Agarest is one of my all-time favorite strategy RPG, and favorite of those available on PC.

Gameplay is a lot of fun, especially if you enjoy having a lot of characters to choose from to form your party, each differing from others by the weapon they use, their skill slots and their unique passive abilities and special attacks. Character customization is fairy extensive, allowing you not just select characters’ weapons and armor and allocate their level-up points, but also select exact skills the characters will have available, and choosing skills that will allow your characters to form powerful combination attacks is important for winning.

There is also extensive item and skill-crafting system, and every next-tier item and skill you want to use has to be crafted rather than bought in the next town’s shop. Though once the initial crafting is performed, all skills and some items can be bought from the stores if you want more copies of them.

Story and character-wise, Agarest is definitely among the best games I’ve played. Each character in a very large cast has very distinct personality, and most of them defy standard RPG tropes. And with the story spanning multiple generations, it is interesting to see how long-living characters interact with the descendants of the person they once knew.

The story also leaves the player plenty of choice: there are multiple story branches in each generation, as well as more numerous event where your choice affect your relationship with three potential love interests, determining which of them you can marry in the end of generation (the story is about protagonist’s goals being carried on by his descendants, after all ~.^ ).

In short, I fully recommend Agarest to all RPG fans, particularly the fans of strategy RPGs!

I played the game on hard without using DLC (really good items for your characters mostly that trivialize much of the content).

This game is sort of at odds with itself. It definitely has fan service and lots of gratuitous shots of scantly clad women in often sexually suggestive positions. The sort of thing that if your friends or parents walked in and saw they'd probably feel embarrassed for you. On the other hand however, the story touches on some serious themes about existence and morality, and the story was moderately intrigueing. The fights and how long they can take sort of interrupt the flow of the story, but I was never bored by it. I think individuals' mileage may vary on this last point however.

Gameplay wise, I see a lot of people saying the battles are repetitive and they could keep using the same strategy throughout the whole game. This wasn't the case for me exactly, I found I would develop a strategy and use it for a good portion of the game before it started to become ineffective and then I'd have to develop a new one that worked and then I'd end up using that new strategy for a good length of time before having to repeat the process again down the road. In a similar manner, new characters and new gear can force you to change your strategy as well. I found as the game progressed and the difficulty ramped up, the combat became more interesting, but this wasn't the case until probably halfway through the game. At the end of the "true ending" the difficulty can become overwhelming and seem unfair if you haven't really learned and got a firm grasp of the game's mechanics.

Mastery of this game comes down to positioning and learning the mechanics and systems of the game. I spent quite a bit of time on the wiki looking for ways to increase the power of my characters or make a better strategy when I ran into a bit of a stumbling block. This isn't everyone's cup of tea, but if you enjoy learning new systems and have patience, you will probably find this game rewarding. If you want to just smash through everything and see the cut scenes and read the story, there is an easy and normal difficulty but I'm not sure these alone warrant buying the game.

I do feel like some grinding is required, but not an obnoxious amount. Usually a 2-3 hours of grinding in each generation (5 generations in total) sufficed to let me upgrade my gear enough to continue progressing through the story. Even at the very end of the "true ending" I didn't have to do extra grinding to gear up enough to beat the final boss.

The one thing I absolutely hate about this game is that in order to unlock the true ending, there are some strict criteria you need to meet, and the game doesn't hint at these criteria at all. Without using a guide, I think you'd be hard pressed to unlock the true ending.

All in all, not a bad game. If you're interested in it and my review above doesn't scare you away, definitely consider getting it if it goes on sale.

One of my favorite tile-based strategy games (I've played FF tactics, fire emblem, and a few others). Very long campaign (at least 100 hours of gameplay) with good replay value (if you have the willpower to do it again in new game+). The story is interesting and should keep you entertained. The hard difficulty setting is challenging and requires a good amount of strategy (and exp grinding at some points). Good amount of customization and options for all your characters. Cool skill animations with a good mix of 2d/3d art. The romance in the game is pretty tame and doesnt detract from the story all that much. The only downsides I can think of is that it is a little rough around the edges and may be too repetitive for some people, but, overall, I think it's a solid game for a solid price.

Hi everyone, here is the review for Agarest: GOW

To start with, this game is essentially a mix between a tactical role-playing game, visual novel and dating sim, all in anime style presentation.

