The Last Remnant – Square Enix

I had heard quite a few mixed reviews concerning this game.  They seemed pretty good on the gameplay side of things (and, in my book, the opportunity to control up to 25 characters in battle, even if indirectly, simultaneously in an RPG is just astounding).   They were pretty bad on the graphics side of things.  And let me tell you, the graphics are awesome.  Awesome as hell.  Hellishly awesome.  They are so awesome. the Xbox can’t even handle them.  That’s how awesome they are.

Literally.  It’s a gripe of mine: the game uses the Unreal engine, which, is a great idea, but apparently Squeenix didn’t take enough time to work out the kinks.  It freezes and skips often, and so much is going on in battle that the character the screen is focusing on is not always drawn in time.  (Nothing is more annoying than when the engine cannot even draw the character on the screen so it can say it is “poisoned” and lose a few hit points.  Or rather, it says “poisoned”, shows the hit point damage, shows the location where the character SHOULD be, and then cuts away.)  Battles move very quickly and fluidly, but only stopped by characters who magically appear nearby when its their turn, but some characters further out are drawn who have nothing to do with the encounter.  Drives me nuts.

But, enough of that.  If you are a hardcore RPGer, like me, you get through the graphical glitches to play the game, which, is solid.  Like I said, you end up with the opportunity to indirectly control up to 25 characters at a time in battle.  The way it works is thus:

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