Finally the weekend / Attempted a new game

This week felt like it took forever. Every morning I woke up cursed the world and droned through the day with a pounding headache and a pissed off attitude. Even though today was friday it still wasn't any better then the rest of the week. I had two test and some event coordinating to do. This took a few hours to take care of. I feel I did well on both tests and the important event information was received but I still am not happy... I just woke up from a few hours of nap and it feels like I have an elephant sitting on my chest. My heart feels stressed and I can't seem to get rid of this new found back pain :(. So the rest of the weekend I will be attempting to get back to the status of a human by resting and playing videogames.

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The depressing half of this post over I feel I should talk a little about this new game I got and tried.

The games name is Record of Agarest War. It is a strategy rpg and dating sim for the xbox 360. A little background info on this game: It was originally made in Korea and translated over to English. It has a 2d battle style much like those of the early console with graphics being on bar with them. With that being said I didn't really know what to expect when I put this game in.

When I first started playing I noticed right away that it was alot different from most English or Japanese based games. The intro was unusually long with it being almost like a starwars feel ( You know blankish screen with just words). I found myself getting bored and missing lines this was so long. Then when it finally got finished I had a few of the standard options. I chose new game and was on my way. You first watch a scene of a battle (with graphics from the actual game) that looks reletively awesome ends with a character getting killed ( I believe the one that was killed is actually the character you play). After another long boring text scene you actuall get to start battleing. The first thing I noticed here was that it is rather tough to control all the people because the playfield is set up as an up, down, left and right but then the game takes it and turns it to it's side so it is now like a diamond. Now where it would have been easy the game makes it rather hard because with a d-pad you never know whch direction to push to get where you want.

After getting over the tough control sceme the game gives some interesting news. It says that when battleing their are two phases: move, and attack. All characters from both sides will move at the same time. Then they will attack in the order of their agility. This seemed good at first untill I realized that the AI actually waits and sees where you move then they counter and move with you. So it looks like they are moving at the same time but they will counter perfectly almost every time. Then the attack phase is a little confusing. Each character has a set of AP ( Attack points) these are used for moving in the beginning and attacking afterwards. The attacks each character has are limited and relatively ineffective for the most part. If you get lucky and compine two attacks that go well together you will get an "art" arts make a different move that does alot of damage. If you don't find any arts then good luck to you sir.

It took me quite some time to finish the first battle. After which there was some rather interesting scenes with the characters. Aparently the main characters leonhart defends an elf girl that the army is trying to kill. This sparks some animosity with his captain and they start to fight. This fight takes all of half a turn. It was a fight they wanted you to lose.

The stale conversations and slow battles pushed me off my xbox rather fast for a night of gaming. I just couldn't play it anymore. I can't quite say if I recommend it yet or not so keep reading folks. ;)