Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia

[toythatkills]

I'm not sure if I'm just bored of the RPG genre, or if I'm just playing bad games, but I'm having a hard time with them on PS2 post-FFXII. I played Rogue Galaxy, but I can't get into it. So instead, I've moved onto this (having loved Atelier Iris) - and this game also really doesn't make progress easy, at least not initially.

About 2 hours played so far.

Basically, my main thoughts of the game so far have been "wtf is going on?" Is there anyone else playing this that *gets* the battle system? And why is everything so music based, when there's no (relevent) singing?

Firstly, graphics. I'm playing on an HDTV, so they look like they've been drawn in wax crayon, or something. You'll know the style if you've played AI, static backgrounds and nice 2D sprites. The characters do look quite nice, and I imagine in SD it's beautiful, I just can't see it!

Storywise, I'm confused. It seems that my world is in trouble, I've left some people mid-battle fighting some monsters, and have journeyed to find an item to help them. So far I have

->Open Spoiler<-

crashed an airship

, had a few nights in an inn, and been

->Open Spoiler<-

thrown in a cell

. It's assumed that the people I'm trying to help are still holding the monsters at bay after all this time, with me still itemless and with

->Open Spoiler<-

no way to return

. Eh?

Apart from that, everything else is confusing as hell. I don't even know where to begin to explain anything, because I cannot work it out myself. In battles, there's about 197 different gauges, your partners MP drops to zero in seconds even when they're not having turns, it restores as fast. You'll get random bonuses appear without having any idea what they are. Saying that though, Fight > Fight > Fight > Fight - gets you through pretty much everything so far.

Alchemy has been replaced with Grathmelding, which is combining two objects to make an item, pretty much. But it appears that the items you can use affect the quality of the item, but if you make 98 crap ones and a good one, is that 99 good ones? What...? You can enhance equipment with other items but some things can't be equipped on some stuff for some reason that I don't know. When you win a battle each enemy has four levels of rewards, with no indication of why or how you get them. Each item has three pages of unexplained stats. And the game promises that more confusing stuff is to come!

I apologize for the lack of info in this post, but I really don't know! Basically, if anyone has any idea what's going on, feel free to explain, as the game does a really poor job of it. The manual is as poor as NIS manuals usually are, so if it's any help I'm unable to see it through the poor explanations, vague information, and sparse/missing information makes it hard to make sense.

There actually appears to be a decent game here, but because nothing at all makes any sense, I just can't get going.

EDIT: It's making more sense now, well the battle system is anyway, still don't get anything else! This edit is purely to mention that this game is filthy!

[briareos_kerensky]

I hope I'll get my copy soon...I was thinking that I was the only one interested in the game, thanks for the preview.

[NoelEdwards]

I got this last week and had trouble getting in to it for most of the same reasons you said THK.

[briareos_kerensky]

I got mine yesterday (Yay!) Played for just an hour, then got bored...common problem with all RPGs, not just this one, I'll play some more in the weekend.
BTW, my first impressions: OMFG it's Atelier Iris with a few redrawn sprites! Even japanese lines during battles are the same, just redubbed. The anime cutscenes look great (oh well, they are the same from the promotional OAV).
From what I've read on the manual similarities won't stop there (there's the dial system of Eternal Mana, for example) and Grathmelding right now sounds a bit less elaborate than alchemy but -I fear- not much as refined. Basic workings are clear, let's see how it develops.
As for combat...only have two characters in party and there's only one gauge and it's pretty clear...all those gauges in the beginning scared me, however.

I can't shake the feeling that it's even more rushed than Azoth of Destiny...even if it has first-class art.

[briareos_kerensky]

I was able to spend a couple of hours more with the title.
Got my first Reyvatel and experimented a bit with grathmelding and the "full" combat system.
After reading the tutorial all those gauges have a meaning now and they're pretty easy to understand...there are a lot of things to keep track during a fight, but in the end it usually goes with the Reyvatel unleashing a giant attack spell to get the best possible after-battle bonuses and items, with all other party members there to guard her or themselves.

