Record of Agarest War Submitted Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - 8:42:01 AM by Klaitu
Have you ever heard of this game? I'd be surprised if you said yes. It's just a little bit obscure, but it gained a little bit of fame because the trailer features scantily clad women and blurred out images.
From the trailer, you'd expect that the game would be rated AO, but it's not even rated M, it's rated T. So I wondered just how "filthy" this game could possibly be.
At the core, Agarest war is a tactical JRPG, it's somewhat similar to Disgaea, of Final Fantasy Tactics.. but it's probably closest to La Pucelle Tactics in that it's really not that good of a game.
The other half of Agarest War is sort of like a bare bones version of a Japanese Dating Sim. Dialogue choices and actions you take affect your relationship with the women in your party, and eventually you choose one to marry.
The story is about Leonhardt, a noble who agrees to dedicate his soul to defeating evil in exchange for the power to protect an elf girl. Leonhardt is unable to do this in his lifetime, so this promise also extends to his children.
Each generation, you play the role of his children, and there are five generations. Each generation has you go through the dating sim and choose a wife, and the resulting child is an amalgam of the different characters you choose.
Sadly, the dating sim part of the game is probably the most unique thing about the game. The rest of it is just a really bland tactical RPG. There is no real strategy involved in the battles, and the battles don't get harder as the game progresses, they just last longer. If you don't take it too seriously, the game is fun in the first half, but begins to get annoying half way through. The last generation is absolutely abysmal. you'll punch in the commands for a round, and then they will play out for 3 or 4 minutes with no action required by the user.
3 or 4 minutes doesn't sound like a big deal, but it happens every single battle, and there are hundreds of battles.
In between battles, the game will "treat" you to some colorful anime pictures:
And make no mistake about it, there is no animation in this entire game, there are only still anime pictures and text. There is voice acting, but there is no english voice acting, it's all in Japanese. Yeah, it's one of *those* games for the hardcore Japanophile.
Overall Score: 4 of 10 Quality Rating: 1 of 10 Pass.
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