Agarest: Generations of War 2 Combat Guide – How to Claim Victory

Planning is Key

Agarest Generations of War 2 showcases a fantastically advanced system of battle. What it keeps from the olden days, however, is an emphasis on early planning. That means developing your characters correctly right from the start – as soon as possible, actually.

The PC port of Agarest Generations of War 2 includes some of the DLC automatically that had to be manually downloaded for the PS3 version. This includes a few point packs. Those include PP packs – party points. Party points are how the player can customize their characters’ level up bonuses and stack certain stats. And yes, high stats from early levels onward mean higher increases as levels are acquired.

So putting 50-100 points in a character’s VIT (Vitality) stat from the very beginning will ensure that their HP skyrockets as they level up. It is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you do this for, say, the protagonists, Eva, and Fiona.

Party Composition Will Make or Break You

SPOILERS AHEAD. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.

This is a game that follows the 4-person party trope. Agarest Generations of War 2 also features quite an amount of ultimate skills that can only be executed depending on which characters are in the party. It pays, therefore, to know who you’ll be using.

These characters will be available throughout the entire game with no interruptions:
Eva
Fiona
Jainus

And these characters are available for most of the game via special means:
The three protagonists (Weiss, Schwarz, Grey)
Everyone else (seriously)

The Protagonists will probably have the best elemental affinities. They have a fair share of ultimate skills that are used with Eva and Fiona. Other party compositions will obviously work well. However, the protagonists and either Eva or Fiona make an absolutely phenomenal combination.

Use Eva if you want to take more advantage of her elemental affinities i.e. Dark skills, or Fiona for Light skills. Both have an excellent selection of EX skills and both unlock great ultimate skills with the three protagonists.

Perfect Point Management in Battle is a Priority

There are three major points that need to be watched in Agarest Generations of War 2‘s battles:

AP (Action Points – the fuel for attacks)
SP (Skill Points – enables EX Skills to be used and eliminates the penalties for combo attacks)
UP (Ultimate Points – used for the all-powerful Ultimate Skills)

AP are the bread and butter. During a combo attack all the participating characters’ AP is rolled together. Leftover AP is also returned to the character and combined with their max value at the start of their next turn to a max of double their base value. Bonuses to AP are awarded when a specific type of attack i.e. down, up, or stun is used to max the attack gauge, granting a bonus to AP recovery (trackable in the upper right portion of the screen).

SP is only slightly less important than AP. Used for EX skills, which will literally turn the tide of battle (for both you and your enemies), it is gained by changing a target’s motion in battle. That is, when you break their guard and start up attacks, SP is earned. When you use an attack that switches from up to stun, SP is earned.

UP is earned by depleting the Break gauge, rewarding 1 UP. If you fail to fully deplete the gauge, half of the Ultimate Gauge will roll over. UP is used, sometimes along with SP, to activate Ultimate Skills.

A note – ultimate skills fall into two categories: ones you activate from the battlefield immediately, and ones you activate after an Ultimate Strike (activated at the end of a turn when enough continuous attacks are chained together). The Final Strikes activated on the tail end of an Ultimate Strike are those involving more than one character. They are absurdly powerful and will only be available if enough UP and SP are amassed. For endgame boss-fights, always save up for these powerhouses.

Filling All Skill Slots is Not Mandatory

Looking at what’s available to a character, it can be pretty tempting to fill every solo and combo skill slot. But don’t. Agarest Generations of War 2 is trying to trick you by tempting you with 21 open slots. Don’t do it.

Now, before you close the guide, hang on a tic for a pretty good reason. Not all skills are created equally. The AP/damage ratios will not always line up. And when building your characters’ combo skills, it might not always be a good idea to drive up certain skills to their max level in favor of others.

Focus on what combo skills you want to use, and what order you want to use them in – and where you want them to activate. Recall that direction changes grant SP bonuses, which are vital to victory.

Planning skills for your party will take a great deal of time. If you like making your party as badass as it can be, spend the time on it. Focus on getting a few level 6 combo skills while managing direction changes. In the end, this will bestow ultimate defeat on your enemies.

Master the Wait Gauge

Agarest Generations of War 2 isn’t just a turn-based tactical JRPG. Like Paper Mario before it, there are action keys to be pressed and attacks to be chosen! But one facet of moving from character to character and from attack to attack is the timing. There is a sweet spot that, when hit triggering the next attack, grants a bonus to wait.

Wait is a quantity used to measure how long it will take for a character to act again. Specifically, if wait ever hits a certain maximum for a character, they become fatigued. Their turn gets pushed back. They can’t participate in group attacks. It can be crippling in a major encounter, which is where it will likely occur.

Master the timing for wait. It is critical to keeping your party available at all times.

Carefully Select Who Executes a Combo

Agarest Generations of War 2 uses a straightforward system when determining whether an attack will hit or not: the HIT stat.

What isn’t immediately determinable is how combo attacks hit. The answer is similarly straightforward: whoever executes the attack determines the hit chance.

So when using physical combo skills, ensure that someone with a high HIT stat actually executes the attack. No matter what the other participants’ HIT rating is, all the hits for the skill will use the executor’s stats.

Watch the Attack Gauge

That bar that accumulates as you attack in the upper left corner of the screen? That’s the attack gauge. What you might have noticed is that this bar increases as you attack and drops as you wait. When it maxes, you get AP bonuses. that’s good.

Waiting is also sometimes good. Because that bar’s filling is what enables combo skills. But maybe you don’t want to use a combo skill; maybe you want to advance a character’s skill to the next column to get to the following combo – thereby spending less AP.

It’s a lil’ trick usable only when enough skills become available. Initially it won’t matter; you won’t have enough skills for it to matter. But when the temptation to fill that skill page with skills rages, remember that letting the attack gauge drop so that solo skills are used also opens up the next set of skills for use. Using this in combination with a well-thought-out skill configuration will save AP and rain death upon your enemies.

Learn, Use, and Abuse ‘No Fear’

As soon as possible, get a character to learn ‘No Fear,’ an EX Skill. It’s ability is: “Immunity to all damage equal to a character’s base HP.”

Remember how you stacked the starting characters’ VIT stats? And how they now have gobs of HP?

The math adds up. Live it, learn it, love it.