Square-Enix has also chosen the Unreal Engine for their outing, rather like Mistwalker did for Lost Odyssey and it shows. Unless you put this game on the HD using the NXE you'll be in for longer load times, terrible texture pop-in/up and a shoddy framerate that slows to a crawl and can grind to a halt during the more epic battles in the game. For me this is a big game killer/breaker and with several glitches and texture errors Last Remnant feels rushed, which is a shame since there's a decent game under these problems.

Even when installed to the NXE the texture pop is noticeable but the framerate smoothes out, there are times when it takes a dip again but it's not as bad as running it from the 2 CDs that the game comes on.

The graphics are nice though, Square-Enix have done a good job using the Unreal Engine to produce and detail their world. The characters are well created and you can tell it's a game that they've spent time working with concept sketches on, since the environments are stunning in places and the complexity of the architecture rivals some of that found in the original Gears of War.

Combat animation and movement are good, the battles are epic and cinematic and when the framerate is smooth they look superb. The main character's animation is stilted when running and some of the other characters feel as though they could have used a little longer with regards to their general animations.

The music and sound is of an excellent quality and the score is worthy of a Final Fantasy style series, it's uplifting and dramatic yet there's a hint of melancholy there in some of the themes throughout the game. There's nothing overly jarring. The voice acting varies as per usual but has a fairly decent level of performance overall in the parts that are voiced.

There are sections of the game that aren't voiced at all, rather like Infinite Undiscovery and this is Square-Enix's attempt to cut down on space on-disk as well as production costs. After being spoilt though by the likes of Final Fantasy 10 we can't help but feel a little cheated when this happens. The Last Remnant is an average game with a fairly decent chunk of world to explore, yet it doesn't feel as massive as it should and the impact of this excellently designed new world is lost due to certain design decisions.

The texture problems and framerate issues are unforgivable in this current generation and to be honest; installing a game on the HD using the NXE shouldn't be a requirement. Whilst it's not listed as such on the box it should really be noted that there is a significant performance upgrade to the game if you do put it on the HD and that's one of my bugbears with the whole thing. It's supposed to be a convenience and whilst some of us have the 120GB drives there are several people with 20GB or memory cards that will find this game unplayable unless they install it.

All in all though, Last Remnant is still better than Too Human.