Record of Agarest War Naughty Edition for Xbox 360 - $56.57 (price drop)

The UK version is a horrible localization though, and doesn't include the extra content from the US release.
 
http://kotaku.com/5458989/theres-more-to-record-of-agarest-war-than-sex-appeal

Looks like PS3 users are getting the game for less and some free DLC.

"It plays similarly to other Japanese SRPGs that have come before it. The main difference lies in the Extended Area and Extended Attacks, which give you a lot more options on the battlefield, such as being able to link slow characters to allow them to act sooner than normal or linking a character that is out of range for an attack. Also, this system allows you to discover special combo attacks called Arts in which the player has to use different (or the same!) characters' skills in a specific order."
 
Bah god. The PS3 really got screwed over. :wall:
Even if we did buy a lot, that won't change SCEA stupid policy. :bomb:

Ah fuck this. I'll buy the 360 LE, sell the game, keep the others, and finally open a share account for the PS3 to cut losses.
 
this game just popped up on my gold box deals on amazon for $56.99....... i don't think i have the balls to have this show up to the house and be questioned for hours by the wife
 
[quote name='brotterr']this game just popped up on my gold box deals on amazon for $56.99....... i don't think i have the balls to have this show up to the house and be questioned for hours by the wife[/QUOTE]
I just preordered mine from Gamestop, then slapped my wife for inquiring as to what I was doing on the internet.

But seriously, why would she question you? Tell her what's up, you like titties.
 
I have the disc EU version of this for PS3 (The Ghostlight version, which has lots of typos and stuff). Incidentally I reviewed it on the Amazon page linked in the OP. It shows up in the discussions.

Bottom line: The game drags on severely. If you hated Cross Edge, this is not for you. If you didn't like Cross Edge that much, wait for a lower price on this one. If you liked Cross Edge, go for it, but be ready for a game that's about 70% the same as Cross Edge and 30% improved.

Discussion link:
http://www.amazon.com/Brief-review-...d_fp_ef_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&asin=B00354NBF4

Edit:
Even though I sort of bashed this game, I still think it's a decent buy for genuine lovers of JRPGs, SRPGs, and provocative anime stuff. On that note I'm looking to sell my EU Ghostlight PS3 version. I'm thinking $40 to a CAG with any Marketplace history. Free shipping. Read my discussion above for issues with translation and typos though. The EU version will also require to to temporarily lock your PS3 to 720p (disable 1080p) because of PAL, although this is easy.
 
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[quote name='Esoteria']you need to be fanatical about one of the following aspects: anime girls and the stereotypes that come with that[/QUOTE]

Yeah. In for one.
 
I preordered mine at GameStop a few days ago. I'm a sucker for JSRPGs (although I did like Cross Edge too), so I'll bite.

BTW, my girlfriend wants to play it too. :p
 
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[quote name='Esoteria']I have the disc EU version of this for PS3 (The Ghostlight version, which has lots of typos and stuff). Incidentally I reviewed it on the Amazon page linked in the OP. It shows up in the discussions.

Bottom line: The game drags on severely. If you hated Cross Edge, this is not for you. If you didn't like Cross Edge that much, wait for a lower price on this one. If you liked Cross Edge, go for it, but be ready for a game that's about 70% the same as Cross Edge and 30% improved.

Discussion link:
http://www.amazon.com/Brief-review-...d_fp_ef_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&asin=B00354NBF4

Edit:
Even though I sort of bashed this game, I still think it's a decent buy for genuine lovers of JRPGs, SRPGs, and provocative anime stuff. On that note I'm looking to sell my EU Ghostlight PS3 version. I'm thinking $40 to a CAG with any Marketplace history. Free shipping. Read my discussion above for issues with translation and typos though. The EU version will also require to to temporarily lock your PS3 to 720p (disable 1080p) because of PAL, although this is easy.[/QUOTE]

I didn't like Cross Edge, but that game was a JRPG not a SRPG. So, I don't understand why they should have the same gameplay.
 
