Agarest: Generations of War
YES! YES! YES! I've finally beaten this ubber-long Strategy RPG. The fifth and final generation ends. The ending is both positive and a little sad at the same time. Agarest: GoW is a pretty good SRPG but I can see how a lot of people might have some issues with it.
The obvious one: It is pretty long, it's basically fights, after fights, after fights, then a lenghty cutscene with a ton of dialogue. Once in a while you have to make a decision that will affect the main hero's relantionships with all the main heroines as well as impact the ending of the game. But ever so often it feels like a chore. Also free exploration is the biggest design problem in all of Agarest. The layout on a lot of these dungeons / free roaming areas is pure bullshit because many of those look exactly identical and sometimes you have to do something very specific to acess a new area. Also the game has way too many characters, some of which you will likely never get to use in battle, like ever and there's really no penalty for not using them. I played the game with roughly the same 4 or 5 major characters.
Having said that, if you are a JRPG afficionado, Agarest: GoW does have some good things going for it:
- The dating sim aspect of it, since our hero's son has to carry on the mission, you often take decisions that will either please all the girls or make them hate you. The more a certain female character loves the main hero, the more powerfull their offspring will likely be. And whoever the main hero marries, the child will inherent traits, it stats and actual appearance. Some of it is window dressing since the character will go through the same adventure, but that choice allows for some replayability
- The combat system is pretty good, despite having a two step phase (first one for just moving and the second for actual combat), it has a nice level of strategy;
- The game feels long unnecessarily long, but I'm happy to see that a lot of effort went into crafting the story and new characters (save for the 4th Generation, the writers must have taken a sick day on that one), every new generation feels completely different;
It's fun if you want more low-budget / indie-esque JRPGs, but everyone else be warned, it's pretty long and at first a lot of stuff will go completely over your head if you don't have a guide with you.
