Some games are just a struggle to get through, making the whole experience unpleasant. You would think that, as a critic, the bad games would be more fun to deal with; after all, writing about them allows us to ravage a bad game with 1800 or so words. That savage rebuke against something wholly not worth your time, because it barely respected yours, is often cathartic post-playing a game.
This time though, it's a struggle to get through. A game like Record of Agarest War 2, the sequel to a cult hit Record of Agarest War, is without much exaggeration one of the more unpleasant experiences I have had with a game. Niche game series are not inherently bad, but in this game the weird mix of mechanics and the clash with the comparatively poor narrative choices make the game one I never wish to experience again.
Right off the bat, the game throws at you several instances of torture for your retinas. From the opening movie scene to the criminally short and incoherent prologue, we see this mish-mash of ideas compiled into a compacted heap. For those new to the Agarest War series, the game is essentially a tactical RPG on a timer, where one of the main sub-quests is that the protagonist needs to enter a relationship with a female partner in order to proceed to the next generation. The game is essentially mixing dating simulation elements with tactical combat solutions, which at the time was more unusual than common as it is today
In theory, the concept is a marvelous one, as it has a continuing storyline that can be shaped by your actions and the connections you make with your party members. In practice, it becomes an exercise of repetition and regurgitated banality. It also doesn’t help matters that the characterization in Agarest War 2 is lacking in some cases; granted, the storyline also plays its own game of cliché bingo. Agarest War 2 stars Weiss, a swordsman with amnesia who apparently killed a god out of some form of revenge. The death of this god created an event known as the “Day of Light,” which enveloped the world in a blinding flash and then unleashed a horde of monsters and demons from its wake. After being told of this by an agent of the divine named Eva, Weiss is tasked with fulfilling his new destiny: to become the “Vessel” of the power of the god he murdered to atone for his actions.
I fully admit, the plot is not the most original idea in the world, but it does bring up some interesting theological themes and questions, something that few games even attempt to do without being too self-referential. For such a narrative to take itself so seriously, the rest of the game kind of falls flat in any attempt to fully engage with these narrative bits. Argarest War 2 bungles it completely, mostly due to the dialogue delivery; while it is a subtitled Japanese game, the actual subtitles and translation are fairly poor, with all of the dialogue being clunky in terms of “speech patterns” and having this tendency for explaining things out for the player, rather than just showing it.
It also doesn’t help that almost all of the characters never get a feeling of growth or really convey any sort of emotion at all due to their rather one-note personalities, which makes reading the game akin to a poorly written fantasy novel above all else. Though this is probably by design; the game features three generations of characters from Weiss' bloodline that span across the whole campaign, and outside of the progeny of the main protagonists, there is nothing narratively to latch onto except the main narrative.
The actual combat is also a mixed bag because of the unnecessary complexity it brings to the table. Instead of following the more traditional, six men on the field tactical-style combat that was akin to a Growlanser type of game, Agarest War 2 has decided to scale back the unnecessary movements, borrowing elements of the combat found in games like Cross Edge. Attacks are now button combos that do different amounts of damage, and field movement is no longer a feature. Most combat situations will have you attack with one of the four field characters at a time, effortlessly mowing down random encounter mobs with relative ease or little thinking, making this more of an action-RPG than a tactical one.
There is depth elsewhere, such as the skill system, but it is also where Argarest War 2 gets confusing. The skill system is divided into four sub-categories for each button on a standard controller, and to unlock special moves or skills you need to essentially grind and combine skills with other characters to achieve them. So to set up characters, you need to level up and add skills based on the characters' proficiency with skills, a total of twelve extra attributes to pay attention to as you grind it out. Add to this a combo system on top of skill learning that throws even more wrinkles into character growth and optimization, and you have one of the most unorthodox and downright bloated character progression trees for a tactical RPG.
Since the characters are only basic sketches with outrageously basic personalities, the tactical aspect will likely be driving your decisions in-game. There is some fun to be had in finding combos between characters that work, and getting skills to a place where the combat becomes more of a cakewalk. Credit there for providing an experience with depth that can appeal to the more hardcore players. Other aspects provide some unique tactical choice; formations give benefits to attacks, and allow for combo attacks between two or more characters on the field, while “overwaiting” the clock in battle reduces wait times for attacking. Original skills are special moves activated by the shoulder buttons to do massive damage when they become available.