[quote name='SniperREX']I didn't like Cross Edge, but that game was a JRPG not a SRPG. So, I don't understand why they should have the same gameplay.[/QUOTE]
Well the battle system in Cross Edge is similar to the one in Enchanted Arms were you have to strategically place your characters around a grid, even though the battle screens look more like a Final Fantasy X game than a Final Fantasy Tactics game (if that makes any sense).
 
[quote name='mxpowar']Well the battle system in Cross Edge is similar to the one in Enchanted Arms were you have to strategically place your characters around a grid, even though the battle screens look more like a Final Fantasy X game than a Final Fantasy Tactics game (if that makes any sense).[/QUOTE]


I thought the Battle System in this Record of Agarest was like the one in a real SRPG :bomb:
 
Cross Edge and Agarest Senki's battle systems are completely different.

Cross Edge is turn-based-row-position-active-confusing battle system that really turns you off from the game.

Agarest is a standard SRPG 2-phase (Move, Attack) style battle system with customizations, such as making chain attack combos with characters, Arts (hidden combos that are activated when skills are used in a certain order), special attacks, and Overkill where you can inflict more damage for more bonuses.
 
[quote name='artego']Cross Edge and Agarest Senki's battle systems are completely different.

Cross Edge is turn-based-row-position-active-confusing battle system that really turns you off from the game.

Agarest is a standard SRPG 2-phase (Move, Attack) style battle system with customizations, such as making chain attack combos with characters, Arts (hidden combos that are activated when skills are used in a certain order), special attacks, and Overkill where you can inflict more damage for more bonuses.[/QUOTE]

Thx for the clarification. I really hated Cross Edge's convoluted Battle system.
 
What they failed to mention was that a lot of the DLC is free on the 360 too. At least on the JP version.
 
I reserved it at Game$top today purely for the pretty girls and the bonus goodies. I hope I don't regret this.
 
If that's mostly what you're looking for, you won't be disappointed.

As I mentioned previously, the SRPG parts have an auto mode, so if you just want to enjoy interacting with pretty girls, the option's there ;)
 
[quote name='Fire_Thief']I want this but don't want to spend 60. Any chance of this being cheaper than that later, or will this be hella rare?[/QUOTE]
If Aksys' previous limited edition is anything to go by (Blazblue), then my money's on rare (literally, since I pre-ordered this).
 
[quote name='artego']If that's mostly what you're looking for, you won't be disappointed.

As I mentioned previously, the SRPG parts have an auto mode, so if you just want to enjoy interacting with pretty girls, the option's there ;)[/QUOTE]

Holy cow! Best purchase of the decade!
 
[quote name='mxpowar']If Aksys' previous limited edition is anything to go by (Blazblue), then my money's on rare (literally, since I pre-ordered this).[/QUOTE]

Man I need this game.
 
[quote name='artego']
As I mentioned previously, the SRPG parts have an auto mode, so if you just want to enjoy interacting with pretty girls, the option's there ;)[/QUOTE]

For some reason, the one-button mode in Bayonetta comes to mind when I read that.
 
I'm biting the bullet. Showed up in my Goldbox and the $10 credit from ME2 is expiring at the end of Feb. Hopefully the translation is decent without the story of the game dumbed-down for a Teen rating.
 
[quote name='artego']Record of Agarest War is an okay game.

The great thing about the SRPG part is there is a 'skip' option during battles (not Boss battles) where the AI takes over and the characters play themselves out. Great for grinding and powering through the game to get to the... real purpose of the game. :D[/QUOTE]

Did this affect achievements? And for that matter, what were the achievements like?
 
[quote name='RaidenMGS3']Did this affect achievements? And for that matter, what were the achievements like?[/QUOTE]
As far as I remember, most of the big achievements are story based ie. 'progress far enough in the plot and unlock them.' There are also achievements for getting the ending with each heroines, and then some misc. achievements like maxing out certain stats/attributes during leveling up.

