The Last Remnant

PC Specific

The PC version lets you field an entire army of uniques - guild mercenaries and story characters. There's no longer a need to even look at the standard Athlum Army troops.

Generally speaking, you will not want to grind on lower level enemies unless you can build up a substantial (50+) chain. That said, the PC version redressed the levelling mechanic such that you don't need to worry too much. It's very hard to permanently screw up your stats.

If you are playing the PC version without a gamepad, make sure you go into your options and go past the keyboard tab to the XBox controller tab. The option to have in-game buttons show up as keyboard keys and not XBox buttons is in there, and it will save you a lot of hassle. The game actually controls fine by keyboard/mouse once you swap the prompts.

Despite what a lot of 360 version veterans will tell you, grinding works in the PC version.

There's a reason you can save anywhere, and it is because battles take really long. Save a lot. No one will judge you for it.

Use Mr. Diggs as much as you can because he gets a lot better at digging and a lot of those components (especially metals) are needed to upgrade weapons. And as a general rule of thumb save a few digs for any red harvest points you may miss.

When you capture monsters, always make sure you've got a nice supply of each component it's comprised of before you decide to keep it.

You don't have to do all side quests available, because there are a lot, but if you're having trouble with story quests, don't keep attempting it, do some side quests. If a side quest is too hard, do a different side quest or go exploring.

It's usually a good idea to hit the guild in town first to see if you've met any of the requirements, especially the "obtain 3 of X" ones. Because if you use those components for crafting, you no longer have the requirement.

Don't feel pressured to use the first battle leaders you get. While the ones with super attacks are quite useful, feel free to use characters unlocked from side quests as they will usually give your team a bit more variety.

As soon as soldiers who can use revive herbs show up, recruit a few and stick them into your unions.

You can turn off the QTE crits (making them a random chance) in the options if they buggin you, although there is an achievement for doing a lot of them right.

Always use your time shift to engage battles so you can keep your chain up. Remember, you can use your time shift to avoid battles too although it makes it a bit more risky.

Avoid as much fighting as possible until you've received your final union upgrade to 18 people. Ideally wait even longer until you have all the party members you want to use. This is because the game makes a big distinction between easy battles and hard battles, and if you fight a bunch of monsters at/below your level you might gimp your stat progression and find it hard to continue. You probably want to be BR 7-16ish by the time you've finished the first disk, lower is better.

The Nest of Eagles fight is ridiculously hard, particularly if you are avoiding levelling. In order to beat it you'll basically HAVE to wait until you have an AoE spell option like Blackout, or David's Gae Bolge (he has to be a union leader for it to show up).

Try to have 42 sidequests done before you get to the last room of the aqueducts, as game events close off some of those 42 quests forever. Have Emma's and Baulson's quests done before Nest of Eagles. If you really want to be picky, look up which ones you can skip and which ones disappear on http://www.gamefaqs.com or some other similiar site.

http://lastremnant.wikia.com/wiki/The_Last_Remnant_Wiki_-_The_Last_Remnant_Guide is your friend. Most of your questions about where to find particular monsters, how to do a bothersome quest, or where to find upgrade components can be found there.

There is no shame in consulting a guide for this game. I found several game mechanics and quests are counter-intuitive, and if you are a completionist you'll basically have to consult a guide. Gamefaqs has a few, as does the wiki site.

Be a bit stingy with your money early on until you can buy Baulson. You need his beefy HP score to deal with the first real boss.

Enemy stats increase as your battle rank does, but at a slower rate than your own stats, so don't be too worried about your BR going too high.

Characters ask for components to upgrade their weapons. If they ask for one, and you buy the component, and it doesn't show up in their inventory immediately, don't worry. They'll take the component soon enough.

As soon as one of your characters learns spark V, make him the leader of his own union and put at least 2 other spellcasters in it. This union will be able to use the combination spell Blackout, which puts a real hurting on bosses and kills anything else.

Traps, Explosives, Lotions, and Evocations all blow. Don't let your characters learn them, and don't level them up for characters that already have them. The first few hexes are terrible but the ultimate ones are great, so only let your characters learn them if you're willing to use them a lot and level them to the end. The rest of the skillsets are good and you should let your guys take them. (Note: Evocations are different from invocations, which are good. Evocations start with mystic missile, invocations with spark.)

Pick a couple trees you want Rush to concentrate on and disable those you don't want to use. Same goes for any character, pretty much.

Don't neglect Hexes or Psionics - although you'll only get the latter much later in the game. Hexes can seriously debilitate unions and are good AoE damage, and Psionics can absolutely wreck a union's morale in a single cast.

Build unions around a common thread, but make sure every union has a Herb User or a Remedies Caster, preferably multiples thereof.

Don't just blindly rush into a boss with every union at once - many bosses have extremely powerful counterattacks or AoEs. A lot of the game's strategy is in being able to manage your unions, going through a cycle of switching them in and out for healing while one or two unions tank a boss.

Switch around your union leaders often. The leader gets priority for performing moves, so it can help to catch up anyone who's lagging behind.

Explore! The main story will take you to maybe a third of the available locations. Sidequests and Guild Tasks are very important, not least because it'll unlock skillsets for Rush.

Whenever you fight an extremely large bird enemy, throw as few unions at it as possible in the first turn, because that fucker will use Curse as a counterattack on every unit that does. This gives each character within the unit a solid chance of dying when they try to attack, and it's generally a death sentence.

Speaking of status effects: they activate on an entire union if they hit anyone within that union. If you're fighting something that loves throwing statii at you, rejig yourself to have as many unions with as few people in each as possible.