Features of this game:

1. Deep tactical chess board type battles
2. Party movement based on a world map
3. Story told in visual novel form
4. Wooing of girls occurs in choices and cutscenes

Things that I liked about this game:

1. Battles require strategy and planning
2. The art is attractive
3. Ability to customize party member's gear and stats
4. Character personalities are interesting
5. Solid storyline spanning lots of hours
6. Multiple endings
7. Dating sim is a nice distraction
8. DLC makes things alot easier if you are playing just for the storyline
9. Polished with very few bugs
10. Total Japanese voice acting

Things that I thought could be better:

1. Learning curve is steep. Instruction manual is good to read but not included in the game
2. High possibility for grinding on first play through. This can be avoided after learning how to play the game, but more guidance on this would have been helpful.
3. Dating aspect more a distraction in this game, could have been more fleshed out
4. Unexpected spike in end game difficulty
5. As an older game, the resolution isnt as crisp
6. Music slightly repetitive only because of the countless hours spent in game

Overall, if you are a fan of anime art, visual novel story-telling and tactical role-playing battles with a bit of dating sim, I recommend this game to you

Agarest is a shining example of JTRPG - Japanese Torture RPG

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(TL;DR? Now that I have done my playthrough, you can skip to the end of this review and find my summary, updates are left here to show how I got to those bullet points)

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Total playtime (so far): 50 hours.

- Time spent researching how to craft a skill/weapon on wikia: 15 hours.

- Time spent dealing with endless and often pointless battles: 15 hours.

- Time spent trying to keep characters on roughly the same level: 5 hours.

- Time spent navigating between shop/blacksmith/adventurer guild just to build an item: 5 hours.

- Time spent loading old save because blacksmith can randomly fail alchemy (this is a feature): 2 hours.

This left me with less than 10 hours of actual enjoyable gameplay, even less was spent on character development and plotline. Given the complexity of Agarest's various gameplay system, it's a real shame to find none of them produce the joy they intended.

So in the end, this is more like a piece of torture porn than anything else: Do it only if you are into this kind of stuff.

(unfortunately for me, 10+ years of JRPG experience has taught me the patience required to enjoy such sadistic gameplay, so expect update when I actually finish this damn game...)

Update on 75 hours mark.

Finally done with 2nd generation (3 more to go), let me add some more comments:

1. Auto-battle is crucial yet miserable: there are many instances where you wish AI can take over the manual labor. But leaving it to its own devices, will consistently turn cakewalk battles into deadly struggles (no XP rewards for casualties).

2. Seriously, you need a true end guide: as with most role-playing, it might be tempting to play this game "your way". But Agarest couldn't care less about your preference, you will, because of the tight requirement for CG/event trigger, miss out on 50~80% of actual content.

3. Less than 10% players ever manage to get the achievement for completing 2nd generation (just completing it will grant you that achievement). I think this goes to show many reviewers have not given this game a long hard look before recommending...

4. Story-wise, Agarest is an ok game, there are moments that will redeem your manual labor (once again, use guide, or it may just be manual labor). Though I personally prefer more character development instead of "more new characters"...

My verdict still holds though: this is a game for the persistent fools, such as myself.

Update on 110 hours mark.

With Gen 3 over, time for some personal thought:

1. Auto-battle is useless at this point. AI controlled team will pile on the same monster, over-overkilling it for no good reason, leaving the rest of enemies free to attack.

2. Avoid battles as much as possible, there is no fun in setting up the same combo routine every time.

3. Stop grinding for levels, under normal difficulty just a minimal walkthrough will give you enough experience, given you stick with the same 4/5 non-heroine members.

4. On the other hand, spend some quality time on crafting and researching, they bring in far more stats than leveling up. And save before handing your hard-earned materials to blacksmith's random algorithm.

5. Number of players managed to finish Gen 3? 3.5% of total players.

6. Oh yes, there are unlockable CGs to fill my sored & empty heart, but the requirements are often strict and weird: this heroine has too high an affection for you, so you DON'T get to see her CG, what?

Unless you have 1000+ free hours at hand to experiment with its magical dialog tree and light/dark meter, your best bet is the True end guide: even though the guide will force you into picking choices you don't like (so that True end and CGs are unlockable...)

Alright, onwards to Gen 4.

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Review summary (on 158 hours mark).

I have finally got to the true ending (on normal mode), it's time to reflect on my journey with Agarest.

What I Like:

- The subtitle "Generations of War" is aptly named, this game does deliver a sense of longevity as player battles through continents.

- Vast number of well-designed characters.

Unfortunately, these seemingly strong points result in larger flaws, both in terms of core mechanics and plot narrative:

- It should have been 30 hours, by spanning battles throughout 5 generations, only 1.7% of all players manage to got to an ending, less than half of them got to the true ending.