This is kind of daunting, and the list of features in the combat system offers some fun for builds, but not much else. All of this becomes an exercise in character crunch versus caring about character motivation, which can be a turnoff for some players. A lot of this crunch is also unnecessary, as all of these features of the combat system amount to little to no use for a fair portion of the game. Even in some boss battles, there is no need to go in-depth with the presented combat mechanics, because it’s just easier to mash out combos with two to three characters attacking at a time, which will wipe out most enemies with ease.
Since one of the core functions of the game is to get married to a female party member, the dating aspect is also present. There are three candidates for marriage in the first and second generation, but most of the time it boils down to a canned response or a choice made by Weiss and his offspring that will have party members like or hate you more. It reminds me of the sliding affection system found in Dragon Age: Origins, but this time, instead of it being a tool used to open up characters and learn more about them, it is used to strictly increase the chances of having a happy marriage. The happier the marriage, the higher stats your offspring will have, along with some other bonuses. Of course, the marriage can be a forced, loveless marriage.
By forced, loveless marriage, there are heavy implications of sexual assault involved in the loveless marriages. Of course, the game never shows this, and it is wholly implied, but it is such a tonal shift that it frankly is a bit unsettling. No, this does not mean the game endorses that kind of behavior; in fact, a lot of the game makes fairly suggestive humor to try to make light of the situation. The problem, though, should be obvious: the tonal whiplash that just does not work.
Consider how other games do inheritance mechanics. The Fire Emblem series provides a fixed child character based on a singular parent, with the marriage being based on deeper character relationships. Some of the games even have their offspring as optional if the characters don't marry. Massive Chalice is built explicitly around the mechanic, and while there is very little characterization, it is mechanically simplistic in the trait inheritance between characters. Argarest War 2, though? It is a mandatory part of the game for a few generations, and relies heavily on innuendo and, well, fan service.
There are other ways to improve your relationship with your companions, and what better way to do it than a bathhouse mini-game? Two of them, in fact, one of which involves massaging your teenage-looking friends with oil, bananas, and ice cream (because why not?) and another that has you moving the control sticks back and forth to generate steam for your towel-clad partner.
Look, I get it. I really do. People like fan-service; they like scantily clad women, young women in bikinis, and fresh-faced anime protagonists who look like they came right out of Bishonen Central Casting. The problem is the excess. Agarest War 2 is all style in terms of its fan service, but offers a fairly unfun form of substance to justify the primary relationship mechanics. When your story is uninspired, your characters are bland, and combat offers a glut of mechanics to placate the hardest of the hardcore RPG players out there, there really is not much to go on with Agarest War 2.
Presentation issues continue in terms of the graphics of Agarest War 2. The animation on the characters' portraits was actually a nice touch, and in HD the characters look pretty good. Yes, the fan-service is obvious, but at least the art direction is somewhat grounded in a sort of real world here. Random cat-girl character aside, the portrait animation is the true star of the show in terms of strong graphical capabilities. What is not a star of any show is the sprite animation, which chugs along like a parody Flash game straight from Newgrounds. The sprites have jerky, springboard movements and, even more shockingly, cause stuttering during the battlefield sequences whenever a bright flash of some special attack occurs.
It's just downright ugly most of the time. What’s worse, many larger monsters, especially boss battles, contain fully 3-D creatures with barely any noticeable detail on them for you to kill. While it may be tradition to keep things grounded into a more simple or “retro” style in terms of visuals, developer Idea Factory and Red Entertainment dropped the ball on this one.
Sound design does fare a bit better. The game is a Japanese port with no dub attached to it, so many otaku purists would appreciate the original Japanese voice-over work with subtitles in the text. Music was also surprisingly catchy and well done, albeit the opening movie accompanying the main track was too over the top to be watchable for a second time. At the very least, the sound team did their job, and did it well in keeping the tracks light and goofy most of the time.
Honestly, Record of Agarest War 2 is just a bad game. Its combat system is a shambling mess of features where you don't really utilize its mechanics wholly, its promising storyline is hopelessly boring, its visuals are inexcusable, and its blatant fan-service is deeply questionable. Top this all off with a game that clocks in at around 40-50 hours and only three generations of protagonists instead of five like the previous titles, and I doubt that even Agarest War fans would be quick to embrace this title, but for others, this is nothing more than a bargain-bin purchase, at best.
Author's Note: This review was originally written for Blistered Thumbs back in 2013. It has been edited from its original form and posted here for preservation.