The Last Remnant

I'm not going to do a full-on review, because I haven't finished the game yet, but I've been playing quite a bit of the Square Enix game The Last Remnant, which was recently released on the PC. I've been on an anti-complexity kick lately, and this game gave me a bit of an opportunity to talk about when complexity reduction can go too far.

Now I'm sure noone would actually accuse Square Enix of crafting a game that is altogether too simple. The game's steep learning curve is noted in almost every review I've read of it. But I think they made some decisions with specific mechanics that aren't quite right in terms of rewarding players for understanding the implications of some of their game systems.

The Last Remnant is a somewhat traditional JRPG which eschews a traditional combat system for a system like the one in ogre battle, with a significantly less complicated tactical map. Players control several groups of units, each of which can be assigned general commands, rather than specific commands. Which specific moves each group uses is determined by the game's AI, though with many commands players will see what actions the units will take when they assign the command.

Personally, I think the combat system works very well overall. For the most part, the game's AI makes good decisions, although sometimes I find myself wishing that my healer took the heal action instead of the high damage character which acted right before the healer. I feel like this specific instance happens alot, but other than that, the AI is pretty good about taking actions for units.

Outside of combat, however, I feel that the game is unnecessarily complex, given that players have so little control of their units' progression. Throughout the game, the only unit that you get to really have full control of is the main character. Your other units' skills and equipment selection are fully automated, though you can prevent your units from using certain skills in combat.

All of this would seem okay to me, if it wasn't for the fact that the item system in the game is so unnecessarily complex. You can create and modify your own items using items that enemies drop in battle. However, it is almost never worth doing this, because I always find myself looking for at least 1 necessary component to improve my weapons, and whenever I find a new weapon that I can finally craft, a better one has become available in one of the game's many shops. On top of that, since these items still cost some gold to create, I generally find that trying to collect and build items isn't really worth my time and effort. While this may change as I progress further in the game, the item system, because of its complexity, really isn't worth bothering with. In other words, there is no tangible benefit to trying to understand the system.

On top of that, since you only control the equipment of your one character, and that character only has five item slots, all of this crafting information is largely useless. The only character that you can improve through active item crafting is the main character, and by the end of the game, he is only one of thirty active units in your army at any one time. Your other units will take items from you to improve their equipment from time to time, and will sometimes ask you to take them to acquire an item, but this requires no actual understanding of the item system to do, and only requires you to look around for mobs that drop the particular item they are looking for.

All of this is frustrating to someone who enjoys complexity as I do. But still, if Square was looking to create a beginner friendly game, they should have just made all of the equipment purchasable in the store without forcing players to acquire specific components for all of it. If they were looking to create an exciting, highly complex system for players like me, they should have allowed me to customize the equipment of all of my units, and perhaps given me the option of auto-managing the equipment of other units. The system that is in place in the Last Remnant has the downsides of both, and the upside of neither.

In short, if game companies are worried about a game's item management system being too complex, just add in an auto-manage feature, or leave it out of the game entirely. It is such a shame that such an interesting item system isn't worth experimenting with.

-Jon