- Battles quickly became the main source of frustration, and in my opinion, not the good sort. Agarest follows the transitional "just one more boss" JPRG motto and by end of it, I was completely burnt out from grinding.

- When you have 5 Lead Actors and 15 Lead Actresses, lost of focus is unavoidable. Just as I got attached to a hero, another came along to replace him, in the end none of them really sticked with me.

- Agarest doesn't like players finding out their totally-awesome super-secret heroine events, unless you follow the perfect path to true ending, be prepared to miss out on a lot of them (I got only 49% after true end). Sadly number of unlockables != replay value.

- There are also minor issues preventing me from enjoying this game, such as combo system dependency on team formation, deep hierarchies on crafting system, subpar translation and that damn Blacksmith.

In the end, these drawbacks are bad enough to stop me from playing the next game in Agarest series (even though I have already bought it), at least not for now...

It's sad to see Agarest failed to deliver what it aimed to, and sadder for me still, to admit that metacritic scores (45/100) are probably well-deserved.

All I can say at this point is: there are many games you can play for 150 hours instead of Agarest: Generations of War, and in hindsight, many of them might have been a better choice.

I enjoy the story, I enjoy the characters, I enjoy the character interactions. I sort of enjoy the combat. I like alot about this game. I intend to complete it but after 40+ hours I am still only half way through Generation 2 (out of 5) and I am finding the repetative nature of the combat quite tiresome. Initially I had soem seriously overpowered weapons in my inventory (some dlc or preorder bonus) which I disabled so it wouldn't spoilt he game by making it too easy. More have appeared in my inventory and eventually I have decided using them just to stroll through the combat and get on with the story.

I really want to see how this progresses and it is a damn shame the combat is so repetative, there is so much more they could have done with it. There are so many character and monsters to use but you end up just using the same 6 all the time (others fall behind). It would be far more enjoyable if the party had to split at points to spice things up and force you into using different characters.

The inventoy/crafting/enhancing is quite complicated (complicated rather than complex), it is difficult to make stuff. You need to enhance this item to make this item part then you need this book to be able to craft this item to make that item and so on, none of this is shown before you actually buy/enhance things so you have to constantly save/load to figure it all out; quite tiresome.

This game is looking like it will be 100+ hours to complete, I really hope it's less as that's alot of time to get out of it the things I am enjoying.

The question isn't "Is this a good game?" as it is and it has alot of things I enjoy, the question is "Is this worht the time?" and I'm not sure I can say a 100% yes to the last question. I don't fully not reccomend this game but nor can I reccomend it toally either.

+ Battle system at first appears rather narrow in scope, but in fact there is a lot under the hood; combat showcases many noteworthy features, such as overkill rewards, bonus points that scale depending on enemy levels, link attacks, etc.
+ Soundtrack is par for the course for a JRPG; nothing revolutionary, but it fits well with the game and the genrea
+ Japanese voiceovers are very well done; sounds like a big-budget anime
+ Cookie-cutter anime plot and characters; nothing spectacular, but this game was clearly intended for fans of anime, and the plot is as 'anime' as it gets (if that is your cup of tea, you will love both the plot and the characters)
+ There are areas that lend themselves to exploration, and employ additional challenges to make the rewards all the sweeter
+ Battle and skill effects look excellent and really add to the immersion of combat
+ Combat movement is done at the beginning of the turn, and the player cannot see enemy movement; directional mechanics work with movement to bring another layer of challenge to the strategy of in-game encounters
+ Places a large focus on the romance aspect of the story, in that there are a lot of potential romance partners, and the game gives free roam to the player in this respect; again, not my cut of tea, but avid fans of anime and dating sims will find this an endearing aspect of the adventure
+ In-game titles of achievement can be unlocked and claimed; this works to slightly increase replay value
+ Alchemy, crafting, and skills are all well-rounded in design and intuitive in practice
+ Includes a mini-focus on monster catching and breeding, the products of which can be further customized and employed in battle
+ Combat design successfully works to reward planning and forward thinking, particularly in relation to character placement and AP management
+ Included is a morality meter, which reflects your characters standard 'Dark/Light' alignment; this meter reflects the consequences of choices made throughout the campaign, and can have noticeable consequences on the story as it progresses
+ Offers a plethora of unlockables, such as art and character biographies
+ Applaudable length and quantity of well-employed content; I clocked in at ~44 hours for a single (very rushed) playthrough

- Gameplay is very grindy, and will become increasingly so as the story progresses and the difficulty sharply rises
- DLC items are automatically added at the start of a playthrough, and thoroughly break the early-game due to their incredible stat boosts
- Crippling lack of variety for combat environments


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Bought this game because I was really missing the Fire Emblem series/Final Fantasy Tactics and needed to play something similar.

