[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]
I really have to disagree with this. Anyone who's played both games extensively will see the similarities. As a matter of fact, the attack names and animations are in some cases identical from one game to the other (Trick Hit, Double Edge, and a few of the more complicated attacks come to mind)
Cross Edge has chain attacks, arts (combos), special attacks, overkill and break. Agarest has... chain attacks, combos (arts), special attacks, overkill, and break.
Is anyone NOT seeing the simlarities yet? Heck, you equip 1 weapon, 1 armlet, 1 accessory in both games. In both games you have the exact same set of base statistics (STR, LUK, etc) which affect the exact same set of extended statistics (Attack, Hit, Resist, etc). Even AP is in the same realm: Characters will start with about 16 AP which amounts to two simple attacks in a single turn. Later you'll have them up to 35-40 AP and can do many simple attacks or a few better ones in a single turn. The character customization menus look almost identical, including equipment selection and so forth. About the only major difference in terms of character statistics and customization is that in Agarest your characters have a MOV stat (in Cross Edge you could jump from any part of your grid to any other).
I... I'm sorry, if you can't see the striking similarities between the two games, you didn't play one of them very long.
Point in case: If you thought Cross Edge's battle system was overly convoluted, Agarest might not be your favorite game. You're still going to have to discover 4- and 5-attack combinations to get decent decent damage special attacks later in the game. In Cross Edge to accomplish this you worked backwards in a skill tree of sorts (two simple attacks make one medium attack, two more simple attacks make a second medium attack, and those two medium attacks make a big-fancy-awesome attack), while in Agarest you can just put in the component attacks in any order before starting your attack chain.
So, yes, the battle systems are different, but the similarities are astounding, and if you really hated one, you're probably not going to like the other.