Grathmelding is somewhat a letdown, in Atelier Iris if you changed ingredients you directly affected the recipe stats, I think this is true in this game too but it doesn't show you any of these benefits, leaving you wondering if you obtained something better or not. The system doesn't look so different from the original found in AI and I hope it will play a greater role than in Azoth of Destiny, even if it's clearly not the game's main feature.
Nice touch to have your Reyvatel proposing names for the items you created, though naming a missile "Francoise-Anne" is a bit...uhm...strange.

Graphics are nice, a bit pixellated if played on a LCD but some of them are recolors or partial redrawings of AI sprites, which makes me wonder if Gust is actually a two-people team using fake names for the rest of the staff.

[Champloo]

I really liked Atelier Iris - was quite looking forward to this one. Might have to give it a miss after reading these impressions however.

Thanks for the impressions in any case.

[briareos_kerensky]

So, here I am. In-depth description of what I think of the game, now that I spent the whole week-end playing it, thanks to high pollution and following traffic block in the whole north Italy.

The game plays a lot like Atelier Iris. Fan of the series won't be disappointed, it's way better that Azoth of Destiny and is roughly on the same level with Eternal Mana; it's not a ground breaking JRPG but if you want a decent game, Ar Tonelico is here for you.
Just like AI, Ar Tonelico uses 2D sprites to visualize the whole world, with the only exception if the world map which is represented in a rather crude, low-poly and uninspired 3D.
The story in the first hours of gameplay is one huge plot device. And I mean HUGE.
Not that I JRPG stories particularly original, but in the beginning Ar Tonelico does not make any real sense. As TTK said, the introduction is rather confusionary, with you sent to a "lower world" in search of a crystal to stop a virus invasion. After that the game took some sharp turns to introduce you to the two female leads (Misha and Aurica) and all other party characters.
And of course, some characters know each other, someone knows someone else but this someone doesn't remember the former, lost lovers and so on.

The game features a simplified version of the alchemic system found in AI, called Grathmeld, which can be performed only in save points or inns. Just like alchemy, you produce an item from raw materials collected from defeated enemies or found in the dungeons and then you can use these items to build other items and so on.
Unlike AI, however, it's not possible to obtain different items by substituting ingredients nor give special attributes by using different grathnote crystals, which are the only item that can be switched to obtain higher or lower quality items.
This isn't really bad, as the system itself is a lot faster and easier to understand.

Combat is quite easy, though all those gauges can overwhelm players quickly.
Combat party is formed by 3 forward elements (humans), which can attack, guard, protect the rear element, use skills (which consumes HPs as humans have no MPs) or items.
The rear element is a Reyvateil, a female being able to sing (cast magic) and issue the escape command. She cannot be targeted directly, has MPs and she's extremely frail.
The first gauge on the right is the Reyvateil's power meter. The longer she sings a magic, the more powerful it becomes and more MPs are spent. Once the song is realeased (attack magic) or stopped (healing and barriers), the Reyvateil starts building up MPs again.
The huge blue/purple gauge on the bottom fills up when the humans attack (blue meter) and when the Reyvateil does...well, anything, even doing nothing (purple meter); when the two meters collide, the Reyvateil fills up the power gauge faster. The little red gauge atop of this gauge fills up when the Reyvateil launches attack magics or as long healing/protective magics are active. When completely filled, it adds a little grey gem on the gauge's left side. There are a maximum of three gems and they become purple (active) by filling up the blue/purple gauge. More gems you have activated, more and better items will be awared at the end of the battle, and humans will be able to perform more powerful standard attacks during that battle.
Here's the last rule: if an enemy hits a party member, the blue/purple gauge will decrease, lowering the gem count and thus the bonuses.

