Lulled by the beautiful followers at his side, the divine blade in his hand, and the promise of eternal greatness nestled firmly in the vacuum of his head, the young doofus and a wanna-be hero Rain makes a critical mistake and gets involved in the generations’ long curse… all of this because he wanted to get married. Soon Rain and his child learn that having a happy marital life in Agarest is the worst possible fate one can deserve. And we as players get to experience this underwhelming story of love and lust in a game that looses all of its gameplay splendor and narrative beats from the very start.
Pros:
+ Some nifty tactical options make combat encounters engaging
+ I’m trying to think of more positive things, gimme a moment…
Neutral:
O The skill/ability tree seemingly wants to offer players plenty of freedom, but is self-limited by resource requirements
O Extremely forgettable music and sound effects
Cons:
- Appalling artistic/visual presentation
- Simplistic and underwhelming story filled with irritating and vacuous characters
- Repetitive combat and boring world traversal system
- Lame and uninspiring villains
[h1] She’s Got Motion [/h1]
ROAW Mariage is a JRPG game and a fourth title in the Agarest saga that mixes the basic tactical combat system with visual novel elements that will easily eat up 20-50 hours of your time. One of the main selling gimmicks and a genuinely interesting part of the series is the lineage story, where your main characters finds that someone special, gets an offspring who inherits some of the powers from both parents, and that child continues the main story instead.
While there is plenty of dialogue and story development, you’ll spend most of the time fighting, which is deservedly the most polished aspect of the game. You’ll start by using bog-standard attacks and special moves in combat. However, as you fight mini-bosses and the main villain, you will have to use advanced tactical options to win, such as laying traps that cause direct damage, buff your companions and de-buff enemies, or activate combo attacks at crucial moments.
On top of this, every character in your party has attacking and defensive skills, along with special moves they can use depending on the combat role you assign to them. A healer will have powerful healing and resurrection powers, attacker will have high damage skills aimed at quickly incapacitating enemy. Supporter will have skills that manipulate the flow of the combat by placing debilitating effects on an enemy and additional resistances on your companions, while a defender has immense defense moves that can save your companion from the instant-death abilities by higher-level enemies.
That’s not all, as all companions also have super-powerful Sacred Arts, combo attacks where two or more characters work together to deal the most damage. Also by using these arts, you nurture better bonds among companions which have significant effect on the story and narrative choices. Make no mistake; ROAW Mariage is a difficult game that rewards finishing combat encounters as soon as possible. If you are not using all of your skills to end the combat quickly, your chances of survival will fall drastically with each consecutive round.
[h1] You Let a Lotta People Down [/h1]
You can feel that the developers were cutting corners everywhere in this game. The visual presentation of ROAW Mariage is of low quality and ugly to look at, both with the 2D character portraits, anemic background paintings, and extremely low-poly and jaggy 3D models of companions and enemies. The music is so unremarkable that I cannot remember a single tune after finishing the game. The sound effects and Japanese voice acting is average at best and forgettable.
The design of the enemies is uninspired which makes combat more dull. You’ll fight domestic animals and banditry vegetables almost every single time, up until the final boss decides to shuffle onto the main stage. Cities and villages have the most generic fantasy look to them I’ve seen in a long time.
Your foolish cohort can travel around the continent by following the red zig-zag lines across the world map. Traveling this world is one of the most exasperating feelings you’ll feel in a long while in any game. You gain new skills by leveling up or by visiting shrines throughout the Agarest continent.
As you gain new personal and combat role levels (yes, there are two leveling systems you have to keep a track of), you will improve basic abilities and gain new skills. But to face more powerful foes, you will have to buy stronger ability boosts and skills from shrines in every city. You can choose and buy unlocked skills with your cash, but to unlock other skills, you will have to gather ingredients that defeated enemies leave behind. And if that sounds to you like a perfect receipt for a whole lotta grinding, you’d be right.
You’ll have to defeat a lot of enemies and chase them all over the continent to gain access to skills that make the difference in combat. You see, you can’t just fight an evil magenta wild carrot anytime you want to gain the smelly root. Oh no, you have to visit the specific location where these buggers live to get the ingredient that unlocks the skill to set powerful traps that automatically resurrect fallen comrades in combat. Overall, Mariage leaves a poor first, intermediate, and lasting impression.
[h1] Wrong Side of Love [/h1]
So, what is the story, you say… The paper-thin plot places the burden on saving the world on a passive and bland main character, Rain, while the great big evil is chasing them, tied in a confrontation that lasts for generations. The main protagonist is accompanied by chosen maidens who are obligated to help the chosen one in his crusade against the story plot that a 10-year old could have made. They have a bit more unique character traits from Rain, which is not saying a lot. The main antagonist, Eclipse exists only to spew petty and childish one-liners.
The story is boring and disappointing, as there are a few genuine dramatic moments in the game that are let down by forceful exposition and idiotic dialogue. And the overall exploration on the religious motives of rebirth and predestination in the game is an excellent food for the brain, that is when ROAW Mariage shyly decides to tackle them.
If there were a few of these gaping flaws in the game, I could recommend Record of Agarest War marriage. But the game is so adamant in disappointing the player at every step of the way, that all the lovey-dovey moments and nail-gripping fights can’t save this experiment in madness.
