Playing A Game The Last Remnant PC

Playing The Last Remnant is a little like watching a battle in The Lord of the Rings. A party of heroes fights a big group of bad dudes and/or a small number of bigger, badder dudes. Swords swing, there's some magic, swooping camera angles, epic music. It really looks and sounds impressive. But I'm still trying to figure out how to play it.

As near as I can tell, it's a sort of compromise between SRPGs like Bahamut Lagoon and traditional Final Fantasy-style RPGs. A party is a "union," and you enter battle with up to several of these (at least in the demo, I seem to have two at all times). These unions each consist of sword wielders and magic users and so on. When you enter into battle with the enemy, they, too, are split into unions, and not necessarily the same number of unions as you (like 3+). Though unions themselves have multiple characters, each one tends to function as a single unit.

Combat is turn-based: before a phase of turns, which I guess is decided by an agility stat or something, you'll give an order to each of your unions. Orders like Attack, Use Physical Arts, etc., as well as a target enemy union for the order. Here's the thing- the possible orders are context-sensitive. If someone in your union has taken damage, an order to heal them will show up. And if someone in another friendly union has taken damage, you can give an order to go and intervene on their behalf. Orders also take into account physical battlefield placement. But you have no direct control over this, aside from telling a union to stay put or to go at a particular enemy union.

Once orders are given, they're carried out automatically. Sometimes, but not always, the screen will prompt for quick time event button presses for extra damage. Other than that you're just watching the swooping camera movement and waiting for the next turn. It's all quite exciting, but begs the question: what am I really accomplishing? The combat system is already sufficiently AI-driven that I feel like my choices don't have much of an impact on what's going on. I'm still trying to figure it out though, so maybe there are some controls I'm not hitting yet.

Progress: Gave Up -- Shambled around in the Steam demo