Record of Agarest War
October 26, 2011 by admin
Filed under Dating Products
Record of Agarest War
- Enjoy an enhanced version of the game based on the Japanese release of Record of Agarest War
- The fate of Agarest is in your hands, as well as your reputation with the ladies. Use the Link Gauge to track how your actions may alter the future world and Affection Rating to monitor how the female characters of the game feel about you
- An epic strategic RPG with ginormous gameplay time, Record of Agarest War spans over 100 hours of gameplay, not including side/bonus missions
- Tired of just living through one lifetime in typical RPG titles? Then witness the Soul Breed system. Choose a bride at the end of your adventure and give birth to the playable hero of the next generation
- Perfect collaborative attacks by positioning your forces on the battlefield and wait for the right moment to string together massive combo attacks using multiple party members, both in melee and ranged attacks
Soul Breeding – Tired of just living through one lifetime in typical RPG titles? Then witness the Soul Breed system! Choose a bride at the end of your adventure and give birth to the hero of the next generation. Collaborative Attacks – Position your forces on the battlefield and wait for the right moment to string together massive combo attacks using multiple party members—both in melee and at range. Curious how one of Agarest’s lovely ladies feels about you? Look no further than the Affecti
List Price: $ 49.99
Price: $ 24.95
delivers what it promises,
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Ok, this game definitely has a target demographic. For you to find this review helpful, you probably should fall into most of these categories:
-You like LONG games (50 hrs minimum)
-You like STRATEGY RPGs (moving around on squares, turn-based)
-You like JAPANESE RPGs (anime style)
-You like JAPANESE styled stories (sometimes corny, slighty perverted romance-type)
-You DONT ABSOLUTELY NEED English dialogue (its all japanese, subtitled)
-You like VARYING ENDINGS based on your decisions throughout the game
Alright. So if you satisfy 4 of those traits, you don’t want to miss this game.
Before getting into the specifics of the game, I’ll say that Xbox360 doesnt have enough RPGs in the first place, so if you are like me, you will feel like you HAVE to at least try it. I don’t think you will be dissappointed in most cases.
GRAPHICS/AUDIO/ETC
It’s all anime style drawings. The graphics aren’t impressive. The audio isn’t impressive. It’s all gameplay focused, and looks like you are basically playing Final Fantasy Tactics on a nintendo DS. The ‘cutscences’ are basically just a visual novel. You have to read a bunch to get the story.
THE STORY
It is what you expect from a Japanese RPG. One defining factor, though, is that you aren’t the same hero the entire game. The story spans over several generations. Each new generation present a new hero. He is NOT the same guy as the previous one. You will like some of them and you won’t like others. The story is DEFINITELY good enough for most people to get over the fact that its all text instead of cutscenes.
I am the kind of guy who hates the play through a game twice. I pretty much lose enough interest to play another 40 hours if I already know the story. But there is even enough variety in this game’s story for me to play again. Thats saying alot for me.
Overall, you have to like the Japanese tyle of storytelling to really get into it. As long as you aren’t taking it too seriously, you will love it.
THE BATTLE SYSTEM
With enemies constantly changing from area to area, the battle system delivers the diversity necessary to play a game for 100 hours. STRATEGY is extremely important, more so than brute strength. This is a very good thing, as it eliminates the necessity to grind levels before moving on. You can grind if you want to, and end up powering through your next few enemies, but it isnt at all necessary on easy or normal difficulty. That is even more important, for reasons I will get to later.
Basically, you are on a big field of squares, where you use action points(AP) to move and attack. Each turn is divided into a movement stage and an action stage. You have to use AP to move, and to perform attack skills. The amount of AP a character has is determined by their agility, weapons, armor, *and* the location of their teammates. Each character has a unique set of “extended areas,” which give them more AP if one of their teammates is located in them. It is the main reason you must strateically think out every movement you make. In addition, you can do combination attacks with the teammates that are in your extended area. These are the most important attacks, and are absolutely necessary to defeat powerful enemies. In some cases, you will have to risk recieving greater damage by turning your back on the enemy in order to link up with your teammates. All things must be considered.
Throughout the game, you will even uncover new battle formations and fields, allowing you to choose a differently-shaped ‘field of squares’ that best compliments your battle style.
Overall, if you appreciate the strategic elements of the battle system, and don’t mind that it looks so old-school, you will never get bored with the fighting.
THE OVERALL GAME SYSTEM
Your decisions are important. Some decisions that dont seem important end up affecting you later in the game in ways you didn’t expect. You can make decisions that move you between the “dark” and “light” side of the guage. Unfortunately, sometimes you cant really tell which way a decision will send you. There are even some decisions that you must make during actual battles, such as not attacking a certain person. I did not fully comprehend the consequences of alot of actions until it was too late, but that is a good sign that you have to be thinking about more than battles to get the results you want.
Your actions affect how the female characters in the game like you. This is important because at the end of every generation, you have to choose a bride to make the hero of the next generation! You will choose your bride based on her strengths and yours, and that will determin the strength of the next hero. So if you like to use physical attacks, it is better for you to do the things the more physical heroine likes. If you…
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|Strong appeal for niche audience,
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Although you most certainly will need to be the kind of gamer this game panders to, if you are the target audience you’re very likely to enjoy Agarest War. If you’re a fan of tactical RPGs like Disgaea, there is a strong chance you will enjoy Agarest War. I also enjoy the “dating sim” aspects, even though they are just as cliched as you might expect if you’ve played visual novels before.
Graphically this game will not impress many people; it could have been done on the PS2. The music is enjoyable but so far (about a third into the game) not very memorable. Load times seem to be about twice as long as they should be, especially when entering a battle. This doesn’t frustrate me much personally as you spend so much time *in* battle rather than waiting on it.
Sound unimpressive? Then you probably don’t see the appeal of these kinds of games. The tactical battle system is deep, challenging and rewarding to learn and master. Character leveling and equipment is branching, complex and customizable. There is surprisingly little necessary grinding (although you can grind to your heart’s content if you want). The story is well-translated, which preserves the enjoyable and fast-paced narrative. The professional translation helps the visual novel aspects stand up well to localization which is often a huge hurdle. I especially like how your choices affect each generation of characters. A player could spend months, even years, “completing” this game.
If you’re looking for the next AAA hit from Bioware…well, Mass Effect 3 is around the corner. However, if you love long, detailed and addictive tactical RPGs and visual novels that don’t take themselves too seriously, this is a game you really need to pick up; it’s worth your time and your money.
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|if you like turn based, this is still a tricky game to reccommend,
I dont mind the old school 2D sprites or the PS2-level battle graphics. Not a big deal. I also dont mind grinding for XP. But the combat is not that interesting ultimately. After some playtime, you will find that character leveling is slow (basically your characters are as good as their equipment in this game). Even that might be OK but the combat is on a 2D grid in which things like elevation and terrain do no matter at all. So it is a pretty basic implementation of turn based. What is cool is that everyone moves around on the playfield before every turn and this creates some interesting tactics. It is not enough though for hundreds and hundreds (no exaggeration) of battles needed to complete the game. Some will still love it, but there wasnt enough there for me in the combat to keep playing.
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