Reyvateil magic are unlocked by diving into them: almost each city has a dive shop, which will let the main character, Lyner, to explore the inner world of one of these fine females, uncovering their secrets and magics; also, the Reyvateil will gradually care more and more about Lyner. Each inner world is divided into levels and each level can be entered after having completed the previous and having unlocked it with some conversation in the real world. Conversation topics are made by using or not using items, by finding bright spots on the map and by advancing through the story.
The inner world plays like a simple adventure game, where you go around and visit places by spending dive points (something else you'll gain by battling in th real world) and doing some ren-ai like events (like choosing the right option in a dialogue and following a certain chain of events); completing a level will usually bring a new magic and a new costume for the Reyvateil. Think of these costumes as equipment, just a bit more on the otaku-side (like a priestess robe for Aurica or a magical girl uniform for Misha).

Humans, on the other side, can be equipped with weapons, armors and accessories like any other JRPG. Each of these items have a minimum of 1 to a maximum of 4 slots where you can place grathnote crystals (yes, the same as in grathmelding) to further enhace stats, much like Growlanser.

This pretty much sums up the whole game.

It shares the same weaknesses and strong points of Atelier Iris, and the only real difference is that you are playing in a sci-fi world (with magic) rather than in a fantasy world. Nippon Ichi America did a very good job with this edition by producing a wonderful hardcover artbook with sketches and infos on the world the game is set in and, as usual allowing players to choose between Japanese and English dubbing. There are a few anime cutscenes (some of them took directly from a 30-min. promotional OAV) with only have English voices and combat lines are completely untranslated.

[briareos_kerensky]

<<I was going to edit the above post but got a new message by mistake :P>>

I discribed the game mechanics but not how I felt playing it...well, here I go.

First, the game is very easy. Battles are hard only if you aim to get the most powerful items by building up all gauges, and even doing this is quite simple, especially with bosses, where you first hit them with lesser attacks and then build up a huge attack spell with your Reyvateil.

In dungeons battles are a bit too frequent. Ar Tonelico uses the same system as Azoth of Destiny: for each encounter, a meter will decrease, and once it's empty, will no logner encounter enemies in that area unless you exit and enter again. However, in some parts, the meter runs out very quickly: this leaves you with the pleasure of exploring alone, but when the meter is full battles are just too frequent.

Reyvateil "growth" is a good system, though I feel that the game wants you to play with Aurica more than with Misha.
It could also have been a lot less linear. Except one magic for both characters, it's impossible to miss any other magic, and it's a real shame.
Also, collecting conversations is useful just to advance in their inner world. Example: you have completed Misha's first inner level. You have only a couple of conversation points for level 2, but are enough to access the next level. Collecting the missing points will not change in any way the contents of level 2, so you can just hit the next level as soon as you can with no drawbacks.

Characters are a bit shallow, and fall into the archetypes of JRPGs...the bratty loli girl, the faithful knight, the lone wolf with shady past, the maiden who shut herself from the outside world, characters with no remembrance of their childhood, the powerful good-doer turned evil by the bad guy...yeah yeah, all JRPGs are the same, but, hell, I'm quite tired of stereotipized characters. I want an other Guillo. Yes, give me something completely above the lines, not just some funny lines now and then (though "Misha, you grow tits!" made me laugh for ten minutes straight) and a story that was old when the first Dragon Quest came out. And...blood. Gimme blood. I want violence, not sugarcoated stories. Really.

Technical problems: once the disk is inside the tray, the PS2 doesn't stop to spin it. Probably there isn't enough RAM for those sprites, and in battles it gets annoying to have the game freeze a couple of seconds to load animations, especially if it looses any command you try to input. As Reyvateil can act whenever you feel like, sometimes you want to way the very last moment before an enemy acts and it by chance the PS2 has to load something (like the magic's next level animation), it's possible to loses the command and giving away a free turn to an enemy. Also, some lines during combat are out of sync, for the same loading problems.

Not I'm done.

[Bassman]

Bit late on this I suppose, but I missed the original release (now unavailable new in America as far as I can see and ebay was quoting silly prices). Not sure what happened with the PAL version, but it is available in France and Italy (the Italian looks cheapest from DVD.It).

Having put in 8 hours so far I am enjoying the game. Running from HD admittedly so have had no technical problems so far. Not being the best game player, the level of this is just about right for me.

Did anyone complete this?