Agarest: Generations of War Review

Record of Agarest War is a strategy role-playing game (SRPG) developed by three studios - Idea Factory, Red Entertainment and Compile Heart - and originally released in Japan three years ago. The game was recently brought over to North America by Aksys Games. Aksys clearly had a specific audience in mind when marketing Agarest, placing an emphasis on the dating slim elements and skimpy anime girls, hence the "Really Naughty Limited Edition" for Xbox 360. Strangely, the actual game places less focus on the dating ("Soul Breeding") portions than players might expect after watching the trailers, or looking at the cover art. Instead, Record of Agarest War puts players through an extremely long, drawn out campaign full of random, unavoidable encounters, an awkward battle system, and a convoluted story that ultimately amounts to little in the way of fun.

Record of Agarest War is set around the classic struggle between good and evil, light and dark. Once upon a time, a group of light gods sacrificed themselves to defeat evil, and bring life back to the world of Agarest, or something along those lines. The protagonist is Leonhardt, an army general who leaves his post after questioning the morals behind his cause. Shortly after quitting, Leonhardt is killed in battle with one of his former allies. He is saved by a mysterious women, Dyshana, who promises to resurrect him if he pledges his soul, and the souls of his descendants (queue soul breeding) to her. They embark on a journey that will span five generations in total.

The main problem with the story, besides the clichéd premise, is the lack of character development. The game introduces new characters constantly, the majority of which will ultimately play a very minor role in the overall story. It's rare for a new character to be featured in more than three or four scenes, most barely get there. This overload of distracting introductions makes it hard to discern what the meaningful plot points are. Even the main characters feel underdeveloped. There isn't much reason to care about them because they all fall into typical anime roles, with little backstory to explain their actions. The uninteresting plot could be somewhat overlooked if the gameplay was top notch, unfortunately that's not the case.

The battle system places the party on a grid and features two distinct phases - move and action. During the move phase, players decide where to place each member of their team based on the amount of AP (Action Points) they have - moving one square in the any direction costs one AP. Each character has a set range of movement and AP regeneration per turn, which must be carefully considered because AP is also used during the action phase. After each character has moved, the opportunity to act is determined by a lineup that takes into account a character's skills relative to the rest. The best way to maximize damage is to chain the team's attacks and generate combos. There's a book which reveals which combination of attacks will produce "Special Arts" - group attacks or special moves.