If I were to say to "Square-Enix", what words would spring to mind? "Final" and "Fantasy" would probably be the most common answer, yet for some reason Square-Enix has eschewed the PC as a gaming platform for the majority of their long running and critically acclaimed series. Now enter The Last Remnant, another Square-Enix game with a very similar style to the Final Fantasy series but nowhere near as popular - and suddenly it gets a PC port. If there's some clever business tactic at work, it's hard to see it - still, I don't usually complain about such gifts from one of those console toys, so let's dive into The Last Remnant with a judicial keyboard at the ready.

You play the role of some adolescent sprog by the name of Rush, who's loping around trying to find his little sister who was kidnapped or something. And there are these enormous ornamental rocks stuck in the ground that people want to gain control of, to harness their crazy powers or whatever - and maybe, just maybe, the missing sister has something to do with this completely unrelated phenomenon. So the story wins a few points for being mildly original, but still - giant artefacts? C'mon, why not throw in a few green, one-legged ostriches for good measure? To be fair, the Remnant artefacts actually make some sort of sense as you progress through the game - just make sure you bear with it through the opening stages, when it makes as much sense as boiled ice cream.

If you've played any of the Final Fantasy series or similar, you'll know what to expect from this Japanese Role Playing Game. You run around in third person view whilst interacting with plenty of people, objects and places, punctuated by regular turn-based battles where your party and your enemies very politely take it in turns to knock the stuffing out of each other. Fighting is somewhat simplified compared to the popular series I keep referencing - at least, to start with. You'll spend the first ten hours of the game wondering why the creators of Final Fantasy have given you this astonishingly basic fighting system, but as your options start to open up, you get access to more advanced styles of fighting, better combat moves, magic spells, and just generally far more variety. With these available, fighting becomes far more a matter of skilled gameplay, as opposed to 'whoever has the biggest chunk of health wins'.

The characters themselves perform attacks or actions based upon what you have asked them to do. You can make them use a special skill or attack, or just let them do what they think would be appropriate judging by the current state of the battlefield. There is a big emphasis on positioning in fights too, so if you have flanked the enemy or taken them from behind, you get a decisive advantage, and vice versa if they get the drop on you. This affects how you play, because separate units within the game can move across fighting areas to initiate an attack where they have an advantage. You also get critical hits, which are dependent on whether you can hit certain hotkeys in time when the situation arises, adding a little more immersion into the fight, rather than sitting back like a vacant puppeteer as you watch your characters lay into their opponents.

I bet you're just abiding by common stereotype by this point and assuming that all the characters have unfeasibly long, spiked, ornately styled hair - and you're right, of course. This seems pretty much de rigeur for any JRPG, as is the habit of creating a main character who's pretty headstrong and rather annoying. Rush seems to do absolutely everything in opposition to what you, the player, actually want to do, the daft thing being that his actions via cut scenes affect the story far more than your own in-game actions. When we're playing the game ourselves, choosing our own actions, why do we have to have a twerpy little teenage nitwit making stupid decisions and communicating intolerably with everyone else in the game?

Said cut scenes are actually pretty good; in fact, The Last Remnant thrives on cut scenes, all rendered with sparkling graphical prowess. The in-game visuals are none too shoddy either, with plenty of the latest technical wizardry ensuring that things are very easy on the eye. However, despite the intricate detail and textures throughout, one may be let down slightly by the animation, which is quite stilted at times and does not do justice to the otherwise quite beautiful graphics. Characters walk in a slightly stilted way and certain animations such as gestures are hideously overused, making conversations a farce. NPCs are always frantically and repeatedly gesturing the same movements too, no matter how irrelevant they are to the conversation.

Whilst The Last Remnant is a fairly capable JRPG and will provide many hours of fun, you are still left feeling as though something is missing. What's missing is soul; the game just doesn't draw you in and envelop you with an enticing story, wrapping its emotional arms around you and bringing you back begging for more. Instead the storyline ambles along pleasantly but never provides the dramatic highs and lows that we have come to expect from a Square-Enix production. It's an enjoyable enough endeavour, but not the best on the market at the moment.

Reviewed by Adam Shirley for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).