Sharingan
22nd November 2008, 10:29
Ouch. The 360 version was recently released, and it's getting butchered for its technical shortcomings, especially on the graphical side of things. This doesn't bode well at all for the upcoming PS3 version, considering The Last Remnant runs on the Unreal engine, and if the developers can't even get it to work right on a hardware platform that's supposed to work well with that engine, I'm not eager to see what mess they manage to make out of the PS3 version.
Some excerpts from the Gamespot (crappy review site, I know) review:
When you first begin The Last Remnant, you'll participate in a battle within moments of inserting the game disc, and chances are that you'll be struck by a glaring issue: The frame rate is awful, and the texture pop-in is shockingly bad. It's an issue you'll never quite get used to, considering that it mars the entirety of the experience. What a shame, because this long and fascinating Japanese role-playing game has a way of getting under your skin. It features a rich, original fantasy world, obviously crafted with great care and artistry, and it tells a strong, politically charged tale that will keep you glued to the screen. Although somewhat flawed, the battle system is fun to play around with, particularly in the second half when enormous armies go head to head in some dramatic, bloody showdowns. Had developer Square Enix not rushed an unfinished product to shelves, The Last Remnant could have been an instant classic. But even if the game isn't what it should have been, RPG fans should take this journey in spite of the game's technical defects.
It's downright depressing that this inner beauty is so heavily diminished by a totally broken technical framework. The Unreal 3 engine powers The Last Remnant's visuals, but it isn't clear whether the technology wasn't a good fit for the game, or whether the development team simply wasn't capable of using it to manifest its vision. Either way you look at it, the visuals are technically broken, a total embarrassment that intrudes on every single aspect of the gameplay. The frame rate is awful, often pausing for a second or two at a time, and slowing to a crawl anytime anything of significance happens on the screen. This isn't just an annoyance, but a huge detractor to the pace of battles and exploration, which are further broken up by inexplicably long loading times. Cities are divided into tiny areas, and moving from one to the next leads to loading screens that jolt you back to reality every few minutes. Furthermore, though many Unreal 3-powered games suffer from some texture pop-in, you've never seen it to this extent. It can take almost 10 seconds for some textures to load, and that includes everything from ground textures, to character faces, to walls. These drawbacks are somewhat alleviated if you install the game to your hard drive, but it isn't a big enough difference to justify using up such a huge amount of drive space. Either way, we shouldn't have to choose either of these evils.
Squeenix should just have stuck with their own development tools instead of fiddling around with middleware they've no experience with.
Some excerpts from the Gamespot (crappy review site, I know) review:
When you first begin The Last Remnant, you'll participate in a battle within moments of inserting the game disc, and chances are that you'll be struck by a glaring issue: The frame rate is awful, and the texture pop-in is shockingly bad. It's an issue you'll never quite get used to, considering that it mars the entirety of the experience. What a shame, because this long and fascinating Japanese role-playing game has a way of getting under your skin. It features a rich, original fantasy world, obviously crafted with great care and artistry, and it tells a strong, politically charged tale that will keep you glued to the screen. Although somewhat flawed, the battle system is fun to play around with, particularly in the second half when enormous armies go head to head in some dramatic, bloody showdowns. Had developer Square Enix not rushed an unfinished product to shelves, The Last Remnant could have been an instant classic. But even if the game isn't what it should have been, RPG fans should take this journey in spite of the game's technical defects.
It's downright depressing that this inner beauty is so heavily diminished by a totally broken technical framework. The Unreal 3 engine powers The Last Remnant's visuals, but it isn't clear whether the technology wasn't a good fit for the game, or whether the development team simply wasn't capable of using it to manifest its vision. Either way you look at it, the visuals are technically broken, a total embarrassment that intrudes on every single aspect of the gameplay. The frame rate is awful, often pausing for a second or two at a time, and slowing to a crawl anytime anything of significance happens on the screen. This isn't just an annoyance, but a huge detractor to the pace of battles and exploration, which are further broken up by inexplicably long loading times. Cities are divided into tiny areas, and moving from one to the next leads to loading screens that jolt you back to reality every few minutes. Furthermore, though many Unreal 3-powered games suffer from some texture pop-in, you've never seen it to this extent. It can take almost 10 seconds for some textures to load, and that includes everything from ground textures, to character faces, to walls. These drawbacks are somewhat alleviated if you install the game to your hard drive, but it isn't a big enough difference to justify using up such a huge amount of drive space. Either way, we shouldn't have to choose either of these evils.
Squeenix should just have stuck with their own development tools instead of fiddling around with middleware they've no experience with.