The Last Remnant

For the past month I have been craving a good JRPG and I thought I found one with Square Enix's The Last Remnant. The Last Remnant has all the standards - You're playing a teenage boy with a mystic gift trying to save his family from one evil guy that is also trying to take over the world, thus you save the world while trying to save your family, magical artifact (Remnants), et cetera. There are no real levels in the game to say, instead the more you use an ability the stronger it becomes and randomly with the more mobs you fight random stats will increase. You control a handful of different Unions (Groups) which consist of 1 - 5 units each. You get to choose each unit, so your unions can customize each Union to your liking (Healers, casters, slow powerful units, fast units, et cetera). You can't really control each unit individually instead you tell what you want each Union to do, making it rather simple and the most aggravating aspect in the game. When in combat with each union the standard commands are: Attack, Attack with Combat Arts (Skills), Attack with Mystic (Magic), and the do whatever command. Whenever a union is low or has a status aliment then you -normally- get to choose between Heal while attacking, just focus on healing, or Turn the tables (Go all our attacks). However, it was to the bright decision of someone at Square Enix to not always give you commands that you need. Sometimes you'll almost have that difficult boss that has killed you eight times dead and then you lose the ability to tell any of your Unions to heal, your biggest hitter's lose the ability to attack with combat arts, et cetera. This will make you rage.

I played the game for about 40+ hours before realizing how bad of a turn it took almost suddenly. The game was enjoyable for the most part, a bit boring at parts, but overall good. Bosses were challenging, unique and fun. Then, Square Enix must have decided that they hate their customers. Almost out of thin air all the battles change for about 40% luck, 30% union make-up, and 30% character strength to 90% luck. Every boss you come across has abilities to kill everyone or almost everyone in a single turn. I stopped playing after dieing five times on a single boss and then killing said boss with absolute no trouble the sixth time. With the change to 90% luck for all battles, they implement the strongest Catch-up AI I have ever seen (Way worst than Mario Kart 64). On difficult battles everything would be normal and then when the opponent was ~half health my chance to hit, chance to crit seemed to drop to near zero while my chance to be crit and chance to be hit were almost certainty. But, I could live with all that, it could make it challenging -if- I could control my Unions better.
There is no skill to this game, only luck.

wow, very interesting, nice write up. yeah i read a couple reviews for this game and they said the battle system seemed like Square-Enix's attempt at a crazy idea to see if people would enjoy something totally different. sounds like it backfired.

i was going to DL this game sometime but i think im going to pass on it now.

If you enjoy having the least possible control in a video game and being to the complete mercy of luck, pick it up. Else, skip IMO.