There were some achievements that were related to battle, but they were based on unlocking certain moves/killing certain number of enemies, so theoretically it should be counted in the auto mode, since it plays out the battle itself in auto mode.

There is also a skip button that lets you skip all battle animations as well, so with a combination of both, a battle can end in a couple of seconds should you want it to.
 
[quote name='artego']As far as I remember, most of the big achievements are story based ie. 'progress far enough in the plot and unlock them.' There are also achievements for getting the ending with each heroines, and then some misc. achievements like maxing out certain stats/attributes during leveling up.

There were some achievements that were related to battle, but they were based on unlocking certain moves/killing certain number of enemies, so theoretically it should be counted in the auto mode, since it plays out the battle itself in auto mode.

There is also a skip button that lets you skip all battle animations as well, so with a combination of both, a battle can end in a couple of seconds should you want it to.[/QUOTE]

Wow, awesome! Thank you so much for answering, I'm preordering this today based off your post!
 
What does it say about this game when people are happy that the game can play itself? If you don't like SRPGs, you'd probably be better off just buying an anime or hentai dvd.
 
[quote name='Banana Peel Assassin']lol, I can only imagine the stares I'll get when I pick this one up from the local gamestop....[/QUOTE]
Bonus points for getting raped by the Taiko Drum Master drum there, too.
 
[quote name='Banana Peel Assassin']lol, I can only imagine the stares I'll get when I pick this one up from the local gamestop....[/QUOTE]
There is always an internet purchase option with which you don't see or interact with any people face-to-face :)
 
[quote name='eau']There is always an internet purchase option with which you don't see or interact with any people face-to-face :)[/QUOTE]
LOL, I use that option for almost everything in my life!
 
[quote name='mxpowar']What does it say about this game when people are happy that the game can play itself? If you don't like SRPGs, you'd probably be better off just buying an anime or hentai dvd.[/QUOTE]

Well, here's what makes that appealing to me -- I enjoy SRPGs, but they're not my primary genre. I frequently start them, but rarely finish them. What I often find in them is that I'll play for a good long while, but then I'll suddenly come up against a battle where the opponents seem far too overpowered for my characters. I'll play through the battle several times, sometimes even coming close to winning, but I won't quite be able to make it.

Now, if I'm really into a game, I'll keep at it until I finally (usually through what seems more like luck than anything) end up winning. And then I'll move on, and usually will find that the next battles aren't nearly so hard (until at some point later another really difficult one seemingly randomly comes up). But my sentiments toward the game will go down. If I'm not so into the game (or I've hit this problem too many times), though, what usually happens is that after the third or fourth time through a scenario, I'll just get frustrated and quit altogether.

Maybe this is because I don't have a ton of experience with SRPGs and haven't learned all of the little tricks yet. Or maybe diehard SRPG fans have a lot more patience and tolerance than I do for playing the same scenario over and over again until they get it right. Regardless, though, I find the idea of an SRPG that can (but doesn't have to) play itself to be appealing because it means that, when I hit that point of frustration, I'm not just stuck. I can let the game get me past the part where I'm having problems, and then I can move on with it. Maybe it's a cop out, but if it enables me to finish a game rather than just giving up on it, and cuts down on the frustration level, I'm happy.

It will be even better if I can watch it play through the scenario and possibly learn something that I can use the next time. I'm not certain whether it does this or not?

Honestly, if anything, knowing that the option is available helps to sell me on this game that I was uncertain about otherwise.
 
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[quote name='arcane93']Well, here's what makes that appealing to me -- I enjoy SRPGs, but they're not my primary genre. I frequently start them, but rarely finish them. What I often find in them is that I'll play for a good long while, but then I'll suddenly come up against a battle where the opponents seem far too overpowered for my characters. I'll play through the battle several times, sometimes even coming close to winning, but I won't quite be able to make it.

