The Last Remnant

Somehow this game is in my Steam library despite me not remembering that I bought it. I'm like four hours in and I have no idea what the fuck half the combat UI is (the ones I'm confused most by are what Chains represent and what they affect, the blue boxes by the party members and some moves, and why I can't do Rush's special attack). Anybody else played this game?

its trash

Look up the Last Remnant wiki. You will find entirely too much information. TLR is one of those games with so many layers of details in its systems that you'll either lose your mind and say fuck it, I'm just gonna work with what I got, or say yeah I can do some real dumb shit with the min-maxing possible in this game. Either way you approach it, the game will appeal to your autism and kick your ass with classic JRPG bullshit.

To answer your questions, battle chains are the number of enemy squadrons you've beaten without messing up timeshift. The higher it goes, the better exp individual units get. Kill count improves loot drops and is based on the number of individual foes you manage to KO in one battle. If you want some rare stuff, luring several rooms and killing everything in one massive, very dangerous battle is the way to go. You know about the overall Morale bar at the top, right? It turns out Unions have personal morale separate from the overall battle. If Rush's Union has very high or very low morale, he will more often use his unique abilities. Stuff like having individuals get KO'd but the Union still standing or getting attacked by multiple enemy unions lowers personal morale, and little victories like fully going through the QTE or healing bring it up.

Battle Rank = monsters scale up to you = bad. Keep this low

Chain = how many monsters you've killed without going back to the world map, this increases XP rates slightly, every 100 or so

You want to also pull as many monsters into a fight as possible, as this increases rare drops. Smaller fights mean fewer turns to win, which means you're having an easy time, which means your battle rank goes up to compensate, making things harder.

Try to avoid grinding, but don't feel like it's a bad thing if you're working towards skills or upgrades. Doing it blindly will ruin things and make some bosses nearly unwinnable.

Always say yes to learning arts, try to keep people focused on magic or phys but not both.

Pics?

Commands depend on the Union leader's 4th stat, such as Rush's Bravery(?) stat. Nobody knows what this stat does for certain, but it affects the commands. Local morale, global morale, positioning, target, etc all cause contextual commands such as "Set Up the Field" to appear if the enemy is far away and someone has support magic.

Also be aware of something breaks the deadlock you're in - enemies will get bonus damage

odds are you got it in a bundle

It's basically a Saga game.

I think something that will frustrate new players is that there are some things that aren't completely known about the game. Things like Rush's Bravery stat, or the love stat, and others.

I'm retarded.

Yeah, that soundtrack is really fucking good. Half the reason I'm sticking to it. The track playing in this pointlessly fuckhuge desert while I'm doing a """puzzle""" is good enough that I can zone out a little and just listen to that.

Fuck the desert, really. I think it's the worst part of the game.

This guy has the basics down.
Make sure you use any remnants you pick up, too.