The Last Remnant - first look

Now, we moved to another dungeon - the aqueducts beneath Nagapur. Again, the demo ended quickly and without a hint of battle - this time, maybe 10 seconds. The demo quickly moved on to the Vale of the Gods, a canyon area, with a shallow river running through it. This is the most impressive area we've seen - beautiful water, abundant nature and huge cliffs with foliage at the top. There's also a treasure chest - much like FFXII it's more of a bizarre vessel than a chest. It contained several different treasures.

Finally, we moved to the Yamarn Plain. Many enemies wander around here. According to Ueda, thise is where the battle in the first scene took place - "It's a battlefield area so in this wide open plane, you will be able to enjoy the Last Remnant battle system." The enemies here are definitely larger than those from the dungeons, including strange Treant-style living trees and large canines. With the words that we were about to see the "the real meat of Last Remnant" Ueda turned the demo over to the game's director, Hiroshi Takai.

According to Takai, The Last Remnant "lets the user control a large number of combatants with a simple command battle system, with an unprecedented amount of characters for an RPG. The tensiokn in the battlefield will be high." His aim is to "keep users on the edge of their seats." After this intro, the battle demo began.

It's turn-based, with a text menu system familiar to anyone who's played RPGs in the past. It seemed that the player selects different battle tactics, but the demo moved quite quickly and without explanation. At first, a party of about five characters, led by Rush, charged into five or so enemies. Lots of different conditions would change throughout the course of the battle - descriptions of how the battle was going, i.e. "Deadlocked!" When "Surge" appeared, more enemies rushed into the battle. While Rush's party fought, another group of computer-controlled mages took down a second party of enemy soldiers. The cat-man from the opening cutscene charged in, shouting "This one is mine!"