I´ve been playing a lot of Agarest: Generations of War lately, and honestly I have no clue on why I´ve spent so much time on it. I don´t think I´ve done that overly much in the game besides fought battles and watched storydriven moments.

But it has taken a lot of time.

Story

Leonhardt is not at ease with how things are handled by his king. Going into the Frontier to conquer it and killing all other species are not what he had in mind. A soldier should exist as a sword and shield for the people to save them from harms way. That is what Leonhardt thinks.

But not his king, not his superior or anyone else in the army, they are soldiers, they just obey the orders that they have received.

This ends up to Leonhardt breaking off from the army by saving a poor elf girl that was about to be killed and helping her escape. But he gets into trouble when Melchior, the right hand of the king and a mysterious Dark Knight appears before him. Telling Ellis to run Leonhardt engages the black night and is utterly defeated. On his deathbed he wishes he would have had more power and Dyshana, a mysterious woman appears before him asking him if he wants power. She will give him power in exchange for Leonhardt becomming a spirit vessel.

Wanting to protect Ellis and the people of the Frontier Leonhardt accepts.

This is a choice that will bring him towards many great things as well as finding some of the most lovely ladies on the continent.

Battle system

It´s just the ordinary strategy isotopic view thing on a square based field.

What is new is that some squares depening on what type of field you have choosen can have positive or negative buffs. It can be a increase/decrease in ATK/DEF/INT or be status like increased EXP or even Death.

What also is new is that every character has a “extended area”, some squares are marked differently and if another character in your party stands on these a green line appears between those two. This line allows you to make an extended attack, which means that you can use your AP to make a series of attacks, then another character can jump in and continue the onslaught. This is great for saving weak characters from getting pummeled and killed or just to clear those high number combo achievements that exist.

It also allows for other people whose turn is not up yet to act before their turn. This can mean the life or death of characters and is utterly important to master.

Every attack uses AP, the smaller ones use up 8AP, and the larger ones demand more. To add this we have a Extra Skill that also consumes SP, 50SP anad 18AP is needed to execute these Extra skills that are more powerful than most other attacks. You get new ones as you level up to lvl 25 and 50 along with using a special item. I haven´t done this so I don´t know how much the SP and AP consumation increases.

You can also combine two skills into a new one. Combining Steal with Trick Hit I think it was results in Snatch, a series of attacks that tries to steal items from your opponent. Or Vanish Trick that deals out a higher number of attacks against a opponent.

These combined skills are called Artes.

There is also a guard meter, if you take this meter down to zero the enemy or you go into “break mode” where attacks are more damaging and Artes are even deadlier as they change to “break artes” that do more damage and have extra hits.

Hard game is hard

Yes, I´ve used that title before, in my Cross Edge first impressions post. It´s from the same company so many things are a like, the way AP is used to attack, that you have to assign attacks to the weapons/armours and such of the character, that each character has a set affinity for some elements.

That the enemies go from easy as pie to downright hellish hard in a matter of seconds. Getting “countered” is often more damaging than any other attack the enemy has.

You have to buy scrolls so that you can create new weapons as new weapons do not appear in shop otherwise. Getting killed is downright horrible as the item that revives you cost 500G and you rarely get over 100G per battle. Reviving outside of battle costs at least 1000G and when outside of battle this can only be done at a town.

Bosses are usually a couple of levels over you. I ran trough most battles without stopping to grind and I´m always one or two levels below the boss and his friends. Which is a real pain in the ass since they can kill me easily.

If you are at the same level range as the boss the boss still has much higher stats than you do so you either need to grind for hours upon hours to get a lot of levels, items, weapons and enhancing the weapons or you need a lot of items that revive your characters. This can´t be said enough but the bosses can easily kill you. Overkill you even so with just one or two attacks.

While you have to fight as a mad man to relinquish their HP. Getting killed only has one good point, it quickly raises your SP so you can use your most effective skills on the boss. Which is mainly how you attack the bosses and kill them.

Females

One of the points that are rarely used in console RPGs is that you get to marry a girl from your party and have offspring so that the story can continue. You raise your love interest by answering questions and making choices ingame. Who your bride is depends on which of the three girls of the generation that like or love you and who you personally fancy.

There are supposed to be some events where we get fullscreen images of these females like the image I used for the post. But I have yet to encounter such a scene. Don´t ask me why, must be because of the choices I made sucks. But there is a new game + available so I might just as well go for a more “pleasurable” game next time.

The ones that I´ve encountered are cute and nice. They all have their problems and reasons for acting like they do but I fancy them all. It was a hard choice at first, but with the choice I made I´m quite satisfied. Their son didn´t turn out that bad, I just wonder what would have happend if I had choosen someone else.

Summary

This is a addictive game, I´ll give it that. Reloading since you lost a character in a battle is not so uncommonly happening and just about everything with the choices that increase/decrease the girls interest in you are worth reloading.

There is a AI that can controll the characters trough battles, but this is as stupid as it can get. If a enemy has the counter ability, you don´t end the combo with a physical in-close attack that will start the counter up with the weakest physical fighter that you have…

And why it want to keep killing the same enemy for a long time even though it has already been overkilled is by my mindset impossible to know. Sure there is a 10 000 damage achievement/title but why try to do that when you are able to kill of more enemies that will make the boss weaker? Just saying.

I haven´t seen any scenes that will make me blush yet. The few scenes that I have seen have been heartwarming. Being alone with one of the girls and looking for fallings starts in the lake? Romantic deluxe.

If you have the time and patience to get this. Then I do recommend it, the fighting is pretty good and fun when everything works and as I said, it´s addicting.