This game looks pretty good, but metacritic gave it 66/100. I prefer normal people's views so if anyone has played it, tell me yay or nay

I have coveted it a very long time as JRPG's are a rare thing on the PC but €20 still isn't cheap enough. There is a demo you can download via Steam.

I'd give it 6 / 10 as well. It's not that it's bad, it just not really that good. The combat system is a little new, but I found was very much based on luck. They also have this BattleRank thing, which increases as you win battles, but the higher your battle rank, the harder the enemies are, so if you're not careful then the boss characters are just impossible, all because you chose to explore and see more of the game.

It is also really long. I cheated towards the end, and just played it through to see the fairly uninspiring finish.

So it starts well, you'll get an enjoyable 10 or so hours, but it gets old after that.

It's very different. Takes a lot of getting used to & difficult to control with keyboard at first.

I wouldn't recommend it on its own, but if you take advantage of that huge Square pack on Steam it's worth the $5 or so it costs in there.

I'm planning on buying it but I'm waiting for the game to go on sale. I hope it goes on sale, $40 normal price is too much for the game - and the current sale price is still too high.

I loved it (the pc port). It gave me 110hours of fun. It's a typical Square linear jRPG with an innovative battle system (for better or for worse). IMHO it's better than FFX, X-2, & 12 (haven't tried 13). If you like variety in your jRPGs , give it a go.

The game is about 25% main storyline and 75% optional side quests. With the battlerank system (a form of level scaling) you don't need to grind those side quests to buff your character. Just play what's fun. In fact, this game has a special feature in that the higher completion score you have, the more difficult forms of the final boss are unlocked (this is different than battlerank). :D

Regarding low review scores, I dunno. Aren't jRPG's not named FF kind of niche in the western market? With that in mind, experimenting with the battle system might have been a bad idea, taking people too far away from their comfort zone. The 360 release apparently had severe performance problems and balance issues (fixed for PC ). The PC version was released months later and didn't benefit from the 360's advertising and suffered for it's reputation. The PC demo throws you into the deep side of the pool without really describing the battle system. The full game's manual is better but still doesn't do the job. You'll want the wiki to properly understand things like formations.
http://lastremnant.wikia.com/wiki/The_Last_Remnant_Wiki_-_The_Last_Remnant_Guide

BattleRank was a non-issue for me, so much so that I even forgot about the system (I think this was altered for PC). I did not find the game particularly luck based though it does have an optional QTE element to the battle system that can really turn things in your favor (pretty much the only QTE implementation in a video game I like).

My favorite part of the game was character collection. In the PC version they allowed you to build formations of nothing but leaders (unique characters). There are actually more leaders than formation slots (IIRC ~16) so you'll still have some warming the bench. :D

I like this game's battle system better than ATB.

If you like jrpg's, I would get it at its sale price. It's worth it.

I'm guessing you're talking about it on Steam, in which case I would wait to see if it goes up as a Daily Deal before buying it (if it doesn't, just buy it on the last day of sales). I've been burned before buying a game that wasn't a daily deal only to have it go even cheaper the next day because I didn't wait D:

I had fun with Last Remnant, never beat the game, but that was a controller issue with my wired 360 one (it's since been resolved, but I haven't reinstalled it yet). The battle system took getting used to, but I enjoyed it while I played it.

I played it a year or so ago I think and enjoyed it. JRPGs are really not my thing, but for some reason The Last Remnant really caught my attention so I got it and enjoyed most of my playing through it. I think by the end I was a bit bored and restless, but generally it was fun and worth it.

I am a huge JRPG fan, I like tactical RPG, I was a huge early Square Enix (well before FFX at least), and like other have said JRPG are a rarity on PC... but... this game definitely fall under the "tried very hard to like it but always fail to"

The plot and the characters are pretty bland even by modern Square standard, but for me the worse is the combat, at first it seems complex, tactical with lots of different possible strategies, but after some time it falls apart.

