Agarest: Generations of War Review

Just Another jRPG

And not a very good one at that. Agarest: Generations of War from Ghostlight sounded like that answer to many PC gamer’s wishes for more jRPGs, but after a great beginning the game fell prey to repetitive battles and a long, drawn out story; mistakes that plague many games in the genre.

This is the first game in the Agarest series, and the first one to come to the PC thanks to Steam’s Greenlight program.

Story

The story is simple enough; at the start of the game you learn of a previous battle which destroyed the world of Agarest. Now, there is a new war between the same forces (dark and light), and you must choose a side in a battle that will last for, you might have guessed it, generations. What is interesting is that, in the game, you will be able to shape the traits of the world’s next generations of heroes (or villains) through the “Soul Breed” system, by wooing a mate. The dating simulation seems to be too prevalent in a game where the driving action is war, though, and it tends to become old and tedious.

Gameplay

While I did say that I feel that the “Soul Breed” system might be focused on too much in the game, it is a nice touch, allowing the player to choose his or her next hero based on the female companions in his or her current party. There is no other game with a system like this, I just wish it was more streamlined. Who knew that a hero had enough time to spend hours in a hot tub with chicks when the world was on the brink of destruction? Plus the shots of cleavage and skimpy outfits feel sort of weird, because it strikes the middle ground of not being quite pornographic, but not being appropriate for children, so I just ended up sitting there waiting to get past it.

Having everyone on the same plane didn’t help either, every single terrain was flat, so the background changes (which happened sparingly) didn’t matter. I felt myself longing for random hills. That would have made things harder, yet much more enjoyable.

The fact that I could almost always easily win took away a lot of what the battle system in this game offers in my opinion. Tougher battles would have made Agarest: Generations of War much more enjoyable for me.

Everything worked perfectly when I used my wired Xbox 360 Controller, though, so that is a major plus for me.

Graphics & Audio

The 2D graphics (in typical Japanese jRPG style) are great, but some of the 2.5D graphics present during battles scenes don’t seem to mesh well, and are not near as colorful or as high quality, making the game look slightly messy. This seems to be the trend lately, to stay away from fully 2D graphics, but I feel that generally, those are done better than their want-to-be 3D counterparts. This is simply my opinion for aesthetics, as the sprites are very, detailed however, and are easily the best aspect of the game.

The background music and effects are executed well enough, and are simply average, especially for a jRPG. This is very expected, and I would have been very disappointed if Ghoslight dropped the ball here, in one of the easiest aspects of a jRPG to get right.

Notable Extras

Agarest: Generations of War comes with a long list of free DLC on the PC. It gives the player a ton of starting equipment that they wouldn’t have as well as extra dungeons for each generation. The extra equipment probably contributed to the battles being so easy for me, and the extra dungeons to the length of the game. I wonder if the game would have sat better with me without the free extras.

SpawnFirst Recommends…

Unless you want to play a long, boring game, I wouldn’t suggest buying Agarest: Generations of War. Even though it is nice to see a jRPG make it onto the PC, it would have be nicer to see a better one. For now, this is what we have on the platform, but I suggest waiting for a better one to come along and skip Agarest: Generations of War.