Mog and Chips

Last Remnant, I really want to love you, I really do. Your battle system is delicious, your characters are all likeable and your music is fair. I’m halfway through the game and done every sidequest I’ve come across.

But dear god do you contantly footbullet.

To say this game shoots itself in the foot is an understatement. This game sticks a machine gun up its left nostril and goes to town. Your box of grenades is missing and it’s shitting pins.

The characters are all likeable but the game doesn’t spend enough time really telling you about them. Near the end of disc one there’s a death – the main character, who met them all of a couple of weeks ago is having a quick sniffle, no-one else  bothered. There’s a plot cutscene, and then at the end of the cutcene, a new character jumps in.

“I’m dead character the second, here to serve you!”

End cutscene.

…Who is this character, who is related to the dead character but has never been met? Has no-one cared to introduce them to our main character? Is there no “you can’t possibly replace dead character!” banter?!

And the dead character was nice enough – there was some interaction between them and Rush (the main character)… in sidequests.

Sidequests. Last Remnant has millions of them. The thing about sidequests is that they’re meant to be just that. Sides. The rewards should make the game easier, but it should be possible to do play the game without them. They might clarify the plot or fill holes – but they shouldn’t be what tells you the essentials, because they’re skippable.

And the number of them – there’s so many dungeon crawls, fetch quests and optional boss fights in order to gain enough experience to survive the plot bosses that by the time you’ve done them and got back to the main plot… you’ve forgotten what’s happening. Considering a lot of the game is politics which can be tricky to keep track of, that’s yet another footbullet. And even if not for the story – if you don’t gain stats by the side quest dungeon crawls, you’ll do all the damage of a kitten to the enemies when you get to the plot.

Back to the plot – there’s a bit of a plottwist near the end of disc one, which is essentially an intelligence NPC approaching and revealing “Actually, the person behind all this is FUZZLEBOOTS! Gasp!” (name changed to prevent spoilers )

“It all makes sense now!” says one of the other characters.

…Where did this come from?! There were no clues, not even in the sidequests! At least, not in any sidequests that were accessable. If it’s an essential story component, it needs to be findable. Background extra info from sidequests maybe, but not the main story.

I’m quite attached to the game – I love the strategic battle system, in which you command multiple teams of up to five units as a whole (eg, you’ll say “attack with combat arts!” and they’ll pick their own actions, which you can see before you decide in a side bar.) and there’s quite the thrill when one of the character’s special abilities (a bit like limitbreaks/overdrive) turn up when you really need them and you wipe out half the battle field.

On its own, though, the battle system gets a tad tedious and the story just can’t hold it up. I’m sure there’s a delicious story in there somewhere…but they’ve just failed to actually tell the player what that story is.