Ar tonelico is an off shoot rpg game from the makers of the Atelier Iris series. The look of the game and its core synthesis component is taken directly from the Atelier Iris series. In fact if you were to take any of the Atelier Iris games and add in some dating and musical elements, you would get Ar tonelico. Ar tonelico is a combination of a dating rpg, a musical rpg, and a synthesis rpg all role into one. The end result of this is a decent rpg game for those looking for a quick and easy rpg game to get into. A game that is strictly for beginner and intermediate players looking for something to do while they wait for the A+ rpg games to come out.
STORY
I wish to climb the tower of Ar tonelico.
We're here to defeat you, Mir.
The world of Sol Ciel is made up of a floating island called the Wings of Horus. This floating island is separated into two parts, the upper world and the lower world, by the Tower of Ar tonelico. The people who lived in the upper world in the city of Platina are called the Apostles of Elemia. These people are descendants from the people who created the Tower of Ar tonelico. For hundred of years the Apostles of Elemia have maintained and preserved the operation of Ar tonelico by exterminating virus outbreaks in the Alter of Apostles within Ar tonelico. Since that time, the people of the upper world and lower world grew distance from one another to the point where they've lost touch with each other and the progression of each society became different. The lower world came to rely on their own technology to advance their civilization while the upper world continues to use technology from ancient times. The two worlds became isolated from one another after hundred of years. One day in the Alter of Apostles, a new virus outbreak occurred. Lynar (the main character), a Knight of Elemia went to investigate this latest outbreak with Shurelia, the administrator of the tower. During their investigation they encountered a new virus that was never introduced before. Despite using all attempts, Lynar and Shurelia could not defeat this new virus. Even with Shurelia powerful song magic, the new virus could not be harmed. As desperation grew, Shurelia ordered Lynar to leave the Alter of Apostles while she and the rest of the Knights of Elemia stay behind to try and slow down the spreading of these new viruses in the tower. Shurelia wanted Lyner to go down to the lower world to search and find a special Hymn Crystal that can help defeat these new viruses. Hymns are special songs that can control the tower. When they are installed into a Reyvateil, a being who can use song magic, that Reyvateil can produce even more powerful song magic to overcome obstacles and even defeat enemies including the new viruses. With his new mission assigned to him by Shurelia, Lynar took an airship and crashed landed in the lower world. From here our story began with Lynar hoping to find friends that can help him search for the special Hymn Crystal while at the same time find a way to climb back up to the tower where his people await for him to return. The mystery of the lower world and its people unfolds in Ar tonelico, Melody of Elemia.
The story is broken down into three chapters or in this case they are called Phases. It's almost like a mini story for each different Phase that get resolve but a new plot is introduce for the next Phase that keep the overall story going. The thing about the story is that it's a bit of an rpg adventure mix in with a musical element and a dating element where you can guide the main character, Lyner, to be with a girl you want in this game. The story itself is sort of just above average despite its good music. I believe the reason why for the most part that the story tends to be a bit bland is due to the fact there are too many conversations or should I say mindless conversations between Lyner and a Reyvateil. This is where the dating element sort of comes in. You have the main story plot that involves the attack of the Viruses and then you have the individual Reyvateil story in their Cosmosphere as well conversations with each Reyvateil when you rest. It's just too much pointless conversations that distract the main Virus storyline. If the story would just stick to the main Virus storyline it would probably go smoother and be more focus. In the end of the whole thing you just want to be done with the whole story from the main Virus story to the Cosmosphere story. You don't even really care which Reyvateil that Lyner will end up with. I guess that's how I feel near the end of the story, I just wanted it be over with due to the lost in interest. It also could be that the story tends to drag too long as well. Not even sure if it was a wise idea trying to drag the story into 3 Phase chapters.
Score 7/10
CHARACTERS
So it's just us to save the world?
The main cast of characters is made up of 6 people while the supporting cast is made up of another 6 characters. However 2 of the supporting cast will shift over into main character status near the end of the story. The story tends to focus mainly on Lyner, the main hero, and the three Reyvateils, Aurica, Misha, and Shurelia. The other characters such as Radolf, Jack, and Krusche don't have much of a spotlight and the game rarely spends time in developing them. Lyner and the Reyvateil characters are usually develop during the Cosmosphere Dive gameplay element where Lyner interacts with each Reyvateil to learn more about their hidden secrets and past as part of a semi dating thing. The character development is decent but a bit unbalance in the fact that it pretty much just focuses on Lyner and his so called girls. The voice acting for each character is very good overall. However the likeability of these characters tends to fall flat. You aren't going to hate these characters or anything but there's really nothing special about them that will make you really want to get to know them more. Case in point, during most of the conversations between Lyner and a Reyvateil, you'll probably be pushing the enter button to speed up the conversation without even listening or reading the conversations because in the end you tend to get bored from these characters. And getting bored from the characters isn't exactly a great thing to have in a story.
