The combat system is the only thing making this remotely playable here. Fans of art, story, or music: buy something else
Unfortunately, Record of Agaerst War 2 was not a pleasant surprise. Here are the reasons why:
STORYLINE:
Simply put, it's a mix of boring and pathetically creepy. I mentioned before how I read that the story spans three generations, but I honestly got through only one before I got a glimpse of the second one before I was tired of playing it. The story begins when some hothead named Weiss kills a god for not answering his prayers. He wakes up with only a fuzzy idea who he is and no memories and a magic sword (a cliché way past overused). Two girls stumble into him in the middle of this nowhere in quick succession. One is a plain and boring healer and the other in a chain-laden bikini that claims to be a messenger from the gods.
What the messenger says make very little sense but it basically boils down to this; gods are ticked, they want Weiss to fix the god Weiss broke, Weiss must do this by slicing up demons with the magic sword, and if Weiss or the god's messenger doesn't think that he can find all the pieces before the end of he's lifespan he must pick one of three chosen women to seduce and create a child with so that the job gets finished later.
Okay fine, whatever it takes to start the ball rolling, but dry plot line aside I still disliked every character in the game, and there is no hint as to any direction for a plot to develop. Weiss just leads his party to random spots in the world to find "events" to ether fight a creature or to say depressing things to a anime women to make her affection points go up. It all feels very dry and stapled on as if the writers didn't want to do their job. None of the characters seem like they care about how traumatic and awkward the whole situation is. There is no drama, no funny moments, and no evolution of the character's "personalities". A shame, really, the idea of a story that followed the lives of the cursed generations seemed interesting too. To bad that's where the creativity ended.
GAMEPLAY:
The game play was actually not bad. In fact, it's what kept me playing for as long as I did. The tactics were not really what I thought they were going to be however. In fact, it was more like the only fashioned JRPGs were bad guys stand on one side and "good" guys stand on the other. The only real purpose of the grid was of area attack effects. But there was a bit of tactics in the way you hade to time and order your attacks as to make the best use out of them.
When leveling your characters you can choose to purchase their stat points any way you wish and teach them moves to use in combat at your whim provided you purchased the book that mentions them, so most of the characters can play any role you want in the battles even teaming up to make more powerful attacks.
The battles were the only fun part of the game, however, and they begin to drag because of nothing else to do. There is a poor tutorial and no mission journal, so you have to figure out and remember what Weiss is supposed to do next on your own. The side quests are so non-engaging that most of the time you are not even aware you are doing them until they've been completed. There are minigames, I discovered later, but they looked pointless and flat out embarrassing to play. I'll give you a hint: in one you press buttons to build a relaxing bath for one of the girls in Weiss' group. You get some stat boosters for the female character you pick to play the minigame...but it was still not really worth it. Felt more like an excuse by devs fto add pictures of the anime girls in towels than anything else.
GRAPHICS:
The graphics were a very classic anime art style with a bizarre twist. Although the story is told with flat 2D images, the character images move slightly, reminding me of paper puppets. In combat some enemies are 2D and some are 3D on 3D background. I got used to it, but not everyone will, it's an odd mix.
SOUND:
The sound track is average. The music is enough to relay an intended mood but not good enough to bother remembering. The voiced cast was in Japanese with subtitles, but only a few people did not sound chronically depressed, further deepening the feeling that not many of the involved staff really wanted to work on this game.
OTHER COMMENTS:
Overall, this game, while almost failing to get my attention in the first place, most certainly failed to keep my attention. The game if made by anyone ambitious might have been good, but with bland art design, practically non existent story, dry characters, repetitive game play, slow and drawn out pacing, forced sidequests, juvenile minigames, tacky advertisement and unlockable pictures trying to have some bizarrely pathetic form of sex appeal…this game doesn't cut it. Buy something else. There are fair more entertaining Japanese games out there.