Last Remnant - thoughts?

[maxlords]

Ok, I have a copy of Last Remnant coming in for me at the local game store. However, the reviews for it are all over the place. To me it looked like the best of the bunch for new-gen RPGs coming out, but I just want to know if the reviews are well-founded or not.

Does anyone have this yet and has anyone clocked more than an hour in to give a decent idea of whether it's worth bothering? I only play 1-2 RPGs a year most times, and I really wanted to give this one a go...but if it's craptacular....

Some comparisons to other games would be nice. For example...I loved Mass Effect and Rogue Galaxy, didn't really get into FFXII (but I haven't tried yet a lot), dig Oblivion and Fallout 3, and adore stuff like the Suikodens and FFVI.

Thanks in advance!

[kupomogli]

It's from Squaresoft. I mean come on. Squaresoft has never made a bad game. :P

/sarcasm

I haven't played it so I can't really tell you. Not really interested in it that much as I haven't been looking into the PS360 scene at all as of late. I mean I went to the store the other day and I actually saw some games released that I didn't hear of since I just stopped bothering keeping up with the systems.

I've only been keeping up with the PSP and DS as those are the only current gen systems I care about.

[carlcarlson]

The main faults I've read about have been framerate issues and texture pop-in. Both are said to be absolutely horrible, especially considering this game is coming from Square. They also say the battle system can also be overwhelming.

The game looks and sounds awesome to me, so I'll definetly be trying it out. The only comparison I've heard is FFXII, which I loved, though I'm not sure how similar the two are.

[Sudo]

I have the game sitting on my shelf sealed, but I'm waiting until I get my HDTV next week to play it. I don't really want to play it on my spare 17 inch 4:3 monitor, so I'll post impressions then.

[unwinddesign]

I read some reviews, and they all seem to be saying the same thing: it's a technical mess. The framerate drops are horrible (as in the game pauses for seconds at a time) and textures sometimes take like five or ten seconds to pop in. Ganespot calls the technical problems "embarassing." Unforunately, I would call Gamespot's journalistic integrity and accuracy over the years less than embarassing, so take those words with a grain of salt. It has about a 65% rating on Gamerankings, as I'm sure you're aware.

These things don't bother me, really -- I mean Fable II has some pretty bad glitches, as does Fallout 3, and don't get me started on some of the ugly graphical shit that happened in Halo 2...so I'll be picking up a copy. Not for $60, mind you, but that's simply because I already have like six 20+ hour games to play over the holidays, and not nearly enough time for anything that would take 65 hours or so.

[kupomogli]

I guess PS3 gamers interested should be glad that Square Enix decided to release it for the 360 first. Maybe Square Enix will fix the problems it has.

[maxlords]

Famitsu gave it a 38 out of 40 apparently. I don't care about framerate and textures, only gameplay and storyline myself.

[boatofcar]

The biggest flaw I've read about is that the battle animation scenes are incredibly long and unskippable. This combined with extremely long (one review said some bosses take more than one hour to kill) was enough to turn me off of this game. I don't mind long, drawn out fights, but I want to be able to skip the long "summoning" animations.

[G-Boobie]

Famitsu gave it a 38 out of 40 apparently. I don't care about framerate and textures, only gameplay and storyline myself.

Yeah, but Famitsu has questionable judgment at times, especially when it comes to Square Enix games. I'm not calling Famitsu out per se, just pointing out that one should never trust a single source for their critical information, especially a source that has historically played for the 'home team'. :)

I played it briefly at my local PlayNTrade and it was decidedly 'meh'. It looks OK when things are actually moving, and the premise of the combat is interesting, but I played the game for nearly twenty minutes and I'm not sure anything actually happened in that time. I was intrigued enough to put it in my 'rent eventually' list, but nothing in the experience jumped out an grabbed me.

Allegedly, installing the game to your hard drive fixes a lot of the technical problems, although I can't personally verify that. It's probably worth a shot.

And lastly: speaking of Saga, didn't Akitoshi Kawazu have his filthy mitts in Last Remnant?