The Last Straw
Next to maybe Nintendo, I don’t think there has been a single company with the same undying love from gamers the world over as Squaresoft. Between the SNES and PlayStation, no developer had a better track record, and their laundry list of classics between those two platforms is simply unmatched. Secret Of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, Xenogears, the list goes on and on. Sure there were a few misses, but the hits far outweighed them. And while its rank among the top games of all time can be debated, nobody can argue that Final Fantasy VII is one of the most important video games ever made. Simply put: I loved Squaresoft. Notice I said SquareSOFT as, ever since Square decided to spend $200 million dollars on a movie studio in Hawaii and fuck everything up to the point where they had to merge into the company we all know as Square-Enix, things haven’t been so rosy.
Since then, they’ve released some truly shitty games in the form of Dawn Of Mana, Dirge Of Cerberus, and Unlimited SaGa that the Square I grew up with would’ve NEVER released in the state those were in. Final Fantasy XII was a major disappointment (in my book at least), and their next gen presence is near non-existent, having only released two games on 360 and none at all on PS3. Now while there have been some diamonds in the rough (Radiata Stories, Dragon Quest VIII, Crisis Core and The World Ends With You), and their DS and PSP support has been far and away better then their console support, the overall quality of their products has gone down significantly over the last four years.
Frankly, the company has been riding the coattails of their previous successes for far too long with their Final Fantasy sequels, prequels, gaidens, spin-offs, and side stories getting way out of hand, and their whoring of Kingdom Hearts is not too far behind. But through all this, I have blindly supported the company and their endeavors. I just have far too many fond memories from my childhood to think otherwise, and when they do connect, they still can hit it out of the park further then pretty much anyone else, in my book. Because of this, I’ve been a good little soldier over the years and continue to give the company oodles of cash no matter what reviewers say.
Well that shit just ended because The Last Remnant is out and it is quite possible the single most embarrassing release by a major publisher since Driv3r. Where to begin? Well let’s start off with the obvious: this game has the worst framerate I have ever encountered. During every single battle, every time you go in for an attack the framerate slows to a crawl. It even happens during cut scenes with lots of effects in them and it’s extremely noticeable. Secondly, the load times are amazingly awful. I want you to imagine about a 6 second load time every time you enter a new area, go through a door, start a cut scene, end a cut scene, end a battle, and go into some menus. It’s unbearable.
Then there’s the engine. This game was actually made using Unreal Engine 3, and it’s quite obvious the developer had no idea how to use it. I’ve got another EVARRR for you: Worst. Texture pop-in. EVARRR. You’ll encounter this little problem at the very start of your first battle as the game takes around 10 seconds to load in every single layer of texture little by little. I could not believe how long it took. We’ve seen this in games like Mass Effect and other UE3 games, but never to the excruciatingly astonishing level that this game takes it to. If I was Epic, I would be angry seeing this game released in its current state as a game like this is something Dennis Dyack could build a case around as to why this engine sucks (because his head’s too far up his own ass to use his own game). Well after seeing Gears Of War 2’s eye-popping visuals, I don’t think “the engine sucks” is a very good excuse anymore because clearly it is a great engine, you’re just not trying hard enough.
Also, don’t tell me you can’t make an RPG with this engine either because Lost Odyssey is 50 times the game The Last Remnant will ever be and used the same engine with fantastic results. If you’re enough of a masochist and you want to go through the game you better have a hard drive because I will go ahead and call the install using the NXE pretty much mandatory. If you install the game (about 7 gigs for each disc), the problems are marginally more manageable but they’re still appalling. And if you don’t have a hard drive, don’t even think about getting this game as from the footage I’ve seen online the game basically turns into a slide show of sorts. More salt to the wound, I suppose.
Now usually I don’t get so worked up over a terrible game like this (especially since there’s about 30 games out right now currently worth your time), but a couple of factors make this game even more infuriating. The worst of which is if you can get past all to the technical problems (which is impossible), there really is the potential for a pretty darn good game here. The battle system is different enough to stick out in the crowded JRPG market, the story has potential to be good, the music is really good (the voice acting is a mixed bag), and if the game was ever actually running properly it would look pretty good as there’s some nice art and detailed character models. Too bad all this potential is wasted on a complete lack of polish across the board.
Square-Enix needed something out for the holidays, so instead of taking the TLC needed for a game of this kind, they shat it out the door with a whole mess of problems. Shame on them for taking advantage of their rabid fan base like that. The Square I knew wouldn’t have let this happen, but it has become quite clear that company is now another page in history.
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Tags: square-enix, the last remnant
December 4th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
I agree with pretty much everything you said in this. I basically consider Final Fantasy to be with Sakaguchi after Lost Odyssey. Final Fantasy XII was not a Final Fantasy game, it was something else entirely.
I will say though, it looks like they’re getting back to what makes Final Fantasy Final Fantasy with XIII. They’re going back to ATB in some form, and they have Tetsuya Nomura back for character design, not to mention they’ve been working on it for about 2 or 3 years already and I wouldn’t expect it for at least another year, especially not in English.
December 4th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
so sad… I was kind of looking forward to this one. This game is a complete mess though.
Whatever… P4 comes out next week, so does anything else really matter anyway?