Now, if I'm really into a game, I'll keep at it until I finally (usually through what seems more like luck than anything) end up winning. And then I'll move on, and usually will find that the next battles aren't nearly so hard (until at some point later another really difficult one seemingly randomly comes up). But my sentiments toward the game will go down. If I'm not so into the game (or I've hit this problem too many times), though, what usually happens is that after the third or fourth time through a scenario, I'll just get frustrated and quit altogether.

Maybe this is because I don't have a ton of experience with SRPGs and haven't learned all of the little tricks yet. Or maybe diehard SRPG fans have a lot more patience and tolerance than I do for playing the same scenario over and over again until they get it right. Regardless, though, I find the idea of an SRPG that can (but doesn't have to) play itself to be appealing because it means that, when I hit that point of frustration, I'm not just stuck. I can let the game get me past the part where I'm having problems, and then I can move on with it. Maybe it's a cop out, but if it enables me to finish a game rather than just giving up on it, and cuts down on the frustration level, I'm happy.

It will be even better if I can watch it play through the scenario and possibly learn something that I can use the next time. I'm not certain whether it does this or not?

Honestly, if anything, knowing that the option is available helps to sell me on this game that I was uncertain about otherwise.[/QUOTE]
I used to think the same way you do back in the previous console generation when games like Devil May Cry would kick my ass and I would just want to see the game through to the ending. So I ended up using a Codebreaker cheat device and then I got kinda lazy and started using it for all games.

Obviously, this was a bad idea since games got really boring. My point is sometimes working hard to beat a game can pay off with the satisfaction of accomplishing something and taking the easy way can take the fun out of it.
 
Well, the Auto Mode+Skip mode isn't a get-out-of-playing-for-free card either. If you're underpowered and just try to brute force through the game, you're going to die. Not to mention you can't really skip through the boss battles either, and you still have to do the dungeon exploration parts. And the gal-getting parts. And there's a crafting part too (gathering materials to build new items and weapons/etc.)

And there's a monster capturing system as well (think Pokemon - weaken an enemy in battle, use Capture skill - captured monsters can fight with you or can be traded in for rare items and the like, or you can fuse captured monsters together to make new, stronger monsters) and you can't exactly do that if you're skipping through the battles.

There's still a decent amount of SRPG'ing you'll have to do, especially your first time through, before you'll reach the ending in the game. The nice thing is that once you run through the first time, having such an option gives you more freedom for replays. If I want to run through the game again and pursue another heroine's ending, or unlock more CGs, I don't have to sit and grind 10+ hours again in SRPG fights to get through the game.

[quote name='mxpowar']What does it say about this game when people are happy that the game can play itself? If you don't like SRPGs, you'd probably be better off just buying an anime or hentai dvd.[/QUOTE]
Except in the game you can interact with the girl and make your own awkward dialogue choices and pursue your girl. You're the protagonist here ;)
 
[quote name='mxpowar']My point is sometimes working hard to beat a game can pay off with the satisfaction of accomplishing something and taking the easy way can take the fun out of it.[/QUOTE]

Oh, I agree -- which is why I said that I'd use that option when I hit that point of frustration. On a single scenario. I wouldn't set it to just play the whole game for me, and I wouldn't ever have it play a scenario for me until I'd given it a few tries myself. But there's a difference between working hard, and feeling like you're beating your head against a wall -- and if I feel like I'm doing the latter, I'm honestly not going to keep playing the game. Maybe you're into that kind of masochism, but if I continually feel like throwing my controller when playing a game, I feel like my time is better spent elsewhere (and my backlog is too big to not be) doing something else that I'm actually enjoying.

I think what frustrates me about SRPGs is the sheer amount of time sink involved. I don't mind so much having to play a section of an action game over and over again, because more often than not, it's a commitment of a few minutes each time. But when an SRPG scenario takes over an hour, though, it's a much bigger deal to have to keep playing it again and again. If I feel like my strategy is improving I don't mind so much, but if I feel like I'm doing as well as I can and having near impossible odds thrown at me, and I'm relying on dumb luck to get me through (which happens too often), I get annoyed pretty quickly. And generally if/when I do finally make it through one of those scenarios, I don't really feel a great sense of having accomplished anything because it feels like I got lucky.

