Good if you like dating sims

by Kyle Thomson-Diks

Fun factor: Average

Worth to: Buy/Rent

Recommended to any hardcore JRPG fan, but those looking for an immersive title can find several other games more worthwhile.

Ar Tonelico is a Japanese RPG from the developer GUST Co and licensed by NIS America for the PS2. It follows the story of a Knight of Elemia named Lyner Barsett through his journey to save the world from the Virus Mir and her plan to remake the world into her own version of paradise. With him are two Songstresses called Reyvateils, Aurica and Misha who utilize song magic to perform varying degrees of miracles in combat.

Solid and simple gameplay

Graphics wise, this game is what I would expect from PS2. Nothing spectacular, but about on par with most other PS2 games. There’s really not much to say. The game is made up of fairly simplistic sprites and any narrative takes place with character portraits. Which, despite my disinterest in talking pictures with text bubbles, are very well drawn.



As far as core gameplay goes, Ar Tonelico is fairly solid. The controls all match up well and are easily accessible to new players. The environment is simplistic but functional, each area of a town accessible through a drop menu and consisting of a single screen. The world map is little different. Player steer themselves around the fairly simplistic and limited world map, entering towns or places of interest with the X button. Despite the game’s claim of an expansive world, the map itself only consists of about a dozen places of interest at any one time, some of which the player will visit only once, or depending on the player’s choice of character in phase 2, not at all.

As with most JRPGs, Ar Tonelico features an updated version of turn-based active time combat in which characters take turns acting based on an active time gauge. When the gauge fills up that player may act. Though how much this actually differs from normal turn -based combat (since the gauges all fill up at roughly the same speed throughout the whole game) can be argued either way.

The characters are split between two roles: tank and mage. The Reyvateils are the mages and cast magic from the back of the formation. Each spell charges up with a steady drain of Magic Points (MP) and can be unleashed or changed at any time by pressing the triangle button in combat. The other characters all act in concert to effectively become a wall to soak up any incoming damage to the Reyvateil (which really only comes up in boss battles or in late-game content). This is one of my points of contention actually, because while all the characters develop in their own unique way character wise, they develop exactly the same statistic wise.

Virtually every battle in the game can be won by upgrading every character with exactly the same grathnodes (Ar Tonelico’s form of Materia-FF7) and just dealing massive damage with every hit. Upgrading equipment is only viable when they include an extra grathnode slot, as there is little, if any, difference from one sword to the next in terms of statistics. And those stats can be modified by grathnodes anyway.



Another function of battle is a colored bar at the bottom of the screen that fills up with every successful attack and drains with every successful hit against a character. Perhaps it’s just me, but this bar has never proven to be a useful contributor to my success in battle and serves only to slow down combat flow when, every time the gauge fills up, a short animation covers the party in light and the Reyvateil’s voice actor says a few words of encouragement.

A story of loyal girls and fickle boys

Story wise there are a few things to note. One: the use of phases in Ar Tonelico actually succeeds at breaking up the game into component story arcs better than most games and serves mostly to highlight Ar Tonelico’s relationship system, where the player can “Dive” into one of the two Reyvateil’s subconscious to learn about her as a person and to craft new and more powerful song magic. It’s a clever use of the relationship system but doesn’t seem to affect the story line in any meaningful way. The only difference is in Stage 2, where the player is given a choice to follow either Aurica’s path or Misha’s path. The choice is basically meaningless except for the scenery as the paths coincide about 2-3 hours into Phase 2 anyway and never part ways again.

Then in Phase 3, the choices laid out in Phase 2 become completely meaningless as Lyner, bereft of his female idol’s presence, decides to resurrect her at the sacrifice of his earlier romantic interest. The script is all too happy to oblige to this, however, and even the love interest chosen in Phase 2 will reprimand themselves for being selfish and capitulate.

I played through Misha’s story and found very little to complain about during Phase 2 and was appreciative of the developers for doing at least a bare minimum job of bringing the relationship into the game. But less than 30 minutes into Phase 3, Lyner asks Misha, his love interest of 9 hours of gameplay, to give up her life of freedom (she has to sing for the rest of her life in order to contain the final boss in a tower) in order to bring his idol back to life. This was the turning point of the game for me because I’ve never before had to convince myself that the past 9 hours of relationship gaming was completely worthless.

Great soundtrack

Another one of the game’s several underused elements has to do with card collecting. Throughout the game the player can collect cards of monsters, recipes for creating new items using the Grathmelding technique, and little tidbits of lore or secrets. Though all the collected cards are stored and kept through the game, the only ones of any use are the recipe cards. Even the secrets given in the cards are nigh useless to any decent explorer. The hint “look at those cracked walls, maybe there’s something behind them” is more obvious than helpful, as any time the player moves Lyner within range of an intractable object on the screen a light bulb flashes at the exact point where the secret lies.



And though the game demands of the player that they at least know how to grathmeld certain objects, the “massive customization” also advertised on the box is misrepresented as well. Any one character can be crafted up to 4 of their own unique weapons of choice. The only real customization comes down to player favorites. As two of the tanks only wear heavy armor, and the other two wear lighter cloth armor. It really only comes down to how high level a potion the player can create for the really tough boss battles. Of which the game sports too few.

The music of Ar Tonelico is, simply put: fantastic! I was lucky enough to purchase a copy that came with a soundtrack of the game and upon hearing the opening song for the first time I instantly downloaded the CD onto my computer and looped it for the next day and a half.

Summary

Overall Ar Tonelico was not quite what it promised to be. As a JRPG it’s about as standard and formulaic as one can get. It tries nothing new and pushes no boundaries. I enjoyed parts of it, but as cohesive stories go, it left me wanting and frustrated. It’s a short game -- only about 25 hours if you’re not grinding for conversations with the girls -- and even with the added character choice in Phase 2, it really only adds another 5 or so hours of unique gameplay.

Though most of the game’s elements feel under-explained or underused I can at least vouch for the splendid soundtrack, which I will, again, because it was fantastic! I can recommend this game to any hardcore JRPG fan, but for those looking for a more immersive title (perhaps a dating sim for the whole relationship appeal) I can think of several other games to spend 60 dollars on. To others: renting it would be just fine.