Are reviewers playing the same game I am? (The Last Remnant rant)

[mrstickball]

RocketPig -

And I agree. It seems that someone got on some sort of horrible bandwagon with TLR. It's strange when IGN gives it a 5.3, and GameTrailers gives it a 8.0. That's a huge friggin' difference.

In the IGN review, there are a few insane quotes from Eric, the reviewer:

'The problems begin with technical issues. Simply put, The Last Remnant is a coding disaster. Square Enix may have licensed the Unreal Engine 3, the same tools used to make Gears of War, but the developers clearly did not know how to use it. There are such serious framerate issues during combat that what you see on your television sometimes resembles a slideshow. It sullies the entire experience and can even get in the way of gameplay since The Last Remnant has a critical system that requires you to perform timed button presses. The trouble continues with loading, which is laborious given the number of times you go in and out of a fight or change rooms. Once it does get loaded, you'll find awkward texture pop-in which can hurt the visual fidelity of cutscenes and kill any power or emotions they might convey.'

Not as big as he says they are. I'm playing without it installed, and frame rate issues don't happen every single battle (and most battles last a few minutes, so you'd think you'd seem em every time if there were MAJOR issues. They're there, but they aren't as prevalent as he argues).

Texture pop-in exists, but in 15hrs, I've seen it happen all of 3-4 times.

'Even the aspects that the near-broken game engine doesn't hinder still fall short. The animations in The Last Remnant are downright bad (just get a load of the main character running). And since Square Enix opted for in-engine cutscenes, that means you get the same lame animations during every conversation and the lip syncing is oftentimes creepy looking. During battles, the camera is sometimes placed too close to your characters, rendering them partially see-through or totally invisible. You might even find yourself looking at your character standing inside a dragon's tail while attacking said lizard. The Last Remnant is sloppy at best. '

So here he is, bashing UE3's cutscenes and animations? I thought Mass Effect's synching was hailed as brilliant? TLR has better lip synching than IU and a few other JRPGs I've played on the X360. Not perfect, but still better than some other games.

And the most henious part of page 1:

Take the save system as a first example. You can save anywhere in a dungeon or town. It's nice not dealing with save points, an outdated RPG mechanic, but there are no checkpoints in The Last Remnant. That means that if you walk through a door and happen upon a tough fight, you had better hope you saved your game just prior. You won't have any way of knowing that you're about to happen upon something out of your league, though. This system made me paranoid while playing and I felt compelled to save my progress every five minutes. That saved me from some frustration but it definitely isn't an ideal way to play a game. What's more, the game will sometimes thrust you into a series of boss battles without giving you the option to save in between. Play through two and lose on the third and you'll have to start from scratch. Some of the extended battles that keep adding new enemies as you kill others (one featured nearly 100 foes) can last an hour and you can't save or run from the fight midway. Lose at the end of that one and you'll likely give up instead of replaying the sequence a second or third time.

So he bashes the fact the game lets you save anywhere, but has no checkpoints? What WRPG has EVER had checkpoints? I can't remember a single WRPG that, when you died, restarted you at a checkpoint. Perma-death has always been a staple of WRPGs, along with the save-anywhere system. TLR adopted both.

Heck, on King's Bounty: The Legend, I saved after every battle. I did so to ensure I never died...TLR is the same way. Is that a bad thing? No. I'd rather be able to save anywhere than not....Yet he attacks the save system.

And then the game designers rendered this setup rather pointless. Near the start of the game you get five leaders plus your main character. By the end, you can only have six in the active party at once. And, of course, the six you start with are the main side-characters in the game that can do things like limit breaks and offer unique powers. The entire idea of swapping them out for lesser leaders is just pointless. The game then becomes a matter of filling out your unions with lame, generic soldiers which can just be recruited by paying a small fee. There is absolutely no reason to care about anybody other than the group you start with.

What a joke. It would make me think that he never bothered playing the game. I'm 15 hours in, and have swapped out 80% of my characters in favor of new ones. As you progress, many characters will not progress the way you desire. But as your stable of leaders & soldiers grows, you can pick new crews with almost always better skills. Some of my first-run soldiers had 15-20 various level ups, but by switching in new characters, I got some insane powers.

Good example: Caeodemon (sp?). He's a 4-armed Sovani with 2 giant axes, and some incredible spells. He's not a leader you start with. Furthermore, no soldier or leader starts with game-breaking Hex attacks (status attacks that cause massive damage + negative effects from long distances). How did he play the game without such characters?

Only the main characters can use limit breaks, like this one. The rest of the characters are useless filler.

A quote from the reviewer. Through smart leveling, and formations, I have ONE character that can deal Limit break-sized damage values PER TURN. How is it useless filler when you can rely on certain attacks 100% of the time? This guy is a moron.

Overall, the reviewer has to be one of the worst I've ever seen. I can't see how Lost Odyssey can score a 80% average, and TLR a 65% when TLR is equal to LO in so many ways. It's so insanely fusterating to see retarded reviews by people that make so many contradictory statements concerning the game.