Agarest: Generations of War 2

My instinct with any niche JRPG is to check whether the combat actually has decision-making underneath all the menus, or whether it is just theatrical busywork dressed up in anime art. Agarest: Generations of War 2 sits somewhere uncomfortable between those two poles, and that tension is exactly what makes it worth talking about. The game ditches the grid-based positioning of its predecessors and replaces it with a formation-and-combo system built around three separate resource pools: AP (Action Points, the fuel for every attack string), SP (Skill Points, which unlock EX Skills and smooth out combo penalties), and UP (Ultimate Points, reserved for the high-damage Ultimate Skills that cap big turns). Each character carries four attack types - high, power, ground, and paralyze - and the core loop rewards stringing them in sequence to break an enemy's separate guard bar before chipping down the actual HP. Chain hits add compounding damage bonuses, and overkilling enemies past double their HP threshold drops better loot. On paper that sounds like a strategy game; in practice, the first generation of the story is largely spent figuring out that the system even works this way, because the in-game tutorial barely scratches the surface. Community discussions are full of players dozens of hours in still asking why their combos will not chain. The game opens up meaningfully in Generation 2 and beyond, once party points have been invested correctly and skill books have raised combat art ranks - but that early friction is a genuine barrier, not a romantic learning curve. Party-point allocation is where the long-term build thinking lives. The PC version ships with some DLC point packs bundled in, which softens the early stat ceiling, but the core decision of front-loading VIT into your fighters versus spreading points across STR and DEX still compounds across every level-up for the rest of the run. Invest wrong and late-game physical fighters will miss constantly, because DEX governs hit rate in a way the game does not loudly advertise. The three main protagonists - Weiss, Schwarz, and Grey - cycle across the multi-generational story, and permanent party members Eva and Fiona are strong combo anchors throughout. Character-party synergy feeds into formation bonuses and joint Ultimate Skills that only fire with specific roster combinations, so roster planning ahead of generation transitions does matter. Outside combat the structure blends visual-novel story delivery - mostly dialogue portraits with choice prompts - with an overworld map and dungeon exploration. The story follows Weiss, a man who killed a god, got cursed with amnesia for the trouble, and now must atone across multiple generations of descendants. It is melodramatic in the expected Compile Heart way, but the political drama that develops past the slow opening actually has some weight to it. The soul-breeding system, where dialogue affinity choices determine which heroine Weiss marries at generational breaks and thus who the next protagonist descends from, adds replay hooks if you care about alternate family trees and ending variations. The presentation is a mixed bag: gorgeously rendered backgrounds, crisp character art, a solid soundtrack, but sprite-form heroes fighting against polygon enemies that look considerably better than they do. Steam user sentiment sits at a mixed rating - around 57 percent positive from a small sample - which tracks with the divided critical reception. Fans of the earlier Agarest titles are split on whether the combat overhaul is an upgrade or a regression. Newcomers who bounce off the opaque first generation miss what the second and third generations actually deliver. The port itself is solid: faster load times than the PS3 original, full mouse and keyboard plus gamepad support, and the previously console-exclusive DLC baked in at no additional cost. This is firmly a game for people who read the FAQ before complaining on the forums, who enjoy theorycrafting stat growth across multiple playthroughs, and who find anime presentation a feature rather than an obstacle. If you want something with a cleaner tutorial and faster payoff, the genre has better entry points. If you are already committed to the niche and willing to treat Generation 1 as an extended tutorial that eventually clicks, there is a genuinely rewarding combo-and-build system waiting on the other side.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

Be the first to comment on Agarest: Generations of War 2.