Then there's the SRPG grind. For example, I actually really like Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor -- but in order to get through the game, you have to spend a lot of time grinding and leveling up in the "optional" battle scenarios. Now, while I'd like to enjoy doing this, the simple fact of the matter is that there are actually a pretty limited number of those scenarios (generally only one or two available at a time), and once you know how to beat one of them, you can pretty much beat it every time. But in order to level up enough to actually be able to make it through the next main event, it's pretty much necessary to play through each one multiple times. Honestly, I get bored playing the same scenario over and over again, and that's the biggest reason that I haven't finished that game yet. If there were a way that I could beat a scenario once or twice, and then let the game do it for me a couple more times until I was at a high enough level to continue on with the game, I'd be all over that.

So yeah, there are people who are going to use this feature incorrectly, let the game play itself, and basically experience it as a cartoon. Their loss, honestly, but whatever makes them happy. Personally, I'm hoping for a game that will give me some great gameplay, but won't ever leave me feeling "stuck" in a situation where I can't move on and I'm no longer enjoying the game because of it.
 
In my experience, ally AI is typcally dumb as bricks and often outnumbered and underpowered compared to enemy characters as they are generally designed to compete with humans. This is especially true on major/boss battles. So if you're getting your ass kicked, auto probably won't have better odds.
 
[quote name='watcher0']In my experience, ally AI is typcally dumb as bricks and often outnumbered and underpowered compared to enemy characters as they are generally designed to compete with humans. This is especially true on major/boss battles. So if you're getting your ass kicked, auto probably won't have better odds.[/QUOTE]

Oh, that's disappointing to hear. AI is pointless if it's not smart enough to actually be able to win. Oh well, if it can at least take care of some of the more boring grinding, that's a bonus.
 
arcane, if you lose once and it isn't one of those "Oh, my bad. I misplayed a bunch of moves" moments, the problem is probably with your characters, not your strategy. Assuming you've micromanaged your characters to their ideal set-up, it's a simple issue of stats. Ya gotta grind.

S-RPGs are my favorite genre, but I've learned that they can rarely be won by strategy alone.
 
[quote name='DarkSageRK']arcane, if you lose once and it isn't one of those "Oh, my bad. I misplayed a bunch of moves" moments, the problem is probably with your characters, not your strategy. Assuming you've micromanaged your characters to their ideal set-up, it's a simple issue of stats. Ya gotta grind.

S-RPGs are my favorite genre, but I've learned that they can rarely be won by strategy alone.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, when it comes down to it, grinding (or at least the sheer amount of grinding necessary) is probably my biggest hang-up with SRPGs. I probably do end up trying to power through them faster than I should, simply because I get bored with playing the more mundane grinding scenarios over and over again and want to get on with the game. That's probably why I end up hitting roadblocks, because I want to move on before I've built up the stats.

That being said, if the AI is at least strong enough to be able to handle grinding and I can have it do some of that for me, that will be a big bonus.
 
[quote name='arcane93']Yeah, when it comes down to it, grinding (or at least the sheer amount of grinding necessary) is probably my biggest hang-up with SRPGs. I probably do end up trying to power through them faster than I should, simply because I get bored with playing the more mundane grinding scenarios over and over again and want to get on with the game. That's probably why I end up hitting roadblocks, because I want to move on before I've built up the stats.

That being said, if the AI is at least strong enough to be able to handle grinding and I can have it do some of that for me, that will be a big bonus.[/QUOTE]
J/SRPGs=grinding. That's just a fact. For those of us who love JRPGs (like myself), it's something we have to learn to love or even just find workarounds for. Personally, when I come upon a point where I can see I have some serious grinding to do, I just take a break from the game and play something else that can be beaten quickly (action/adventure games like Heavenly Sword, etc.).

When you come back to the RPG, it feels a little more fresh and the grinding doesn't seem as tedious.
 
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