This has been one of the biggest years for RPG releases on the Xbox 360.  The Last Remnant is the final JRPG to grace the system for 2008, but it really should have waited till fall of 2009.  The game has some great characteristics with the idea of the battle system and the story but technical aspects of this title makes me discouraged to see it released to the public in this manner.

          This is your basic brother is suppose to protect sister; brother loses sister now brother needs to rescue sister tale.  That is the A-Z way of saying it, but there is more to the story than just that.  There is the political intrigue, which deals with the Remnants and the rulers of the world, the Dukes the Marquees and the Lords.  Granted the tale is not as grandiose as Final Fantasy XII but it is not bad to thumb through.  The only trouble with it is the voice-over work, but since when has any Japanese RPG game have good voice-over work?

          The story itself is very long winded and if you are any fan of Square’s previous productions than you are aware of the cut-scenes that take place, but it is better than reading text boxes to progress the story.  You actually watch the game more than you play it, whether it is watching a cut-scene, watching a battle unfold or watching a loading screen. 

            Load times in this game are atrocious, and I have a measly 20 gig HDD, so I only downloaded the first disc.  It really does make a difference, the load times have been cut by up to three seconds per load.  If I did not have that convenience than I would be pulling what hair I have left out of my head.  Now if I could just cut a few more seconds, even minutes off of the battles, than I would be in there.

            The battle system is in fact one of my higher interests of the Last Remnant.  In a traditional RPG, you are in control of a party and the individual characters.  Not so much here, your “individual character” is a group of characters and you can only control a few of them (the leaders).  Allow me to break it down even further, say you have four guys in one formation (the formation being the individual character).  Those four guys pool their hit-points as well as there magic points (if one guy in the group takes a beat down, it could take out the whole formation).  Now imagine that multiplied by three, having 12 characters but in three formations.  It really makes for interesting combats and is quite fun, the only drawback is the length of some of the boss battles and watching the same animations over and over again.

            The boss battles are very drawn out, I fought one encounter that took me over an hour and I failed to win.  I guess you could call them epic, but watching the same maneuvers time after time gets pretty monotonous.  The skirmishes would have been a lot more enjoyable if there was a way to skip all the vibrancy, regrettably there is not.  One more gripe I have with the battle system is the drop in frame rate during some of the previously mentioned maneuvers.  Frame rate issues like those I had thought were a thing of the past, as if the fights were not slow enough.  This is just one of the many technical issues this beta (oops Freudian slip), I mean game has. 

            Since it is ok for this “completed” game to have frame rate issues I guess it is ok to have texture pop-in issues too.  Maybe it has something to do with Square’s lack of ability using Unreal technology; they should probably get in contact with Dennis Dyack and his Silicon Knights debacle.  Enough with speculation, it would be nice to have a real reason as to why this game was released in such a manner.  They should have kept this title baking in the oven for another six to eight months.

Square talked about giving Westerners what they wanted with this title, I beg to differ, we usually want games that run smoothly and look good.  For such a reputable company as Square Enix is, I tend to hold them to a higher standard of development.  Unfortunately, they chose not to consider their own standards and by doing so has me concerned for the next installment that they plan to release with Star Ocean next year.  I still enjoy the battles even if they last forever but it is not a good enough reason for you to purchase this title much less rent it.  But, if you can forgive the technical issues and the crazy amount of loading times, you may still have fun with it.  Otherwise, I would have to suggest a pass on the Last Remnant.  6/10