The Last Remnant Previews

GameSpot and GameSpy are both offering up new previews of Square Enix's The Last Remnant, after getting some hands-on time with the upcoming RPG at the Tokyo Game Show. An excerpt from GameSpot's preview:
Battles are fought with squads or unions that consist of five people. Our squads were already created and were well balanced, but a lot of strategy comes into play when you have to create your own. Depending on what kind of situation you're in, you'll want to ensure that you always have a healer in your party and that some of your weaker characters hang back in the formation so they don't get pummeled in the front lines. We were told that there will be situations in which you'll have to change around the squad depending on what your goal is.

We wandered around a rather barren mountainside and ran headfirst into some giant lizards to initiate a battle. As you get closer to an enemy, a symbol will appear over its head, and if you press the right trigger exactly when you see the exclamation mark, you will gain an advantage in battle. Once the battle starts, you select what you want your squad to do. If you choose to attack, your entire squad will attack one by one. If you choose to heal, only the members in your party who can heal will cast the spell. You can't give individual commands to the squad, but your strategy revolves around creating the most efficient team.

And an excerpt from GameSpy's preview:
Following some successful monster murder, I was rewarded with bits and pieces of the monsters I'd just killed and, in many cases, an entire carcass that I could drag back to town (in my inventory, of course, I didn't literally have to drag it). These carcasses could be sold to vendors for cash, but if I felt particularly sadistic I could also butcher the carcass into its composite parts. Butchering can could result in the discovery of special monster parts that can be used to somehow augment or upgrade specific party members' items, armor or weapons.

My PR guide mentioned that there was another feature when roaming the overworld, called Air Time, that comes in handy for grinding out experience points at a more rapid rate. Rush can use a special ability that slows down time temporarily, enabling him to gather several groups of enemies together for a larger combat encounter. Larger battles are more challenging and the more challenging the battle, the bigger the experience rewards you reap.