"Ar Tonelico: Melody of Elemia" (Review)

[Arctic_Slicer]

North American Title: "Ar Tonelico: Melody of Elemia"

Japanese Title: "Ar Tonelico: Sekai no Owari de Utai Tsudzukeru Shoujo"

Developer: Gust, Banpresto

Publisher: NIS America

North American Release Date: 6th of February, 2007

Format: Playstation 2

Reviewer: Arctic_Slicer


"Ar Tornelico: Melody of Elemia" is Gust's newest CRPG to be released in North America. Much like I have I have done with previous games I going to do my best to give a mostly spoiler free review of the game.

Story, World, and Characters

The game takes place in the world of Sol Ciel which isn't much of a world after being stuck with disaster not once but twice. Due to the first disaster the surface of the planet is covered with a sea of thick poisonous clouds and is therefor unihabitable. The sky was also lost to this disater creating what creating an impassable plasma barrier called the blastline. All those who survived came to live in the tower of Ar Tonelico, a great and tall tower that extends to the upper reaches of the atmosphere past the blastline. They is also the Wings of Horus a floating continent built into the middle of the tower and was originally intended to be a vaction resort but due to the cicumstances now plaguing the world most of society began to reside on the Wings of Horus.

Coexisting with humans are a race people known as the Reyvateils, maidens who can use magicial powers with the help of song. However the population of Reyvateils eventually exceeded 30% making the humans uneasy and causing them to start restricting the rights and freedoms of Reyvateils. This eventually led to a Reyvateil uprising which triggered a great war. In the end the conflict was resolved and laws concerning Reyvateils were straightened out, however it all came at the expense of the Right Wing of Horus falling, taking it's people with it.

So here most humanity lives on the remaining half of a floating continent know as the Wings of Horus. In addition to that there are people who live in the city of Platina which is located just below the blastline in the tower of Ar Tonelico. Here is where the Knights of Elemia reside who watch over and product the world creatures known as viruses. However a new type virus appeared in the alter of apostles near Platina. The Knights of Elemia are dispatched to investigate, including a young knight known as Lynar Barsett. This is where the story begins as you assume the role of Lynar.

When it is found out that you cannot fight the viruses by normal means Lynar goes out on a journey to the Wings of Horus to find an ancient artifact which could help fight the viruses. In his quest to save humanity from the impending threat of viruses he makes some new friends and even enlists the help of some friendly Reyvateils, who play a very central role in the story.

Lynar Barsett, the main character of our story is one of the Knights of Elemia who was dispatched to fight the viruses in the Alter of Apostles. He is a about 18 years old and has a bad habit of acting before thinking the situation through. While not exactly an idiot his arrogance tends to cause him many problems in his travels. He's not the most likable main character ever but his commitment to duty and his ideals make him likable enough that you will want to see his story through.

The other important characters in the Story are the Reyvateils, Misha and Aurica. Since this game focuses heavily on character development I am not going to go into detail here. One of the things I really enjoyed about this game was how developed each character's story was and the fun I had see how they developed. There are also several other characters in the game who may join you team along the way but once again I don't really feel that much need to go into detail.

Overall the World of "Ar Tonelico" is a very interesting and unique. The overall story of the game isn't the most original but that is more and made up for with the depth of character development throughout the game.

Game Play and Design

The game play of "Ar Tonelico" is very similiar to Gust's "Atelier" series of games. First of all the game features it's own version of alchemy called grathmelding which works much like the alchemy systems of "Atelier" games past. Basically as you travel the world you will obtain recipe cards which are required to make new items. Besides being useful to earn some extra cash all of the best equipment in the game in created through grathmelding making it a very valuable ability that you will many times throughout the game.

The biggest feature of this game is the dive system. With the dive system Lynar is able to dive into the minds of the Reyvateils. Once inside you will see a minimap with several locations on it. Each location has a Dive Point(DP) cost and an importance rating. Generally the more important the location is the more it costs to enter. Each important location will have a dialog which will often reveal emotional issues that particular Reyvateil is expirencing and it's up to Lynar to resolve them. Sometimes you will have to make a choice or two but for the most part the cosmosphere plays more like an interactive novel so you can pretty much just kick back and enjoy the story.

Sure it might sound silly but the dive system is probabally this games best feature and one I thoughly enjoyed. Not only that but exploring the cosmosphere also plays an important part in gameplay. By completing various levels in the cosmosphere your Reyvateil can learn new song magic as well as aquire new costumes, which Reyvateils equip in place of weapons. Even if some of the soul levels take quite a bit of time to complete the whole process is very fun and rewarding and was an interesting new expirence in the CRPG realm.

