Record of Agarest War, despite the perverted hype, is a solid Japanese Strategy RPG.
The dating simulation aspect of the game is that with each generation three women are selected for your character to have a child with to play as in the next generation. These three women have their own love meters and are influenced by the choices you make throughout the generation. The child stats and weapon type are influenced by how high the love meter is at the end of the generation.
The story for the game is your standard main character realizes the nation he serves has become corrupt and decides to betray his nation and and to the right thing by helping the losing army. The story, while having been done before, is still very well done.
One part of the game that some might not like is the fact that the dubbing of the game is all in Japanese with English subtitles. While it is interesting to hear what the original voice actors sounded like it does get tiring.
The soundtrack, while not bad, is fairly standard for a game of this style and considering the length of the game get fairly boring and repetitive. Most the time I play I turn on cd and just pause my music during the character conversations.
My final opinion of the game is that If you like very long (80+ hours) Japanese styled strategy rpgs then you will more than likely find this game entertaining and considering this game will most likely become one of those games that quickly becomes hard to find it probably wouldn't hurt to pick up a new copy.