I picked up my copy of The Last Remnant last night after work, and (after taking care of my cats, who wouldn’t let me near my 360 until they were fed) played until the wee small hours of the morning… which ought to make having to spend the next nine hours in the office a lot of fun.

So… first impressions.

On the superficial side of things, the graphics are not the greatest, and characters have a strange stiffness to them when they walk. I don’t particularly care, but some people might, and it is a little odd coming from a developer like Square Enix who seem to be head over heels in love with gorgeous animation. Load times are a little long, but I’ve seen worse.

The voice acting, though, is significantly better than most games I’ve played lately, and the music has a decidedly nostalgic a touch of old school mixed in with the modern.

Delving deeper, story-wise, I’m not that far in… but I’m intrigued. The characters, too, are likable (or hateable, depending on which side they’re on). Rush Sykes, our protagonist, is your average acts-before-he-thinks kind of kid who, at this point anyway, shows none of the brooding, angsty-ness so common to many of Square Enix’s heroes, nor a reluctance to act (in fact I’ve counted at least four times now that he’s acted without much regard to anything other than achieving his goal of rescuing his sister).

In terms of gameplay, I remain undecided at this point. The Union battle system puts the game into some strange limbo between Final Fantasy XII’s turn-based, random encounter-less system and a strategy RPG. For the early enemies, quite frankly, it seems like overkill… but I think I can see how it might become a lot more interesting (and challenging) later in the game. I was a little overwhelmed at first at the sheer amount of information presented during battle, but I think I’m getting the hang of it.

After approximately 5 hours of gameplay, I can tell you that I do want to play more. Look for a full review once I’ve had the chance to do so.