The Last Remnant Preview

Games Radar has put together a three-page preview of Square Enix's newly unveiled Unreal Engine 3-powered RPG, The Last Remnant.
According to Takai, The Last Remnant "lets the user control a large number of combatants with a simple command battle system, with an unprecedented amount of characters for an RPG. The tensiokn in the battlefield will be high." His aim is to "keep users on the edge of their seats." After this intro, the battle demo began.

It's turn-based, with a text menu system familiar to anyone who's played RPGs in the past. It seemed that the player selects different battle tactics, but the demo moved quite quickly and without explanation. At first, a party of about five characters, led by Rush, charged into five or so enemies. Lots of different conditions would change throughout the course of the battle - descriptions of how the battle was going, i.e. "Deadlocked!" When "Surge" appeared, more enemies rushed into the battle. While Rush's party fought, another group of computer-controlled mages took down a second party of enemy soldiers. The cat-man from the opening cutscene charged in, shouting "This one is mine!"

I really like the fact that they plan on launching this in the US and Japan simultaneously. One would hope that the language translations and voiceovers will be spot-on.