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It's been five months since I started Record of Agarest War, a Japanese strategy RPG. Even after 20 hours of gameplay, I'm still on the first part of the game.
In spite of the extremely long journey, I don't think I've ever enjoyed a strategy game as much as Record of Agarest War.
In many respects, this game looks very unimpressive. The bland 3D dungeons are generic and dull. Some of the trees on the battlefield block my view when I'm trying to plan my moves. The boring intro sequence consists of cheap Playstation 1 backgrounds, 2D anime drawings and a cheesy J-pop song.
However, Record of Agarest War makes up for its flaws with a clever fighting system and a beautifully-written story. In fact, the game's time span takes up over three generations of a man's bloodline. The strategy RPG gives the main character the freedom to choose whichever woman he would like for his bride. The statistic and skills of both characters then pass on to the next generation.
[embed:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2lAG26b7tU ]
The video advertisements didn't really show off this game mechanic very well. The YouTube trailer for Agarest makes the epic adventure seem more like a adult sex game. Even though Record of Agarest War has its share of fan service scenes, these moments only take up one percent of the entire game.
[embed:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgOOPUj0lwo ]
In fact, Agarest has some of the most memorable characters I've ever had to take control of. In the opening of the campaign, the brave soldier Leonhardt fights against his fellow army captain in order to save a young elven girl's life. Although the army kills Leonhardt, a goddess grants him a second chance. He devotes his entire bloodline to protect this young girl from the mysterious forces of darkness.
Agarest has a very well-written script in comparison to many other games. The first section of the game intrigued me with a story of cursed artifacts that can turn honorable soldiers into demons. Although the dating simulation choices are silly, they play a significant part in determining the visual novel cutscenes that people see throughout the game.
The battle system also stands out with one of the more interesting fighting styles in Japanese role-playing games. It doesn't require players to travel turn-by-turn across gigantic maps. Instead, each battle takes place on a flat arena. Players move their characters so that they link up to other characters in pre-set patterns around each individual.
By linking up to other characters, they can perform deadly combo moves. For instance, I could link up Leonhardt and Elaine, combining each character's double-edge attack to execute a quadruple blade attack for four hits. Half of the fun in Agarest comes from discovering these combination attacks. I especially enjoyed finding the "Muspelizheimer," a ruthless magic combination attack that I executed by combining fire, thunder, and a black mist attack together.
A demonstration of a combination attack from Winhill, Borgnine, and other teammates.
Unfortunately, enemies can also pull off their own combination attacks. Some of their attacks are absolutely unfair. They especially love to kill off individual characters with a massive string of combination attacks. This makes the fighting system terribly unbalanced, because I have to then revive each character with an item called a fragment of life. Each fragment costs 500 gold coins, which was out of my price range for the beginning of the game.
The ruthless fighting system keeps forcing me to soft reset the game, by pressing both trigger and bumper buttons, select, and start. I wish that the developers balanced out the fighting system more evenly, so that the monsters wouldn't kill my characters so often. Thankfully, the fights became much easier as I leveled up my characters.
I really enjoy Record of Agarest War, in spite of all of its flaws. I still have two or more generations of characters to play through in the game. It's a great strategy game that people have to own, just because the entire story lasts for such a long time span. People can find it for the Xbox 360 or the Playstation 3.
What are some of your favorite strategy RPGs? How do they compare to games such as Record of Agarest War? Feel free to write about them in the comments below.