When Square Enix president Yoichi Wada recently announced that he was worried about the Japanese gaming industry, I wonder if he was talking from first-hand experience. Has the president played recent S-E titles, and do they give him cause for concern?
As I wrote a couple months ago, Infinite Undiscovery was a disappointment. Since the game was developed by Tri-Ace, I didnt really let its failings phase me; I trust Square Enix because its the company of Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior. Few titles are worthy of blind faith, but both FF and DW are games which inspire admiration, regardless of whether or not youre a fan of the JRPG genre. Even if you dont dig turn-based battle games with lengthy cut-scenes, you can look at a Final Fantasy game and understand theres an loving attention to design and detail.
As much as I want to -- really want to -- love The Last Remnant, theres a sort of cheap mediocrity to much of the game that prevents me from celebrating its release. Let me clarify: The music is great, and the character designs (especially on your non-human comrades) are really fantastic. I wish western games looked and sounded like this.
But the animation is sometimes terrible. Is it the engine? If so, I dont want another Unreal Engine Square Enix game. Its distractingly rough, and stands out like a sore thumb when juxtaposed against such effortless character design. And the voice acting that I was so looking forward to (after my controlled demo of the game at Square Enixs Los Angeles office) falls apart very quickly. Again, a message to game companies: You must start hiring SAG voice actors and WGA script editors. There is so much money being risked on these games; to cut corners on such obvious elements as voice over and localization does your games a great disservice.
The battle system in Last Remnant is by far the best part of the title. In a way, its the Game of the game; the rest could be seen as a long, menu-heavy interactive DVD. Unions of three or more characters function like individual units on large, expansive battlefields. Because the characters in each union base their combat on broad terms, its a little like window-dressing on individual party members. To put it another way, if these were just single characters instead of unions of unknown troops, there wouldnt be much lost except for the sense of scale.
Finally, Ill add that there are some very welcome changes to the JRPG formula in Last Remnant in terms of the traditional conceits of the genre. For example, travelling the overworld is done by selecting a city or location -- bang, youre there. Man, is that nice. Another small and welcome shift is the ability to save any time; something these games should have been doing for the last ten years.
score 8.0 out of ten
verdict Playing this and Fallout 3 in the same month clarified what I want from RPGs -- something exactly in the middle of both of them. Remnant is not a bad game; its much better than Infinite Undiscovery, for example. But its not evolved enough to be a great one. Its more like getting to see the in-between steps of a genre shifting towards a new horizon.
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