Score: 7/10
GRAPHICS
Living in a 2D world.
By now you should be pretty familiar with the graphical look on all rpgs from NIS America. Each game uses a 2D environment with drawn artwork as environmental background and large drawn 2D sprites for characters. Story scenes are mostly done through character artworks using comic bubbles with text in them. Ar tonelico is no different from this old school graphical style. There are quite a bit of an anime and manga influence in the game including the artwork in Ar tonelico but not worth much of a mention nor are they impressive at all, just your basic anime or manga artwork that you normally see from other Japanese influence games and books. The colors used in the game are top notched though. Magical spell animations are kind of on the dull side nor are they impressive to watch. I guess for a 2D graphic game, Ar tonelico is adequate at best with nice usage of colors.
Score: 7/10
MUSIC
Lets sing to save the world.
The music is the best feature in this game and it should be for an rpg game that is set up as a musical rpg game. The music is broken down or separated into two categories. You have the hymn songs and you have the regular gameplay scores. The strongest and most noticeable of the two music categories are the hymn songs. The hymn songs are professional songs that are orchestrated and sung in their original Japanese content. If you listen to all 7 of the hymn songs in the Extra Menu, you can really appreciate the quality of work done on these hymn songs. Very top notch work on the hymn songs even if you can't understand the lyrics of the hymn songs. They just sound great and professional. Now for regular gameplay musical scores, there are over 90 different scores and you can listen to all of them from the Extra Menu. What is impressive about the regular scores is that there are a few tunes that are rendered with excellent quality that rival the hymn songs. In fact some of these musical scores seem out of place in this game in a way that you feel they are too good for this rpg and would be better off belonging to an A+ rpg title like a Final Fantasy game or Xenosaga game. That should tell you just how good the music in this game is.
Score: 9/10
GAMEPLAY
Feel the power of my gun.
We'll protect you, Aurica.
Game Information
Genre: Traditional RPG
Publisher: NIS America
Disc: 1 DVD Disc
Memory: 380 KB
Players: 1 Player Mode
Analog Control: Yes
Digital Control: Yes
Vibration Function: Yes
Rating: Teen
Release: February 2007
Before we go into the features of this game, let's do an overview of how the game is set up and played. The game is set up like most regular turn base rpg where you are traveling around various places and exploring dungeons. You have your regular random encounter fights and than you have the typical boss fights that you normally get at the end of a dungeon. First you would normally start off on a 2D world map that list areas for your little sprite character to move to. Once you arrive at a location such as a village or town, you can enter it. Some areas and locations on the world map will open up as the story progress. Once you enter a town, you have a town artwork as the background with a menu list that list areas of the town for you to enter. When you choose and enter a town area, your movement will be in a 2D side to side motion. There's not much to explore base on this concept but you are able to interact a bit with some of the so called town residents in this manner. You can find shops and inns in towns. A story scene will occur when you enter a key area of the town. Once you rest up, stock up, and done the story scene, you normally then head out onto the world map again to activate the opening of a dungeon location. Once you enter a dungeon area, your exploration will be done on a 2D setting.
