"Can you strip? I want to do some high-level programming"
Oh, Ar Tonelico's innuendo, how much I missed you.
Third installment in Gust's "let's sing to save the world" series, Ar Tonelico takes a few steps away from the previous chapters, though their formula is still the same.
The story again revolves around one main protagonist, Aoto and two Reyvateils, Saki and Finnel. Following tradition the former has light hairs and the latter dark hairs and wears asian-looking clothes. And of course both have some dark mysterious secret and a whole lot of problems that must be unraveled to bring the game to its end.
Gust made a few changes to the battle system.
First, they ditched turn-based battles for a Tales'inspired real time combat.
Square attacks, X activates song magic, triangle brings up the in-battle menu and circle performs a defensive move when enemies are threatening the active Reyvateil; blocking is performed by standing still.
Players will control the party leader (which can be changed via the in-battle menu) but it's not possible to assign tactics to other party members, and will limit to attack the nearest enemy, though they are smart enough to split when there's more than one.
The active Reyvateil will start to build up her song magic as soon as the battle begins and unlike previous games, there's only one attack song (at least, up to where I am). The longer the song magic is charged, the more destructive it will be.
The bottom part of the screen is taken up by a large harmonics gauge and if attacks are timed with the red spikes, the Reyvateil will eventually be able to perform a purge. Purges are performed by pressing one of the shoulder buttons and shaking the controller; if a Hyuma (more of that later) is assigned to the pressed shoulder button, the song magic will also acquire a secondary effect, like attack up, defense up, status recovery and so on.
Saki and Finnel are able to perform up to four purges in a battle, depending how deep you went into their Cosmosphere. By performing a purge, their avatar will change shape and the Reyvateil will...remove clothes.
Differencies between Saki and Finnel aren't merely esthetic but also functional. Saki deploys her magic in circular area (her avatar is Bob-Omb like thing) with status recovers, while Finnel fires in a straight line with status changes for enemies. Her avatar? Momoko, a red-haired fox girl in underwear, red tie, knee-high socks and a babidoll. With a bunny head on a stick. And weld mask, a Faust-like paper bag or a diving helmet depending on the purge level. Why can't Momoko be the main heroine?
The forementioned Cosmosphere can be described as the Reyvateil's psyche. Players must earn DPs (Dive Points) through battles to spend while dving and try to bring the chosen Reyvateil to a Paradigm Shift, which will unlock a deeper Cosmosphere level and stronger song magic effects.
Secondary effects are bestowed by Hyumas, small sprites found in the Cosmosphere.
As with the other games, Cosmosphere seem to be the best-written part of the game and they feel more closely related to the story of the game, rather than a way to know "your" Reyvateil more.
Unfortunately the game doesn't spend too much time explaining the world's setting, leaving it to brief and often cryptic dialogues spread throughout the game.
This time around the two Reyvateils
so hopefully the story will be a bit more complex the the first two games.
So far the game has been pretty standard, it's not breaking any mold. There have been a couple of seriously funny WTF moments and the script feels somewhat more lighthearted than the first two games and while visual do feature stripping girls and all female characters look good, the innuendo isn't as heavy as the first game, which is something I appreciate.
Luckily enough Gust revised synthetis mechanics and while buying certain items is only possible in certain shops, there's no longer the need to go to a specific place to craft an item; instead everything's done at inns or save points; unfortunately Ar Tonelico 1's way to handle missing materials has been ditched too: when a certain item required an object not in the player's possesion but that could have been crafted, the game woould automatically carry out the synthesis.
The new battle system is good, though the absence of tactics and the need to bring up the battle menu to use items (one at a time) is annoying.
Also, the game first saves progression data and then system data. Every. Single Time. Loading the system data requires a confirmation, too. Just...why?
Dungeons are in 3D, with a fixed camera. Views aren't bad but there are a couple of instances that terrain features completely obscure the payer.
Environments are very poor and repetivitve. In the first dungeon texture seams are clearly visible and while the quality does improve a bit, dungeons aren't exactly easy on the eye.
Cities are portrayed in 2D and while more interesting to see, sometimes shadows and polygocal models look a bit off.
Character portraits also sport few compression artifacts, while movies are essentially perfect. Portrait artifcats aren't particularly heavy but they aren't as sharp as other games, which is a shame.
Party members' 3D models are nice and beside Aoto's jump animations are good. Saki and Finnel, when fully dressed have a lot of meshes compenetrations, which greatly reduces the graphical impact of the game.
