[quote name='ck76']Curious what best and worst parts were as someone getting into this series.[/QUOTE]
HUGE POST INCOMING:
The best aspects of this game are the original battle-system (Zero and One), the customization, the soul-breeding and the world they created.
The worst parts are the "dating sim" aspects, the J-pop influences and the fan-service (once it got out of hand).
Don't get me wrong. I dig tits. But once you make the boobs more than just aesthetics, and start making events based on them... well that's when it gets uncomfortable and annoying.
So okay, Agarest War 1, in my opinion, didn't have any "dating-sim" elements. You're not tasked with learning anything about the girls and remembering it or anything like that. You're simply choosing dialogue at certain points in the story and it increases and decreases affection accordingly. Most of the time you can't really determine how your answer is going to affect the girls, so basically you should just choose the answer that would be closest to one you would actually give. That's what I did at least. Usually the discussion isn't even regarding the females. It can be something as simple as what course of action you take when attacking a group of demons or something like that. To me, that isn't "dating-sim". So I was glad that was a very toned-down aspect of the game.
What was great about Agarest 1 and 0 was the battle system, crafting system and customization. Agarest 1 had 5 generations in which you recruit tons of characters that you can choose to use in your party and customize to your liking. Characters can turn into casters, tanks or dpsers depending on how you build them. It's a lot of fun to spend time making your team the way you want it. Agarest 0 had only 2 generations, so the team customization was terribly downplayed.
The battle system in Agarest 1 and 0 is also great. It's very slow, but also very strategic. The placement of your characters and what attacks you use in what order are all very important. If you're someone that has patience and enjoys strategy, then you'll enjoy it. If you like more fast-paced battles, it's not for you.
Soul-breeding also had a great influence in your customization. It was fun to pick out the female you found the most intriguing and see what aspects of your next "main character" would be effected by their stats and fighting styles. Marrying a caster type female with a very sword heavy dpser would create interesting possibilities and stats for your next character. There's also an instance of which you can marry a character with wings, giving your next hero wings and very high evasive properties as he flies in combat.
Finally the world they created in Agarest 1 is actually really intriguing, if you can look past the mediocre story. There are lots of cool races like the Ryulent, Yulishees, Harupia and Syrium. They all kinda have their places and fit well into the world. There's also a heavy influence on the struggle between the mortals and their relationships with the gods.
So where did they go wrong?
Well lets start with Agarest War Zero.
I'll start with the few things they did right. They added some breathing animation to the portraits, so they don't look so lifeless. And they improved the sound quality in the voice acting. That's about it.
Now on to what they f*cked up:
Lets start with the lack of generations. Only two this time around! That's less than half the first game! That greatly effects the number of characters you meet and the amount of customization you have on your "hero" character. Pretty lame if you ask me. I loved having tons of characters to choose from and being able to have my party any way I wanted it.
Next, lets move on to the mini-games. So they started expanding upon the "dating-sim" elements, where you now build up points for "vacation days." During these events, you have a certain amount of "moves" in which you can visit one of the many locations in the different cities. You usually have 5 "moves" and there are well over 5 choices to make during each vacation. Some choices open up different choices that would otherwise not be available. During these "vacation days" you can build affection with the females, find extra items or learn about hidden areas that you can gain access to. On paper, it's not a bad formula. Unfortunately, unless you use a guide, what ends up happening is you save your game before you activate a vacation day, make 5 choices, see what bonuses you get, re-load, make 5 new choices, see if they're better then rinse and repeat until you find the best set of choices. It's annoying as shit. Oh, and the higher affection you get during these vacation days, the more revealing the corresponding female's outfit is. Nice I guess... but still... doesn't justify the inevitably monotonous task maximizing your vacation day's benefits.
Other than that, this is much the very same game that Agarest War 1 is, just castrated into two generations. The characters' roles and personalities all have direct counterparts to characters in Agarest War 1. There's literally nothing new.
So basically, this game is worth a look if you really enjoyed Agarest 1. It also has an abridged version of Agarest 1 ... for what it's worth.
Moving on to Agarest War 2
Lets start with what they did right... trust me... it's not much.
They upgraded the quality of the sprites and they got rid of vacation days. That's it. They added a few new options to their still image dialogue scenes to breathe a bit more life into the, but that is all.
What did they do wrong? Oh god. Here we go:
Again, lets start with a lack of focus on the generations. We get 3 this time. One more than Agarest 0, but still... not even close to Agarest 1. So yea, there's your first strike on your customization... and trust me... it's far from the last.
