My Secret Life as a JRPG Failure Part 2: Redemption

Do you know who that bald headed Mr. Clean dude on his knees is? Yep, that's Midas, the boss that was kicking my ass and making me think I would fail at finishing Record of Agarest War! That little bitty eensy weensy red bar is what is left of his health. When a character or monster's health gets low on this game, they fall to their knees. But the more damage they take, the more powerful attacks and spells they can unleash. A lot of Agarest War's strategy has to do with annihilating your enemies, because weakening them actually gives them more power to do damage to you. So on each turn of battle you have to position your party to do as much damage as it possibly can. You do this by joining your characters in "extended attacks" which allows you to combine and chain multiple attacks from multiple characters on one enemy. You know when a character is in position for them when they are joined by lines of energy as you can see below:

Midas was just kicking my ass over and over again and I was at loss as to how I was going to make it past him. Every time I would bring in my team to attack, they would do damage, sometimes even a LOT of damage, but he would use these very powerful area attacks, especially one called "Phoenix Strike" which would kill any of my party that was near him. And then my magic users were pretty easy prey after the melee warriors went down. I got so desperate that I spennt $10 to download 10,000 stat points that I could distribute to my party to increase stats like strength, intelligence, etc. But don't think it was that easy. It's not a one to one equation. The higher your stats go the more points  you have to spend to raise it ONE point. Like for instance, it takes 14 points to raise a stat 1 point. I only used about 1000 of the points I bought and raised my party's stats by about 40-50 points, maybe even less. But I STILL got my ass kicked. So it was back to the drawing board. I didn't want to use those points or get any characters OVERpowered so that the game would be too easy, so I scoured the internet for strategies. So buying the points was really just a waste of money. I couldn't tell any difference in the amount of damage they were doing with a bit of bump up.

I found the key I think in an Aksys forum where a guy said to let Midas attack first and to also use some of your party as "sacrifices". There were like fireworks going off in my brain at that point. I think most people want to take the initiative in games and want to make the first move. So I put my 2 toughest characters directly in his path and kept the other 4 members back. Midas did his attacks, doing a lot of damage to the tough guys, but nothing to the rest of my party. I used my healer to heal them and then did my attacks with the whole party. My party would be in killing range of his attacks at that point, but Midas had already used his turn so I could hit him with impunity. Then when the next movement phase came around I could move the four back, let him attack my two tough guys again, then attack, rinse repeat. So that's how he ended up on his knees in the picture above. The bastard.

I ended up with my whole party alive at the end of the battle! But of course he ended up not being the real boss. After I kicked his butt, I had to fight this monster and her party of angels!

And then of course she wasn't the final boss either. So I had to fight against a giant corrupted angel-like being and his minions. He was really tough but I defeated him as well:

And so what was my prize at the end? I got married! To this girl:

You see, one of the cool things about Agarest War is that your bloodline has been given the task of destroying a great evil, but it's gonna take more than one lifetime to truly defeat it. So at the end of each generation of the game (there are 5 generations altogether), you have to choose from one of three women from your party to marry to have a child with that will continue your mission. It's really kinda like a dating sim in that respect. Along the way, you make certain choices which increase or decrease each woman's affection for you. Towards the end of each gen, the three girls corner you and ask you questions in order for you to figure out which one will be the best match for you. Based on which choice you make, your son (I don't think there are going to be female descendants) will have a different appearance and different beginning stats. But the funny thing is, in reality, there are characters that you do care about, so it can be hard to figure out which answer will lead to her!

Due to the length of time between each hero's maturity, your party changes between each gen as well. Most of the ones that stick around with the new hero are non-human, like elves who have a longer lifespan (or immortal?). There has been one exception in the 4th gen. One character that was like a young dude in the 3rd gen is now a middle-aged scruffy 40-something, which is kind of cool.

And each main character of each gen has a different personality as well. 1st and 2nd gen heroes were serious, justice loving crusaders. 3rd gen was a ne'er do well playa. 4th gen hero seems to be a spoiled brat who smarts off to everyone.

So maybe I'm not such a JRPG failure after all. I've made it past this gamelife crisis and am starting the 4th gen. PLUS I still have those 8000 stat points left!