More than often the outcome of a battle is determined either by power difference in your favor or just by sheer luck rather than any sort of strategy. I also finds it incredibly frustrating, I could even say annoying, you often feel like you don't have any real control on what characters inside your "group" does and when they do it, which spell they cast, on which enemy,etc.... (I really hate when your guys lose turns, waiting stupidly not doing anything, just because their original designated target got killed before they reach their turn)

For me Last Remnant's combat system is the proof that new/innovative doesn't always mean good.

THIS. I love the game, the aesthetic, everything but the combat really does let it down. If they would just make them able to attack ANOTHER victim instead of the "Oh fuck you guys killed that guy first. Oh well, time to wait for the next turn".... $%$@#%#$@

I'm playing TLR and it's my first JRPG since I only play PC games. It's an interesting game but is held back by so many baffling design decisions. The story, setting and graphics are all really nice and the cutscenes are amazing even if the voice acting is a bit hit or miss. But combat is what brings the game down to about a 5/10 game. I can safely say that in all of my 25+ years of being a gamer I have never encountered a game where pretty much everything is so piss-poorly explained as in TLR - you will have to search the web 10 times in the first 5 hours of the game because none of it is explained ingame or in the manual. I like to figure things out on my own but this is insane - it's like playing an RTS withou any numbers so you have no way of knowing if what you do works or not. In fact TLR is the type of game for people who love to min/max the shit out of their RPGs and to play with a guide that will assist them every step of the way. The turnbased nature also mean that luck is the biggest factor in who wins a fight in that you can only issue basic commands like attact, use magic, use melee, heal etc. but sometimes you don't get a specific command and sometimes you do - so combat is a crapshoot so prepare to reload 20 times. Regular creatures are not a problem but bosses can be balls-busting hard.
Despite all of this I don't hate the game and it's fun to play a JRPG for the first time and it's nice to play an RPG that doesn't take place in a DnD setting. But the combat system brings the game down and it's not because it is that complicated it's just that the game doesn't explain anything so you are left in the dark with how things work. I hate using guides in my RPGs and I hate games the force you to min/max. If you can get the game for about 10 euros it's worth it just to try it and I hope we will see more JRPGs on the PC in the future but TLR is simply not a good game.

It's an okay game. I'm at 52ish hours so far, and only just finished "disc one". After a while the battles stop being so random for some reason (presumably because your dudes start getting so many skills that they're statistically bound to show up on the list in any given turn), at which point the game becomes more enjoyable.

Story-wise the game is fairly mediocre - its sole saving grace is The Conqueror, who is a prime example of the less-is-more paradigm. The voice acting is pretty bad in both English and Japanese, and comically the lip syncing is off for both dubs. Still, there's a fair bit of world-building going on, and exploring the world is quite enjoyable.

It's up to you if you want to wait for a sale or not. The game might be worth it, or it might not.

if you like final fantasy (especially 12) you will like this game.
i don't think that the battle system is all that bad, yes sometimes the characters
dont do what you want them to do but it's not all that hard to understand.
without any learning and play as i go i got to the end of disc one.
it will take a restore sometimes, but that only happens a few times.
the only real struggle so far was the nest of eagles in which you had to fight 2
bosses at the same time.

i never managed to finish it, not because it is that bad. but because my old pc couldn't handle it and i played it on my dads pc. never bothered to copy the savegames to my new pc. but one day i will and finish this.

as a matter of fact i gonna go look for the game right now and start it up again.:)

[edit] okay think i can scratch that, since it looks like i dont have the savegame anymore. (darn those games that keep their save games in my documents and the sorts)

Well i own it on 360 and really enjoyed it (unfortunatly i have RROD so can't play it anymore) My problem was the lag in the battles but that's resolved in the PC version.

I have heard from a fellow GoG member that it tanked his GPU and overheated his computer though so i'm not sure how reliable this game is or how well it runs.