A dating-sim with emo issues

by Melody Clark

Fun factor: Fun

Worth to: Buy/Rent

An acquired taste JRPG that offers more of the same previous goodness with a few new twists -- not recommended for those squeamish around “moe”.

Given that Melody of Metafalica is the sequel to NIS America’s cult JRPG, Ar Tonelico: Melody of Elemia, it is important to point out that players don’t need to have played the first Ar Tonelico to enjoy this sequel. The stories are entirely different, with only one major character reappearing (one minor one, as well), though her role is entirely different in this game compared to the first. People who have played the first will still have a lot of new things to learn, though there will be lots of familiarities as well.

A melody for every bipolar emo

It comes to no surprise that Melody of Metafalica has an awesome musical score, as the music in the first game was solid as well. The Hymns are melodic and wonderful and even the overworld and dungeon music is a joy to listen to, with the end-boss score being particularly memorable, especially the third movement. Considering the game revolves around characters who sing for a living, it’s good that they nailed this aspect of the game.



Unfortunately the plot is convoluted enough to rival Star Ocean: The Last Hope’s. The story makes no sense at some points. At other points characters are making blatantly stupid decisions when you expect them to make the most obvious and smart ones. Many points in the plot feel bloated for the sake of being bloated and derail from the overall story. Yet other points feel like a lot was lost in translation. I found myself glazing over those areas figuring it would all sort itself out sooner or later.

The plot is heavily convoluted due to a TERRIBLE translation job (there’s even a site dedicated to a re-translation), but even if the translation was perfect, the plot would still make little sense at many points. I’d give a brief introduction to the story, but honestly, if you’re willing to give this game a chance, you’re going to have to throw away your expectations for a deep, involving narrative. All you really need to know is that you control a character that is not a main character so much as a bodyguard for the main characters, and you get to decide which one you want to protect most.

One main character is insanely bipolar (actually, make that just “insane”), yet people unconditionally love her… even though she tries to kill them, tells them she hates them, tells them she’s been using them, blames everyone else for her problems, and goes insanely emo about how no one understands her. This doesn’t really affect how good the game is or not, but it is a significant amount of the plot.

Fancy a crystal bath? You’ll need some tanks

The combat can be a mix between fun and insane. When you get to attack you can decide between a bunch of different attacks and then unleash huge magical spells that negate all the physical damage you did (e.g. physical attacks do 100 damage; song attack does 10,000). When enemies attack you have to parry by hitting buttons at the right time and enemy turns drag on foreeeever... Many trash fights will have you pressing 20+ parries PER TURN. It’s just not very fun, and it can get totally wrecked by fancy spells that cause graphical slowdown and screw your timing up entirely.



There are a lot of monotonous dungeons you will be forced to go back to over and over. Thankfully there’s a bar to tell you how many random encounters you have left before there are no more mobs to fight, but often those are only for small sections of the overall dungeon and reset in the new areas, rendering the system somewhat useless. You’re always able to flee from trash, which is something players will find themselves doing most of the time because...

Character levels are somewhat irrelevant. You level up like a normal RPG with XP, but your singers don’t. Instead, they level up by taking baths with crystals. My singers were still level 4 while my physical attackers were level 20 until I was able to do the bath thing and they gained 20 levels at once. The only difference it really makes is they have a larger mana pool and more HP, but if you block the attacks properly, they don’t take damage so HP is somewhat irrelevant. The front characters only really need HP to soak up damage if you don’t get “Perfect” blocks -- as mentioned, their damage is negated by the insane song spell damage so they’re really just there to act as tanks.

Useless alchemy and the Dating Sim is back

Alchemy plays a much smaller role than in the first game to the point it feels useless, and has you going to various stores to make things rather than doing them at inns. I’ve gone through the game without needing any of the items I’ve made. The conversations while crafting them are cute but get old fast as they all revolve around your Reyvatails (songstresses) being incompetent at crafting/cooking.

Cosmospheres are back (yay) and if you played the first Ar Tonelico, you’ll know how they work, though they’ve added some interesting twists, and you’re told very early in the game you have to pick one of the Revyatails to focus on creating a deep relationship with. I actually like this as it makes the relationship with the one you focus on feel more genuine. In the first game, the hero was able to go “all the way” with both and it felt weird that one minute he’d say he loved and would protect one, then jumped over to the other and said the same stuff... Damn polygamists; glad that they addressed that in Melody of Metafalica.