Exploring a dungeon is like going through a mini maze that isn't too hard. You can call up an overhead map that shows your location in the dungeon as well as the various parts of the dungeon that you have already explored. This helps you keep track of where you are in the dungeon and what areas you haven't investigated yet. Most of these dungeons are pretty small with little obstacles to stand in your way other than random battles. If you reach a dead end than just backtrack. It's that simple. If a door or wall is closed off to you than just blast it open with an elemental green magic. You can find various items and chests littered around in these dungeons as well as save/rest points. Basic simple stuff that most rpgers should know by now. Now if you get into a random encounter than the game will switch is a 2D side to side battle mode. You can have up to 4 party members and a couple of members on reserve. You can switch in different members to form a new party but you can't do it during actual combat. This is a turn base system and if you've played an Atelier Iris game before than you would be quite familiar with the make up of the battle system. Your party formation is made up of 1 front line fighter, 2 middle line fighters, and 1 back row member which is a Reyvateil. Your front and middle line fighters have the basic commands of Attack, Item, Skill, and Guard. Your Reyvateil basic commands are Sing A Song, Activate A Song, Cancel A Song, and Escape. Your front and middle fighters can choose and attack whatever targets they like. Your Reyvateil job is to sit back and cast a powerful magic spell that will either heal the entire party or do damage to the entire enemy party. The longer the Reyvateil sing, the more powerful the song magic becomes. The game is a bit unbalance due to song magic being too powerful to the point where they can one shot all enemies in this game after just 2 or 3 turns of actions. You see when a Reyvateil sing a song, that song start off at level 1. After each turn over where everyone from enemies to party members has taken an action, the song magic will go up a level. Once a song magic reaches level 3 after 3 turns, the song magic becomes too powerful and literally can wipe out the entire party of an enemy with the exception if it is a boss fight. You basically can't die in this game because of how quickly and how powerful a song magic can become. There's really no challenge from regular fights in this game and there aren't enough boss fights to make battles interesting. To off set this balance a bit, the game made it so that the Reyvateil are very weak creatures that they can be killed in one shot if an enemy unit decide to target a Reyvateil. If a Reyvateil is targeted by an enemy, you will need to use your other fighters to guard the Reyvateil from a direct attack. Some enemies such as bosses can stored up to 3 attacks on a Reyvateil. In those cases you will need to use all 3 of your other fighters to guard the Reyvateil. If you have successfully guarded a Reyvateil from a direct attack, the counter attack gauge shows up. You have a few seconds to press the right button that correspond to the fighter that was guarding the Reyvateil to do a counter attack. If all 3 of your fighters have successfully guarded a Reyvateil in 3 straight attacks than you can do a counter combo attack where the last person to do a counter attack will do a special Super Counter Move attack. These instances are mostly held in boss fights as during regular fights, you won't have to worry too much about guarding a Reyvateil as the song magic alone can destroy your enemies in 2 or 3 turns. Outside of the guard and counter elements, the game is fairly straight forward and easy to get into. It's really a very linear game with nothing else to do but to follow the storyline along. The battle system is really basic stuff that offers no challenge. However the game does have some nice features that are worth a mention.
Grathnode Crystals: These grathnode crystals are the building blocks for almost every game elements in Ar tonelico. You'll need them when it comes to grathmelding, enhancements, and song magic customization. There are different types of crystals and each crystal has different types of effects that can be used during synthesis and customization. You can buy these crystals from shops or get them from battles are regular drop rewards. Grathmelding: The synthesis feature in this game is pretty much the same as those feature in Atelier Iris except it's called grathmelding. You can create weapons, armors, items, accessories, and key item through grathmelding. In order to make anything you will first need to acquire the recipe for the item that you are making. You can gain recipes as part of the storyline or find them in dungeons or even buy them from shops. Once you have the recipes you will still need the ingredients. And like recipes, you can find ingredients, buy them, or even make some ingredients yourself. When you finish making an item through grathmelding, the quality of the item will depend on the grathnode crystal used during the synthesis process. Topics: Sometimes Lyner like to get some feedback from the Reyvateils so he can know what they are thinking and how they are feeling during certain period of the story when the party or group rest to recover their HP and MP. This is known as having topic discussion with a Reyvateil. Some topics are automatically unlocked after certain key story events while other topics can be found on the ground as shimmering glowing spark in certain areas of a town. I consider these to be more or less small talk or random discussion with a Reyvateil. The point of having all these topics is nothing more than to help unlock a level of a Cosmosphere for diving as each new Cosmosphere level requires a certain amount of topics to be open up first. Cosmosphere: In order to unlock new song magic for a Reyvateil, you'll need to dive into their consciousness known as the Cosmosphere. Once inside the Cosmosphere, you'll go through various story scenes to learn a bit more about the Reyvateil and her background. Each Cosmosphere is actually broken down into 8 levels or chapters if you will. Cosmosphere is sort of like a mini story within the main Ar tonelico story. Once you clear a Cosmosphere level by going through all the story scenes, a phase shift occurs that will allow you to clear the level and gain access to new song magic for that level. You won't be able to dive into the next Cosmosphere level until you have enough topics open on that level. Installing: A nice way of being able to customize a particular song magic to give that song magic an added stat boost or effect is by attaching grathnode crystals to the song. This process is called installing since you are basically installing grathnode crystals to song. Again the effect and level of the effect depends on the grathnode crystal. Song Magic: Each Reyvateil has their own set of powerful song magic. Normally a Reyvateil start off with a small set of song magic but as you start to Dive into their Cosmosphere and learn more about them and their personality, new song magic will be unlocked for usage in the game. Each song magic will be limited to a number of usage before the usage runs out and need to be replenish with time. Later on near the end of the game you can buy addition usage to a Song in a Reyvateil Cosmosphere. Song Magic runs on MP and will last as long as the Reyvateil has the MP for it. Enhancement: Weapons, Armors, and Accessories can all be customize with stat effecting enhancements by allocating certain grathnode crystals to them. The effect of the stat boost varies depending on the crystals and the level of the crystals. The crystals that can be allocated on a gear depends on the slot available and the level of the slot. Encounter Bar: When you travel through a dungeon you will notice an encounter bar. The bar start off being full at first but as you start to fight in battles, the bar will slowly start to empty out. Once the encounter bar is empty out, random encounter will no longer take place. This is a great way to balance the game out and allow gamers to explore areas without being annoyed with mindless random battles. Recrystallization: One way of getting new grathnode crystals or getting a particular grathnode crystal with a certain effect is by taking an item or equipment and recrystallizing that item and breaking it into its original crystal state. This process is called recrystallization. It's sort of a reversal of the grathmelding process.
