechanism to prevent the players from achieving any form of advantage in combat.

I remember reaching the game stage all the way to storming the Wyrmkeep to save Irina and face off a boss called Hell's Gate. It was a tough fight, which forced me to reload a previous saved file before entering the dungeon and leveled up my character from battle level 56 all the way to level 72 and defeated Hell's Gate in a SINGLE turn without getting kOed or losing any of my parties members. Yeah, you can imagine how powerful my party members had become considering Hell's Gate was considered one of the hardest boss in this game.

But then, on the way out of the dungeon, I have encountered another boss fight called Jager and his pet remnant, Lob Omen. Not only there was these two to contend with, you also have six other enemies who will charge at your party (mine had 12 members, in teams of 5, 5 and 2 members per squad). 

Not only that I had to contend with the human characters who seems to protect Lager and Lob Omen, but I also had to contend with Lob Omen doing a single, instant kill attack on random party members. It was one-sided battle which I do not think anyone could get passed with the pre-existing disadvantage the game deliberately throws at you in this game. 

Furthermore, what is it with the party system? I had up to 15 members which I could have recruit and put in a party, and I had space of 30 members max who I could recruit without sending anyone away BUT the game only allows me to have 12 MEMBERS in my active party. Which means that even if I had 30 members in my recruitment list, I could only use half of them in a battle, creating a squad of anywhere between 2 to 3 squad (where I have to divide the members). In this game, I had created three squad - one for Rush (Rush + four members), one for Da-Vid (Da-Vid + four members) and another squad consists of only two members. 

So my question here is - Why even so I had finished half the game, the game do not allow you to add more party members? WHY? It makes no sense whatsoever. Once again, this feature seems to be adding more disadvantage to the players instead of helping the player along. In normal game sense, by the time you reach the half-way mark (in this case, saving Rush's sister), the game should stop limiting you as a player and allow you to play the game to its max limits (which in this case means that you should have 15 members instead of 12 member in three squads). So why is the game still holding you as the player back?

And finally, the weapon creation/upgrade system.Once again, you will find that this game consistently ensures that the players are left in disadvantage state as much as possible. Most of the weapons you buy in this game could be upgradeable with the right material. But the problem here is, the materials themselves does not appear as readily as you may expect. The battle rank does allow a rarer form of monsters to appear and drop more rare loots but most of the time, they could only drop regular lots. 

You could get items by dismantling rare weapons and armor but most of these rare weapons and armor can only be dropped by rare monsters as shops do not sell them. And even if you managed to obtain anything worthwhile, you going to need tonnes of money (in like five digits) just to level up a single weapon and this game very stingy in giving money to its players. So, the game's weapons creation and upgrading system were specifically designed to show that the player can do these upgrade BUT will not be able to do it due to various reasons which they will feel is out of their control. 

So in that context, I could like to ask Square Enix regarding this game and my question is - "What the hell wrong with you people?" You made a game which is unplayable, anti-player in every sense and gives open disadvantages to the players (sometimes in form of crippling penalties) in most of the features in the game like battle, item creations, leveling up, ability learning and party customization. 

My suggestion to those who wondering whether they should pick this game up - DON'T PICK IT UP. This game is worst than Kingdom Come Deliverance, and I never thought there could be a worse game than that. At least Kingdom Come Deliverance was playable.