The combat system in this game seems to be an modified version of Gust's Active Cost Time Battle and plays similar to their other games. The one main difference of course is the Reyvateils who play a vital role in your combat party. You can have up to 4 characters in your combat party. The front line always includes Lyner and up to 2 additional human characters. The 4th spot is reserved for your Reyvateil only. As long you have at least one human character alive enemies wont be able to directly attack your Reyvateil. However some enemies may have attacks that will target your Reyvateil directly and when an enemy does one of your humans have an option of guarding her and if successful get a chance for a counter attack. Since Revateils have low hp and defense it is generally a good idea to use the protect command to keep them out of danger.

During combat the Reyvateil in your party is capable of using powerful magicial songs. There are two types of combat songs know as red magic(attack) and blue magic(beneficial). At any time you may have your Reyvateil start charging up a song the longer she charges the song the more powerful it beomes. You may choose to quit charging the song at anytime, if it is an attack spell she will then hurl at all of the enemies. While a Reyvateil is charging a song her MP decreases and if it reaches 0 the song is released. The rate at which MP decreases depends on the song being used with the more powerful songs decreasing the mana pretty quickly. It's also important to note that some enemies have attacks that lower the MP of your Reyvateil reducing the ammount of time your Reyvateil can continue signing so it's a good idea to be mindful of your Reyvateil's MP at all times else you risk a song being canceled before your ready.

The last feature of combat is harmonics. The harmonics gauge is a little bar at the bottom of the screen the fillls up as your party uses attack against the enemy and decreases when your characters take damage. Filling up the harmonics gauge is fairly important as having a higher harmonics level strengthens your party's attack as well as allowing the use of higher level skills. It also affects how fast your revateil will charge up a song with higher levels allowing songs to reach high bursts much quicker than lower levels. Most importantly though is the fact that the enemy's loot table is directly based on the level of harmonics your party achieved during battle. Each enemy has 4 levels of items. You will always get the level 1 items but if you want the higher level ones you need to have to build up your harmonics level. As expected the rarest and most valuable items are usually level 4 many of which are either powerful pieces of equipment or neccesary components for grathmelding. While building up the harmonics gauge can be a pain in the arse at times it's definatly rewarding.

Overall the game play is fun which alot of good ideas. The only cavet however is the fact that the enemy difficulty need some tweaking. Either the enemies need to be stronged, needed to give less expirence, or the leveling curve needed to be slower. Unless you spent a lot of time running from battles and subsequently not getting any expirence points it is unlikely you will see the game over screen too often if at all.
Art, Graphics, and Sound

As can be expected from any Gust game the graphics of "Ar Tonelico" are obviously dated but due to the artistic qualities of the hand-painted backgrounds and character portraits it turns out well enough. Gust's artists did a very good job at making this an interesting and inviting world so there's no need to be disapointed with this game for not having super realistic 3D graphics.

The music of this game is done by the same people the who did the awesome soundtrack of "Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny". While it isn't quite as good in this game it's still a great listen to nonetheless. Featuring a wide varity of vocal and electronic tracks I never felt the need to turn the music down while playing, something that has become a problem in many other games.

This game also features quite a bit of voice acting available in Japanese or English. Since NIS America seems to have a problem finding decent voice actors for the English casting, and this game in no exception, I prefered using the much better casted Japanese actors for this expirence. Most of the dialog is text only with probabally no more than maybe 20-30% of the game actually having voice acting. However this game has about 3 times as much text as most CRPGs and voicing the entire thing would have been madness. Once you start diving into the Cosmospheres you will soon learn to appriciate how much voice acting there actually is in this game. Some sections of the Cosmosphere will literally have 15-20 minutes of dialog with voice to accompany it the whole way.

After clearing the game I have a great appreciation for all of artistic quality that went into the graphics and sound of this game even if it may be lacking for some people's tastes.

Conclusion

Overall "Ar Tonelico: Melody of Elemia" was a very fun and exciting game to play and definatly one I recomend picking up. It was a very fun game to play with multiple choices with led to diffent outcomes and endings. There have been few games on the ps2 I enjoyed as much as this one and a game I am happy to have in my collection. If you are a big fan of CRPGs who love's a good story and interesting characters and have a PS2 and $50 burning a hole in your pocket you should do yourself a favor pick this game up. Since it's published by NIS America it's unlikely there was a large quanity available so if you really want to play this you should do so sooner rather than later.

Anyway thanks to Gust for making a great game and thanks to NIS America for bringing it over to North America so we could enjoy it.