Before I forget, Happy Dissidia Release Day! Mine came in today with my brand spanking new Dissidia silver PSP. Oh happy day…!
But to keep me occupied between inFamous and Dissidia, I’ve been playing quite a bit of The Last Remnant. It’s quite possibly the most different RPG I’ve ever played because the battle system is so nuts. You have to recruit random characters to form a battle union, select the union formation, select which characters go where in the formation, and then try to implement the union as well as you can in battle. Combat is turn-based, but each union gets a turn, and within that turn each member of the union gets a turn. You have some control over what they do, but not really. The big factor of it all is how you send your unions into battle. This is where it’s most like a real-time strategy game, and it gets frantic in a hurry.
I had a lot of trouble with it at first, because it makes me strategize in a way I’ve never had to. With hack n’ slash games, I use my RARRRR technique. With turn-based games, I smack away one enemy at a time unless they’re really weak. Now I have to figure out how the enemy is set up and the best way to send my troops into battle. I’ve been overwhelmed and frustrated more than once.
A few hours into it, I started to see how everything came together and had fun with it. However, I’m also now seeing all the technical problems everyone talked about when the game released this past November, and they’re quite annoying. The textures pop in and out of cut-scenes, and the constant fluctuation of the audio volume is driving me insane. But, it’s not enough to make me stop playing the game. It’s just a shame though, because it keeps it from being perfect.
I wonder if the PS3 version, which came out five months later, fixed all of these problems. I may need to rent a copy and see.
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