Pros:
- Long with each generation having it's own story line.
- Very Replayable. Choice of mate influences future characters and different possible story outcomes with Dark/Light and turn meter. Can travel back to previous chapters once completed.
- Art is very nice.
- Crafting system allows for a lot of ways to change up gameplay.
- Combat system is and engaging/interesting. Being able to string moves together to make combos (including ultimate moves)

Cons:
- VERY VERY grindy. Party AI in auto-mode is very reckless and will not use skills/items in context (person with Rez skill would attack instead of ressurecting teammate). So you cannot trust automode.Some bossfights are just completely unfair at times due to what the game expects you to be for the boss fight vs what the monsters leading up the boss are actually at.
- Steep learning curve. There's a lot of game mechanics that don't have a lot of good explanation, and some things that look optional are essential for progression.
- DLC weapons are insanely overpowered at the start of the game.


Other:
- Fully voiced japanese audio (with english subtitles)
- DLC is very optional, but very OP when starting out.


I haven't beaten the game yet, but I'm well over 100 hours total. I'd like to get back into it, but I think next time I'll start out with the DLC items to speed the start of the game up. This game will definitely eat up time

I figure that I should pipe in as I see many who have this game on their wishlist. I have put about 30 hours into the game so I qualify for at least a first impression. First and foremost, if you are looking into buying Agarest you have to realize that you are buying a dating sim (although simplistic) wrapped up inside of an RPG. The objective of the game is to defeat the boss of each generation and then to pick one of your companions to mate with so that you can continue towards your ultimate quest which spans multiple generations. Each generation will have you playing as the offspring of the last hero and companion that you picked. This is the story all wrapped up short and sweet.

The appearance of the game is a mixed bag. The CG (as they call it) are actually still shots with text that carries the story forward. The art and quality of the images are amazing (subjectively speaking). This remains true for the towns where you will spend your time crafting and upgrading weapons/armor. The battle system where you will spend the majority of your time shows the age of the game. The graphics are comparable to the Playstation 1 capabilities. Your party of heroes are cut down to chibi size and some of us who may be spoiled by newer generations of games might be slightly let down here.

As I mentioned above, the battlefield is where you will find yourself 90% of the time. This is both where the game shines as well as where the game begins to lose its glimmer. To start off, the battle system uses a turn-based grid system with both a move phase and then an attack phase. Each character uses Attack Points (AP) that they expend by both moving and attacking. The shared expense of the AP for both phases adds a strategic element to the gameplay. Obviously you would regret not moving your party member in a effort to conserve AP to find out that now your character is too far away to initiate any attacks against the enemy for example. The most strategic element of the battle system is the inclusion of a linking system which in short allows you to string attacks together.

There are some negative things to say about Agarest. You will find yourself fighting the same enemies over and over and over again. The battleground where you take on enemies will change into new scenary but only when you enter new areas which can take hours to advance through. This redundancy of core game mechanics dulls the experience and soon you will find yourself selecting the AutoBattle mode whenever you can putting your attention elsewhere. This becomes increasingly frustrating if you sludge through eight or nine battles fighting the same enemies in the same battle area just to be awarded by a 10 second still picture of a character who you are not interested in.

With all this said do I recommend this game? Well yes and no. It depends on what you are after in this game. If you are wanting the experience of a RPG similiar to other AAA titles that have branded themselves as must plays... then No. This game falls short in too many areas. Although the game opens up with its own crafting/upgrading system and many achievements to work towards, the gameplay is not diverse enough to keep the traditional RPGer happy. However, if your main reason for buying this game is to see attractive Anime girls appear on your screen, collect trading cards/backgrounds, and/or enjoy casual dating SIMs this game could be for you. The artwork is stunning. The content shifts from mild to erotic which will please many fans. If you are going to give Agarest Genertions of War a try just don't go in expecting more than what it promotes itself to be.

My personal favorite game of all time. With 11 possible endings if you count heroine true-ending changes, a bad end, and a good end. Agarest: Generations of War boasts more play time for a dedicated SRPG fan than one can possibly imagine. It is a game I believe every SRPG, JRPG or even dating-sim fan should play at least once.