Tongue in Cheek Video Game Review: Record of Agarest War for Xbox 360

Being a young video game player of the male variety, I admit that any game featuring boobs will most likely grab my attention. Aksys Games knows this and manages to capitalize on it with its not quite safe for work video promoting its new game Record of Agarest War and its collector's edition for the Xbox 360. I confess that had it not been for those videos, I probably would have remained blissfully unaware of this game.

Record of Agarest War (RAW) is a Japanese strategy role-playing (SRPG) game where the player role plays as generic role playing game hero #151, AKA some effeminate dude with a sword on a quest to vanquish evil. During the course of the game, this dude will run into some ladies during the game. Female interactions play a part in RAW in the SRPG element as well as a dating simulation side quest. Players who flirt and woo a woman well enough-a potential challenge for the more socially awkward people who have trouble communicating with their own species-will bed her and give birth to an heir for five generations of hero protagonists to play as. More successful interactions will result in the ladies finding themselves in compromising images for the players to gaze into their overly cute facial expressions and the curves of their nicely rendered bodies and the sweat or other fluids trail downwards...

...Sorry. I lost my train of thought.

While the cheesecake factor is an interesting touch, there has to be some strategic role playing game elements in this SRPG or else RAW is nothing more than a slide show of naughty pictures to click through using a remote whose buttons randomly reassign themselves. And RAW does feature SRPG battle game play consisting of deploying and positioning your characters to kill enemies on a map grid. Some spaces provide tactical advantages and several game play elements like capturing and combining monsters to add as allies or sell to line coffers. I never really got the hang of the combat, but I am hooked trying to get the hang of it. Players will get a challenge of strategically planning assaults, defenses, ambushes, and special combo attacks. Watching them get executed on the screen is satisfying even if the combat graphics feel more akin to Nintendo DS or PSP game play.

Getting back to sex sells vs. selling sex, Aksys was cruel to make the collector's edition exclusively for the Xbox 360 and leaving PS3 owners with only a 10GB downloadable version. Priced the same as the regular edition, the collector's edition features a soundtrack CD, a pillowcase with one of the girls drawn on, and a mouse pad with boobs-a more 3D experience of those traits to coincide with the 2D counterparts displayed. None of these premiums really add to RAW but how often do you find such blatant attempts to pander to the gaming male demographic?

Whether you see Record of Agarest War as an SRPG with some mild PG-13 sexy elements to serve as breaks in the game or you see Record of Agarest War as cheesy PG-13 sexual exploitation disguised as an RPG, it is a game worth checking out. Just try not to look too embarrassed when people catch you checking out the scantily clad images.