"The Game Your Mother Would be Embarrassed to Know You Own."
Hi Mom
by Drew Chrisman

Let's just get this over with right now. If you haven't seen a trailer for this game, watch this. Feel dirty? I know I did. You have to give props to Aksys for knowing how to sell a game, but for those of you who stuck around after that video, this kind of racy content is actually a very minute fraction of the Record of Agarest War's content. A large, and I mean very large, portion of the gameplay is the combat, but with the sheer number of characters in the game and the depth of the customization of the characters, combat never gets old.

Leonhardt, known to his enemies as Golden Leo for his fierce fighting style and golden blade, is one of Gridamas' foremost commanders stationed in one of the country's Frontier garrisons. A truly dedicated soldier, Leohardt has fought to regain the honor of his disgraced family. However, during Gridamas' invasion campaign into the Frontier, he begins to question his country. When a fellow soldier deems it his duty to kill an innocent Elven girl, Leohardt fights back, making Gridamas and it's fearsome Dark Knight his enemies. Left for dead after a mortal wound from the Dark Knight, Leohardt curses his inability to save even one small child. It is then that a woman calling herself Dyshana appears before him. If he swears that he and all his descendants will become Spirit Vessels, Dyshana will grant him the power he needs to protect the Elven girl, Ellis.

Like many JRPGs, Record of Agarest War is quite a hefty game to tackle, taking me almost 20 hours just to finish the first of the game's five chapters. At the end of each chapter, or Generation, the protagonist must choose one of three women, chosen by Dyshana, to carry on his bloodline as a Spirit Vessel. Each woman obviously produces quite different offspring, and using the fortune teller in any city can show you how your child with any given woman will turn out. That is, if they like you enough. Various decisions in the game not only change the direction of the story, but affect how much each woman likes you.

Like I said, combat is a huge part of Record of Agarest War, but thankfully stays fun throughout the game. Battles are grid-based strategy with various fields earned as you play the game. Some fields come with certain tiles on the grid that affect stats and can range from tiny skirmish-sized fields to huge fields that enemies use effectively by running the fuck away when they know they can't win, causing you to waste seven goddamn turns just chasing their stupid ass. Fuckers. Each character, and there are a lot, have a certain set of tiles arranged in a pattern around them. If any other character is standing within those tiles, the characters become linked, allowing multiple character combos and even allowing the slowest of characters to attack first if linked properly.

A majority of the characters you get are thankfully long lived, as the game spans five generations. Your typical plethora of fantasy characters make their appearance, from Elves and Dwarves, mermaid-like creatures and demons, lolis and emaciated bark-skinned pedophile tree monsters. Attacks have various classes, such as Critical and Burst and elemental, and everyone comes with character specific attack slots, plus slots gained from equipped weapons. Gaining levels gets you not only points to distribute to stats, but opens up Extra Skills, extremely powerful attacks that, like normals skills, can be combined for devastating effects. Anyone who has played a Disgaea game will feel right at home in Agarest, as a lot of the fun comes from doing obscene amounts of damage. Titles are earned for completing tasks such as doing 400,000 damage in one attack or getting a 300 hit combo.

Battles reward you not only with experience and money, but EP, points used to upgrade weapons and equipment, TP, points used at the Adventurer's Guild to purchase items and various books, and in the case of boss battles, PP, a pool of points used to increase any character's stats, much like at levels up. The various books that I mentioned range from smithing manuals that unlock more equipment to craft at the blacksmith's, esoteric books that show you which skills to combine for combos, and skill books, which unlock skills for crafting at the Adventurer's Guild. Hot damn, I made it through this entire paragraph without laughing at TP and PP, if you don't count this sentence.

This game is not for everyone. However, if you're a fan of grid-based tactics style combat and over-the-top anime characters, and 100 hours is a selling point, not a drawback, Record of Agarest War is definitely worth checking out. And if you get it on the 360 like myself, you can rest in comfort with the booby mousepad the game's Really Naughty Limited Edition comes with, if retailers haven't hidden them in shame yet.

Overall Rating: 8.5 out of 10