Next, they completely did away with the old battle-engine. Yea, that polished, strategic engine that allowed for so much customization... it's gone. In it's place, we have a system that's somehow more complicated yet severely less strategic. First of all... there are so many "points" in this game. SP, TP, AP, UP, XP, HP, WP... it's ridiculous. They also do a HORRIBLE job explaining all this. I'm at the end of generation 2 and I STILL don't completely understand SP. But it really doesn't matter, because none of this shit is really that vital to know. You have hardly any control over the positioning of your characters, something that was so vital in the first two games, now almost irrelevant. You essentially select a grip of abilities and bind them to each of the controller buttons X, 口, O, △ and mash them to perform the abilities. There's a bit more to it, but that's the gist of it. It sucks compared to the original system. You are able to switch out dead characters for ones in your party... which is kinda cool... I guess. It's really all just a big mess.
Ooooohkay... so this one is something that just tugs at me as a sprite editor. They upgraded the quality of the sprites significantly... but much of the animation in this game is done by tweening. It's extremely lazy.
Alright, lets move on to the new mini-games. We've gotten rid of the Vacation Days, so that's a plus. But in their place, are something much worse. Good lord I hate these. Remember when I said boobs are good as long as they just remain aesthetics? Well these many games are all about tits. It's a public bath in which you massage and oil mostly static images of the heroines to increase their affection and stats. It's Move enabled, but I don't own a Move so I can only comment on the standard controls. Anyway, you drag a cursor over the image of the girl to spread oil on her, then you pick a part of her body, like her tits, hold a button down and spin it until she cums... or moans... whatever. It's uncomfortable and I can only play this game at night because of this, lol. I would skip them, but the stats and affection bonuses are too important to ignore. The more time you spend with the girls, the less revealing clothing they wear in the baths. It starts with a towel, goes to a bikini, then an "EX bikini" (which is skimpier), a night shirt then finally just soap suds to cover the goods.
Did I mention there was only ONE active town in this game? Yea... each time you want to restock on supplies or turn in commissions, you have to go back to the same time on the same continent (1 of 6). This is made even more tedious by the addition of an over-map in which you free-roam and encounter random battles. Sort-of like the dungeons in Agarest 1, only this time you'll spend much more time running from objective to objective. Luckily you can run from battles at the risk of losing "soul coins"... not even sure what the point of those are yet.
The game is also pretty bad at telling you where to go. You are usually given directions during dialogue, but it's very easy to forget it with all the locations of bizarrely names of cities you have to remember. This pretty much goes hand in hand with the bad tutorials.
Finally... and my god I hate this. They have the most convoluted "skill-tree" system in this game. You are gradually given books with spells, that you can learn. There are 4 different tiers, each with dozens of books that are segregated into "groups" you can only learn 1 book of spells from each group. Once you learn it, there is NO way to undo it. You are stuck with those spells, regardless of whether or not they end up in synergy with the ones you choose for other characters or the more powerful ones you choose later in the game. With the original two games, you could equip and unequip spells on a whim at any point in the game. This is another HUGE hit to your available customization and basically goes against the essence of the first game.
Okay, so what should they have done?
Expand on the customization! So get this, in all of the games, when you choose a bride it determines the look of your child. However, I think the appearance of your previous hero should also be a factor. For example: if you chose "Bride A" in generation one, the three possible appearances of your next child in generation 3 should all be different to if you chose "Bride B". Normally, there are only 3 possibilities at the end of each generation to how your next character will look. If they factored in the appearance of your previous hero, into the appearance of your child, by generation 5 there would be a possibility of 81 different appearances. They could look so inspired if you had features from all the awesome races they've created in this universe.
Polish the battle-system. Don't redo it! Make the system more user-friendly. Find new ways to speed up the spell selecting and positioning. Add new layers of elements... hazards... more varied battlefields. This new engine is garbage.
More generations! 5 should be our minimum! This is Agarest WAR right? I want to meet an army of characters at my disposal that I can customize in the manner I see fit!
Expand the lore of the different races! They've killed off some of their coolest races over this trilogy! CUT THAT SHIT OUT! I want to play as more Ryulents, Yulishees, High-elves, Syrium and all the others!
Bring back monster capturing! I forgot to mention. In Agarest War 1 and 0, you could capture almost any monster and add them to your team. You could breed them too. There was also a REALLY awesome point in which you could capture one of the main villains in Agarest War 0 and it made sense! I won't spoil that anymore though.
More cut-scenes that aren't J-pop trash. Okay, so we get like 2 CG scenes in Agarest 2... both of them are of two of the lead female characters dancing around on a stage with a horrible song and light-show. How about we take this shit a little more seriously? I mean the games main theme is only about slaughtering gods....
I could go on forever... but I've made this long enough... and I doubt anyone is even gonna read it. I just had to rant about a game series that I fell in love with at first... but watched crash so abruptly in the span of a few years.
Sakura Wars: So Long My Love with Hard Cover Artbook $19.99