The one thing you can say about the gameplay is that it's very simple and easy to get into. While the game does have certain elements such as singing and dating sim, it's really just a simple traditional rpg. There's no need to read the instruction guide as the in-game tutorial is very good, nor is a strategy guide needed for it. In fact there was no strategy guide made for this game and you can see why when you finish playing the game. The game is very linear with dungeons being straight forward and short. The mini dungeon map that you can call up is very helpful and informative during your exploration of dungeons. The random encounter gauge also makes fighting quite balance in a sense that you aren't flooded with too many random encounters. The battles themselves are too easy due to the over powering of song magic from the Reyvateils. In fact the drawback is that game battles are too easy to the point where you really can't die in this game unless you are a really bad player. And when a game lacks any sort of challenge, it can get a bit boring after awhile. Some of the key features in the game doesn't offer a complete package that makes those features really stand out in the game. Yes you can synthesize in the game using Grathmelding but you don't even really need to touch grathmelding much to complete the game. It's there for you to do but not a real requirement which sort of make grathmelding almost pointless in the game. The Cosmosphere feature to get new song magic could have been something special but in the end it offers no real challenge at all as all you do in the Cosmosphere is access one dialogue scene after another until you finally get a new song magic. In fact as you play more and more of the game toward the end, you start to get annoyed with the numerous dialogues in the Cosmosphere and during resting as you interact with each Reyvateil by talking with them. The dialogues seem to be pointless and boring most of the time. Outside of the Grathmelding and Cosmosphere features, the gameplay doesn't offer much other than the usual traveling around the world and exploring dungeon elements. You can probably finish this game in less than 40 hours. It's a simple rpg game that can be fun at times but the more longer you play the game, the more chance of you losing your patience with it as the game start to get boring due to a lack of challenge and too much useless dialogue.
Score: 7/10
EXTRAS/REPLAY
So you found Dragon Nest?
In terms of extras during the game, Ar tonelico offers nothing. No extra bosses, no mini games, and no side quests. Near the end of the game there's a very small extra area that pops up that you can explore called Dragon's Nest. Dragon's Nest has an extra village where you can buy some rare materials but overall Dragon's Nest can be fully explored in less than 10 minutes so that's not much of an offering. The game does however offer some extra goodies from the Extra Menu that pops up once you finish Ar tonelico. The Extra Menu offers goodies such as an artwork gallery, musical scores from the game and rendered hymn songs. The game itself is geared toward replay ability than extra options. Even though the game doesn't offer a New Game+ option for replay, it does however offer multiple endings base on the different female Reyvateil that Lyner can end up with in the game. In addition to that, during Phase 2 (Chapter 2) of the game, the story does branch out base on which Reyvateil story path you choose, either Aurica path or Misha path. Technically you don't need to replay the entire game to try out each story path and see the different endings because if you are smart, you can just save a separate save file before deciding on which story path to take. But that's about it in terms of extras and replay value. The game could definitely use a bit more than just different endings and an Extra Menu when all is said and done.
Score: 7/10
Like with most rpg games from NIS America, Ar tonelico appeals more to the old school rpg players than those that are mainstream rpg fans looking for innovative gameplay with stunning graphical achievements. If you are a fan of the Atelier Iris series than you would probably enjoy this game very much since this game have most of the components from Atelier Iris. Outside of being an Atelier Iris fan, this game doesn't really offer much in return but a simple and quick rpg adventure. It's a game you want to pick up and play when you are bored and don't really have anything else to play. It's not really a bad rpg game just a game that's not very gratifying at the end of the whole gaming experience. It's like finishing dinner where you are content but not really full from a great dinner.
