Agarest: Generations of War

 PC
Metascore
45

Generally unfavorable reviews - based on 5 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 5
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 5
  3. Negative: 2 out of 5
  1. Multiplayer.it
    Oct 28, 2013
    65
    Agarest: Generations of War isn't a bad game, it just lacks the courage to be clear in what it wants to be.
  2. Hooked Gamers
    Oct 10, 2013
    60
    Agarest: Generations of War has an interesting central concept that never manages to create anything special with the tools it has available. While the dating sim portions of the game do succeed, even if they are overly awkward, the slow pace of the storyline combined with a lack of clear innovation does more harm than good. But, if you want to play an RPG that will last you an extremely long time, and are unconcerned with its pace, then you could do far worse than this.
  3. RPG Fan
    Oct 31, 2013
    50
    Often, even if a game is flawed, there will still be an audience who can appreciate what it has to offer and look past its flaws. I would be hard-pressed to identify any such audience for Agarest: Generations of War.

User Reviews

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User Score
6.9

Mixed or average reviews- based on 102 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 59 out of 102
  2. Mixed: 18 out of 102
  3. Negative: 25 out of 102
  1. FurthestFlung
    Nov 8, 2013
    4
    This is a game with an intriguing premise that you can shape your own personalized hero by playing through the generations of characters,This is a game with an intriguing premise that you can shape your own personalized hero by playing through the generations of characters, aided by a dating-sim-mini-game, and selecting out the heroines who will become your final hero's (great-great-great-grand)mother. The story is basically dead-set upon tick every RPG cliche it could off the checklist, and features a generic war-of-the-light-versus-dark story, but makes up for it with colorful characters. Oftentimes characters more scantily clad in their colorful-but-threadbare outfits than may necessarily be comfortable, but at least the dialogue did its job of entertaining me as I played through it.

    If it was just an average RPG with the same story and gimmicks, I would have been happy to give this game an above-average rating. The problem is that the game falls flat on its face when it comes to the actual "game" part of the game.

    I have never seen so much need for an auto-battle feature before in my life. The auto-battle exists (barely), but is so mind-numbingly stupid that you generally have to go a third of the game backwards to find opponents you can auto-grind against, but it's still far superior to having to spend the hundreds of hours it takes to beat the game gaining XP the normal way.

    Grinding is excruciating and necessary. On Hard, bosses will kill your characters in one hit, no matter even if you spent every single character point on NOTHING but getting more hit points. (And I did, for every character, because there's little point in anything else.) When they use their super-moves, (which they can do at will,) they often get the "overkill" bonus for dealing triple the HP of my characters in damage. Survival is a matter of packing max recovery items and spreading out so that only one character dies at a time.

    Because every combo you can do has to be not just pre-planned before battle, but pre-equipped and oftentimes grinded for, itself, the theoretically tactical grid-based combat basically always comes down to getting into the exact same formations, using the exact same combos you've metered out exactly to take advantage of the exact amount of AP you can spend. There is nothing in the game to make any one given battle any seriously different from another, besides maybe the bosses, but even every boss starts looking the same after a while. (In fact, at the end, they just outright keep reusing the same boss.) Hence, auto-battling just to keep from drooling boredom. (And because the auto-battle is awful, you have to grind more on auto-battle to survive auto-battling.)

    When "playing" the game usually entails just putting a weight on the button to walk upwards, and then leaving for a while so that auto-battle auto-levels your characters, just so I can do something else while "playing" the game, it's a problem.

    Worst of all, there's basically no way to get the good ending without using a guide, and if you screw up anything (and the game gives you basically no hints as to how you're screwing yourself over, or even where to look,) you have to start the WHOLE GAME OVER TO TRY AGAIN. That's right, 500 hours down the drain. When you DO finally beat the game, the game says, "Congrats, now onto the TRUE FINAL BOSS, which incidentally, is level 700. What, you're only level 100? Here's a new place to grind forever in, and all your old characters back, back at level 20. No, of course there's no experience sharing. Grind harder, sucker." I estimate "beating" this game will take roughly 1,000 hours, and I'm not even exaggerating.

    That's roughly where I figured I was just completely not having fun anymore, and abandoned the game for good.

    Oh, but as a bonus, they include "free DLC" that they originally charged people for, which basically includes just plain BUYING exp. Yeah, that's right, their business model was to make a game where you grind forever, and then sell people exp.