If you’re new, Cosmospheres are basically the “Dating Sim” part of Ar Tonelico II, where you “dive” into a Reyvatail and learn about her personality, helping her overcome some obstacle. It involves some weird cosplaying, roleplaying, and general craziness, but overall, it’s pretty cute and fairly innocent. It’s VERY text-heavy, so if you don’t like reading you probably won’t like the Cosmosphere at all.

Items, like alchemy are also pretty useless in Ar Tonelico II. Because combat characters are just there to soak up damage, you don’t really need to worry about their stats. Defense and HP are the only things that really mater but even then barely. Most of the treasures found in dungeons are gold (“leaf”) or useless consumables or ingredients. Speaking of the consumables there are wayyyyy too many are of no use: one that heals 20 HP, one that heals 22 HP, one that heals 43 HP, one that heals 67 HP, one that heals 120 HP, and so on. Most of the recipes I’ve made produced these types of items -- totally pointless ones that just bloat my inventory. Why would I use any of those when I can buy inexpensive 750 HP heals early in the game? Song magic can heal better and get rid of stats / resurrects people all at once.

All you’re speling mistake are belong to us!

Graphics, once again, are typical NIS stuff. Character portraits are polished and really nice to look at, but the sprites and dungeons look like they could be from an SNES or a PS1 at best. No surprise here though, as this has always been the way NIS works. And honestly, as long as the game is fun to play, I don’t mind the graphics taking a backseat.

The dialogue and localization is downright embarrassing. They seriously needed an editor as there are many spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. They managed to overlook multiple elementary school type mistakes like using “there” instead of “their” or “to” instead of “two”. Seriously, NIS America -- proofread your dialogue!



There’s not a lot of voice acting, which is a surprise. You won’t mind it, as voices are a nice addition but not necessary for a game like Ar Tonelico II, but honestly, so much of the story is so silly that I can’t help but wonder if the actors just flat out refused to say some lines for fear of breaking out laughing.

Getting new crafting recipes is a chore... you have to go in to the stores and trigger a cutscene where they will give you a recipe... then head out and enter again to get another. Then they’ll stop until you leave the town entirely and then reenter. It seems new ones unlock as the story progresses but there’s really no indication of when they are unlocked, except occasionally the shopkeeper will tell you to visit the shop upon entering a town. But there’s no way of knowing you’re supposed to walk in and out of their shops multiple times; you have to figure that out through trial and error. As that were the case, I didn’t realize this until later in the game, making Alchemy even more useless as I received recipes late in the game that were obviously meant to be crafted earlier.

Ladies, don’t crapshoot in the pool…

The Reyvatail’s Dualstall bathing/leveling system is weird and poorly thought out. You place crystals in a pool along with your Revyatails and the Revyatails randomly move through the pool. If they cross over a crystal they will gain certain abilities from it like more HP, more damage, etc. It’s a total crapshoot and you just have to hope they cross over the crystals. You can place toys to help guide them, but it’s still mostly random. Also, they lose any previous abilities they had from crystals in earlier baths, so you could end up losing 8 abilities and only getting 1 if you’re unlucky enough to have a Revyatail only cross one crystal in the most recent bath -- and I have had that happen a LOT of times, especially with Luca. It’s ridiculous.

You often lose your main characters throughout the game (e.g. one goes crazy, one gets sick, they get separated from the group, etc.), and since the game focuses heavily on developing relationships with them, it can get really frustrating having to trudge through more dungeons without them, especially if you just want to take a break from dungeon crawling and focus on the Cosmosphere aspect or, heaven forbid, alchemy. You have to choose which one you want to protect early in the game, and the game almost taunts you by making it harder to develop a relationship with them after that point than with the one you didn’t pick, let alone the third one that comes late who, honestly, is a weakly developed character with no personality and I couldn’t care less about -- and yet I seem to have unlocked more conversations and events with her than the two “main characters” combined!

Summary

The game manages to stay fun despite many flaws, though it’s certainly an acquired taste. The Cosmosphere has always been a strong point in the series for me and has a ton of potential if they flesh it out even further. The romantic relationship aspect of the story has helped make the characters more endearing, even if the plot itself is awkward and convoluted.

So, overall, the game has issues, but it’s got enough good points that playing through it doesn’t feel like a chore. I wouldn’t recommend it to newcomers of NIS-style RPGs, but if you’ve played Ar Tonelico 1, this might tickle your fancy if you’re looking for more of the same. I’d also recommend you steer away from it if you’re not into dating-sim type games (not to be confused with Hentai games -- sorry boys, none of that here) or get squeamish around heavy doses of “moe” and Japanese romance humor.