Oh, Ar Tonelico's innuendo, how much I missed you.
Third installment in Gust's "let's sing to save the world" series, Ar Tonelico takes a few steps away from the previous chapters, though their formula is still the same.
The story again revolves around one main protagonist, Aoto and two Reyvateils, Saki and Finnel. Following tradition the former has light hairs and the latter dark hairs and wears asian-looking clothes. And of course both have some dark mysterious secret and a whole lot of problems that must be unraveled to bring the game to its end.
Gust made a few changes to the battle system.
First, they ditched turn-based battles for a Tales'inspired real time combat.
Square attacks, X activates song magic, triangle brings up the in-battle menu and circle performs a defensive move when enemies are threatening the active Reyvateil; blocking is performed by standing still.
Players will control the party leader (which can be changed via the in-battle menu) but it's not possible to assign tactics to other party members, and will limit to attack the nearest enemy, though they are smart enough to split when there's more than one.
The active Reyvateil will start to build up her song magic as soon as the battle begins and unlike previous games, there's only one attack song (at least, up to where I am). The longer the song magic is charged, the more destructive it will be.
The bottom part of the screen is taken up by a large harmonics gauge and if attacks are timed with the red spikes, the Reyvateil will eventually be able to perform a purge. Purges are performed by pressing one of the shoulder buttons and shaking the controller; if a Hyuma (more of that later) is assigned to the pressed shoulder button, the song magic will also acquire a secondary effect, like attack up, defense up, status recovery and so on.
Saki and Finnel are able to perform up to four purges in a battle, depending how deep you went into their Cosmosphere. By performing a purge, their avatar will change shape and the Reyvateil will...remove clothes.
Differencies between Saki and Finnel aren't merely esthetic but also functional. Saki deploys her magic in circular area (her avatar is Bob-Omb like thing) with status recovers, while Finnel fires in a straight line with status changes for enemies. Her avatar? Momoko, a red-haired fox girl in underwear, red tie, knee-high socks and a babidoll. With a bunny head on a stick. And weld mask, a Faust-like paper bag or a diving helmet depending on the purge level. Why can't Momoko be the main heroine?
The forementioned Cosmosphere can be described as the Reyvateil's psyche. Players must earn DPs (Dive Points) through battles to spend while dving and try to bring the chosen Reyvateil to a Paradigm Shift, which will unlock a deeper Cosmosphere level and stronger song magic effects.
Secondary effects are bestowed by Hyumas, small sprites found in the Cosmosphere.
As with the other games, Cosmosphere seem to be the best-written part of the game and they feel more closely related to the story of the game, rather than a way to know "your" Reyvateil more.
Unfortunately the game doesn't spend too much time explaining the world's setting, leaving it to brief and often cryptic dialogues spread throughout the game.
This time around the two Reyvateils
so hopefully the story will be a bit more complex the the first two games.
So far the game has been pretty standard, it's not breaking any mold. There have been a couple of seriously funny WTF moments and the script feels somewhat more lighthearted than the first two games and while visual do feature stripping girls and all female characters look good, the innuendo isn't as heavy as the first game, which is something I appreciate.
Luckily enough Gust revised synthetis mechanics and while buying certain items is only possible in certain shops, there's no longer the need to go to a specific place to craft an item; instead everything's done at inns or save points; unfortunately Ar Tonelico 1's way to handle missing materials has been ditched too: when a certain item required an object not in the player's possesion but that could have been crafted, the game woould automatically carry out the synthesis.
The new battle system is good, though the absence of tactics and the need to bring up the battle menu to use items (one at a time) is annoying.
Also, the game first saves progression data and then system data. Every. Single Time. Loading the system data requires a confirmation, too. Just...why?
Dungeons are in 3D, with a fixed camera. Views aren't bad but there are a couple of instances that terrain features completely obscure the payer.
Environments are very poor and repetivitve. In the first dungeon texture seams are clearly visible and while the quality does improve a bit, dungeons aren't exactly easy on the eye.
Cities are portrayed in 2D and while more interesting to see, sometimes shadows and polygocal models look a bit off.
Character portraits also sport few compression artifacts, while movies are essentially perfect. Portrait artifcats aren't particularly heavy but they aren't as sharp as other games, which is a shame.
Party members' 3D models are nice and beside Aoto's jump animations are good. Saki and Finnel, when fully dressed have a lot of meshes compenetrations, which greatly reduces the graphical impact of the game.
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