    In summary, the story and style of the game may or may not be to your taste, but the actual mechanics of the game get downright masochistic. When a game is best played by having a book to read to get you through the boring parts, (read: 99.999% of the game,) then it's not exactly something I can in good conscious recommend to any but the most rabid of JRPG dating-sim fans.    … Full Review »
  2. Noratetsu
    Oct 4, 2013
    10
    If you are hardcore into strategy jrpgs then you will definitely like this, heavy on story and a good battle system, you will spend many hoursIf you are hardcore into strategy jrpgs then you will definitely like this, heavy on story and a good battle system, you will spend many hours playing this. And with difficulty options even casual players can speed through the battles to get through the story. The story system is like a typical Japanese Visual Novel, with a battle system similar to other grid based strategy rpgs. The PC port seems to have been done pretty well. mouse and keyboard controls are good, and you can still play the game via controller.… Full Review »
  3. Rubytyr
    Nov 16, 2013
    10
    To start off with, this is a Jrpg through and through; and is regrettably thus the focal point of a lot of negativity on Metacritic. LowTo start off with, this is a Jrpg through and through; and is regrettably thus the focal point of a lot of negativity on Metacritic. Low scores based on "voice acting in Japanese" or "Old plot devices and predictable story lines" or "un-innovative gameplay" .

    Prior to my review, I would like to debunk some of the negativity; "IF" you like j-rpgs, then you will find no fault with this title; the story is your tried and true save-the-world montage, however, a old story concept can be just fine as long as it is told RIGHT, and it is my opinion the writers did a fine job of integrating previously known plot devices and character personalities and making for a enjoyable experience. Despite it feeling glossed over at points (due to it taking place over many generations), there is a undercurrent through the whole story that adds depth and feeling to the long term characters. For example, the game feels episodic; but you can tell from their behavior how the characters grow and change from beginning to end; they are not as two dimensional as some characters have been in other stories.
    Also, as an afterthought the translated script is more or less accurate (some inconsistencies, but nothing major), but my favorite aspect is that conversations are mature and thoughtful, some philosophy mixed in at some points and humor at other points, but no-head-slamming-against-a-wall derp conversations that tend to occur in a lot of official translations (NA translators trying to appeal to younger, broader, audiences etc).

    Diverging storyline based on choices, light/dark focus, provide for multiple playthroughs and provide some sense of "control" to the story (limited, but still some to an extent).

    Gameplay is your standard fair nothing great, nothing horrible there is a large selection of skills, all with their own animations and can be combo'd and many turn into group skills etc, making for a diverse experience. For those that can't stand animations (esp. when you seen them a hundred times) you can turn them off to speed up the game play. The battle maps offer some variety through positioning of characters as each character has a tactical formation they can have others join in on (to creat combo attacks and chains) based on where on the grid you place your party members.

    Not as polished as the Disgaea series, but comparing the gameplay of Agerest to Disgaea is just unreasonable as one is a accomplished developer with many big sales hits under their belt, whereas
    Agarest: Generations of War was the founding title for the devs; later titles show clearer progress, from the imports I have played.

    But that is not to say the combat is by any means poor in Agarest: Generations of War, it is intelligent, tactical, and dynamic you need to think, plan, and adapt to every fight and unlike what people claim, grinding is not required to see the ending(s) of the game its all about placement, members, and skills chosen.

    As for audio and visuals there are over 100 unique cgs, diverse sprite emotions for every character (the portraits that represent the characters), and you can tell effort was put into every character concept. Music is engaging, and effort was put into giving the tracks proper ambiance and feeling and not super-annoying the way a lot of other j-rpgs are (they mix up the battle musics so its not the same thing over and over). Voice acting is rich and emotional they feel "in character" and not just rehearsed lines, mind you these voice actors have tremendous experience under their belts from prior projects. (though bear in mind if you're a "English first" kind of person, you may have greivances but at least, everything but combat voices are subbed unlike what some other reviewer here wrote.

    An amusing concern/gripe is the scantly-clad girls and innuendo, as there are many people that label this an "eroge" or "hentai" game. seriously? would this make it to Steam or port over to PS3 if this had "that" level of adult content? Get a brain people. The artstyle is a sales ploy through and through and personally i'm enough of a perv to appreciate those half-naked anime girls. :P (not just for horney teenagers!) Ultimately it's up to personal taste if your a prude or delicate sensibilities are offended by sexualized artstyles, move along.

    The next point for me is there are multiple endings (varied, not cookie-cut like ME3 heh), and a "true" ending all based on wives married, the blance between light and dark by the end of the game- and other factors. And while each generation is fairly linear there are branching choices that add to replayability for new game+'s. And the obvious mechanic of creating your linage, and the skills/appearance they share amongst the parents.

    Those are the core points I can think of at the moment; as for why this game should be considered more favorably; if you enjoy j-rpgs, I believe you will have fun with this game.

    I'm glad I discovered this gem on Steam and hope they bring the rest of the serie    … Full Review »
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