Record of Agarest War

Record of Agarest war has some very interesting ideas. Take a strategy role-playing game and mix it with a Japanese dating-sim? Alright that could be pretty cool. Make the game span across five generations and at the end of each, you get together with the woman who loves you the most and make a baby. In the next generation you then play as that baby! That sounds great too right? Spice up the typical SRPG with some sexy anime ladies and overtly market the game toward lonely horny teenagers? Sure, why not? All these ideas sound fine on their own, so together they should make for a solid game right? Well I guess that depends what you want out of an SRPG.

The story is definitely the best part and the main draw of this game. You start out as Leonhardt, an officer of the enemy army who fights back when he sees a fellow officer about to kill a little elf girl. In attempt to save the girl, Leonhardt becomes mortally wounded and left for dead. A mysterious woman named Dyshana appears and offers to bring him back to life and give him great power. In exchange, he (and his future children) must become a “sprit vessel.” So he becomes Neo and has to fight against the machines or something. Being an 80 hour long game means there is a ton of story, and if you’re willing to go deep (ha...deep...), you’ll find a rich and fulfilling plot.

I’m going to be honest here; Record of Agarest war is a game that baffles me. Just about every great idea comes with a lot of extra baggage that weighs down the experience. For instance, whenever you level up, you gain points that you can drop into you basic stats, e.g. strength, intelligence, defense etc. Having this level up mechanic means that you can customize each of the characters attributes to make them play how you want. Unfortunately, each stat costs a certain amount of points to level up. So let’s say you wanted to make your speedy character have more attack, well you could spend all the points you gain from leveling up to upgrade attack once or maybe twice if you’re a low level. Or, you could level up the traits that the game tells you your character is good at 3 or 4 times.

I have massive list of complaints, too much to go through all of them. So I’m going to fire off a quick list of my top five annoyances that could have easily been rectified.

5. All of the battlegrounds are just a flat board. That meant that almost every fight I got into played out exactly the same. I would stand still for one turn until the enemy came over to me, then I attacked. Rinse and repeat. This doesn’t sound like a big complaint at first, but play a game like Disgaea and you will instantly see what I’m talking about.

4. The strange pacing of this game means that, for the most part, you will do 3 or 4 battles with random bad guys, then 10 or 15 minutes of dialog. Only breaking pattern when you come to a town or a story fight, which also usually has 10 or 15 minutes of dialog. Again, rinse and repeat.

3. While the game has full voice acting, it’s only in Japanese. For some people, that will be okay. The reason this is bad to me, is because you can read the dialog box much faster than the actors can say their lines. This means that unless you are willing to sit there and wait for each actor to finish talking, you are going to hear the first word or two before you cut them off and skip to the next text box. This takes the personality out of most of the characters and straight up beaks the immersion for me.

2. For being a game that blatantly advertises itself as being sexual, there is absolutely no explicit nudity or sex or anything like that! I mean come on, just look at the U.S. trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgOOPUj0lwo&hd=1 The box art even says “The Really Naughty Limited Edition.” In fact, GameStop has to hide the box behind the counter. If you want to buy it, you just have to suck it up, (ha...suck it...) and ask an employee to see if they have the game. Record of Agarest war is rated “T” for teen!

1. The worst problem though, absolutely has to be the act of getting one of your female companions to like you. Each generation has three women you can woo, and their affection for you can go up or down depending on which multiple choice dialog option you choose. However it is very rare that you can talk to just one party member. A lot of the relationship building comes from random choices that have nothing to do with your relationships. For instance, you will often get to choose what path you wish to take to get to a location. Choosing one path may make a person lose affection for you, but the game does not always tell you that’s going to happen. Twice at the end of two different generations, the game forced me to marry someone I didn’t like because she had higher affection for me.

Honorable mention. It takes way too long to load these simple super Nintendo era sprites, even when the game is installed. This is just the first battle, later one when you’re fighting more enemies, it can take forever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZT0iVWwXfs

Okay, I’m being really harsh I know, but that’s only because I see all the wasted potential in this game. After everything is said and done, Record of Agarest war is not a bad game. It just doesn’t utilize the great ideas it has very well. If you come for the strategy game, go get Disgaea or Final Fantasy Tactics. If you come for the dating-sim, do a Google search and find something better that way. If you come for the long and interesting story, well you just might have something there.

(Ha...I just said come three times...)