Yesterday I started playing the PC port of "The Last Remnant", and have some observations about my first Final-Fantasy-type JRPG. I can see a number of JRPG characteristics that I've heard about over the years -- very different from Western RPGs, which I still prefer. The combat isn't bad, controlling squads of warriors instead of a single player-character during battle.

The Duke is a Japanese man with blond hair, and androgynous. Check. The player character is similarly bishounen. I don't get this aesthetic myself, though the Wikipedia explains it a little: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishounen

There aren't many shops within the towns, and I get the feeling that's typical too, but it's early yet within the game. Many cutscenes, check. Anachronistic clothing, check. (The player character is dressed in a cross between medieval clothing and modern "street" style.)

Anyway, it's very different from Western RPGs but I'll give it a try. Has anyone else played "The Last Remnant"?

I've played the game, and finished it. It's not really a traditional JRPG the way the world exploration and battles work, the combat system in the game is unique for the game (as far as I know).

Anyway, besides the hero being an idiot, I did enjoy the game. And I think the soundtrack is quite good. There are a huge amount of tracks and none of them are bad, although relatively few are really super good.

Stormrider played it and enjoyed it too.

I'd have to agree about the hero, who goes out of his way to be stupid at times. Most obviously when he's addressing the Duke, David, calling him "Dave" right from the start. I wonder if this is also a Japanese thing -- a tradition of the hero being instinctively rebellious.
This article looks interesting: http://www.animevice.com/stereotypes-and-archetypes/22-42/

The Last Remnant is pretty tough for the Xbox 360 version (I know there are some differences between it and the PC version that make the PC version easier IIRC).

It's not the best JRPG's have to offer but it does have a unique battle system. I'd also say it's not the best introduction into JRPG's.

Don't worry so much about labels like bishounen just enjoy the game and the characters for what they are.

Out of all the jrpg's in this world you chose The Last Remnant as your first? Very interesting.

There aren't really that many on the PC to choose from.

Final Fantasy VII would probably have been a better choice. These days you can even use tools to get the original soundtrack and not the horrible midi versions it was released with on the PC.

I would've recommended Kingdom Hearts as a first JRPG ever. Or maybe even Pokemon!

PC version, Holy, PC version!

I'll get through this game first before trying other JRPGs, if then. As a side note, I've changed the language to Japanese (with English subtitles) and it seems an improvement over the dubbed version. Kind of enjoyable to hear the player-character's forces exclaiming in Japanese during battles -- reminds me of a samurai movie.

Yes, the localisation of many RPGs is pretty strange. I'd point, as usual, to bad dub direction since many actors play horrible in one game and grand in another. Sadly this has led to a pretty bad reputation of dubs among many those who are very focused on JRPGs and even those with a great dub tend to get complaints about not having the Japanese audio as an option.

jRPGs seem to be in a pretty awful, stagnant state this generation. You should probably try some older games if you want to find something enjoyable. I'm not much of a jRPG fan either, but I did like Breath of Fire 3 for PS1 (and BoF4, though to a lesser extent).

Older games tend not to have as androgynous character designs or weird fashion styles. It's not just a problem with modern jRPGs, but with Japanese games and anime in general. Even the fighting games suffer from this which is especially ridiculous, rugged martial arts masters have been phased out completely by high school kids with weird powers.

Seems pretty common in videogames in general to me, presumably because of the especially high marketing toward teenage males.

Buying the game and the soundtrack would cost a fair bit more than buying The Last Remnant, though. There's even one guy on Ebay that tries to sell FF7 PC for $499! Although most of them had noticeably lower prices, but still more than a new game. Not sure about this as I never played the PC version, but being a 13-14 year old Windows game I'm guessing it's not exactly a piece of cake to make it run well on a modern computer?


Agreed, there are very few JRPGs I really enjoyed in the past 5 years, although the recently released Radiant Historia for the DS is quite excellent. Just unfortunate that it's not released in Europe so a US friend of mine bought it for me.


I don't really agree there, weird fashion styles and character designs always been a part of JRPGs (which isn't necessarily a good thing), it's just that before the graphics were too poor to really show it, being a tiny SNES sprite or whatever.

I agree that there has been an increasing amount of focus on high school kids when it comes to japanese entertainment, though. Not a development I'm fond of, at all.


Yeah, I prefer playing with the japanese audio in The Last Remnant too

I don't really see it as a problem. :shrug: It makes characters stand out from the crowd. Perhaps not in a general sense, but they tend to be unique in that game's setting. Contrast to many Western games, whose slightly more realistic approach to character design often blurs the lines between characters. I'd have a hard time picking out the main characters from a crowd of NPCs in most Western RPGs. I'll take wacky high school kids with powers any day.

Remmant is a good game with a very unique battle system. It's also one of the few JRPG games that allow you to save where ever you want.

That reminds me, for a while "The Last Remnant" for PC would have cost me $ 90 (U.S.) on Amazon. Insane; I wouldn't pay that much for a Bethesda game let alone a JRPG. But when the price dropped to a more reasonable $28 or so, I decided to try the game.

Thanks for the comments, everyone.

Need a patch. Unfortunately I cannot describe on these forums how I got the game to run.

Doesn't PSN have the older FF series for download?

Yea, but getting them gunna be hard :tongue:

Final fantasy 7,8 and 9
which can be downloaded to a PSP too.

Cant remember, but i think theres some older ones just for PSP.

If you got a iphone final fantasy 1,2 and 3 is on the app store.

I think the chances of running a stable version (and a version we can talk about on these forums) would be better then if you can get it from PSN. I highly recommend FFVII / FFVIII / FFIX. Actually playing FFIX right now, the wife on hiatus with FFVIII.

Played it. Hated it. I didn't like it, now that I mention it, I hate all Square Enix games. Hmm...

Remnant was fun. I never beat it, but I enjoyed the ten or so hours I put into it. I had gotten Vesperia at the same time, and since Vesperia is such a vastly superior game, I sorta left Remnant to collect dust, then traded it in. The combat system doesn't offer much control in combat, though, which seems to be an extremely unfortunate recurring theme for contemporary JRPGs. However, the visceral nature of it, the good animations, and the killer soundtrack made up for that. Somewhat.

So I guess you never played FFX and below.

Fixed, for the sake of your life. There are many a member on here who hate X with a fiery passion, though I'm not one of them. It's my favorite in the series, in fact.

No I mean Square Enix didn't exist until after FFX.