Andromeda's JRPG Review: Ar Tonelico 2: Melody of Metafalica

[Andromeda]

So much for doing this monthly like I had hoped. Oh well, I did say I was using time I did not really have to spend. I suddenly felt the urge to do this again, so we’ll see what happened. I don’t make any promises, but anyway next up on the review as you can tell by the title is Ar Tonelico 2: Melody of Metafalica, which is not so much a direct sequel to Ar Tonelico: Melody of Elemia as it is a continuation of the same themes with some reoccurring characters from the last game, on the Playstation 2 coming out in 2009 for those in the US and EU territories.

Why am I doing the second game first rather than the first? Well I played it more recently, but I think the second game is actually far superior to the original game. And in the end if you only play one ultra niche JRPG this should be the one to pick over the first. You won’t be at a terrible lose or confusion if you do.

I’ll start out by trying to explain exactly what Ar Tonelico 2 is and its series (as there are now three in the series with Ar Tonelico 3 recently released on the PS3 in Japan, so far). For those rare RPGers out there that have enjoyed the smaller RPGs and niche games might have played a game called Thousand Arms, its similar in some ways. However, those that don’t know what that means will be completely lost. So I’ll explain what the Ar Tonelico series is and why it is ultra niche, at least in the US and EU territories. The game comes from GUST, the people that have brought you the Atelier series for so long, so that helps to begin to explain the niche, but I’m just getting start. This is a sprite based, anime inspired JRPG that combines pretty much everything that is a fetish to anime fans and RPG fans and cross breeds with a dating simulation game to bring what could only be ultra niche in the US. In Japan dating sims are quite popular, so it sort of makes sense to combine two popular genres and get both fan bases. However, in the US when it’s not from Square Enix you’re pretty much niche to start and then going for dating sims which are almost non-existent. You clearly have a very small fan base you’re going to reach here, but we can thank NIS America for bring us this highly entertaining JRPG to our shores.

Now before I go on a couple things I’ll need to note. For those that are pretty well informed they’ll know that dating sims come in quite a few varieties, but the less informed probably only know about all of the H-games that exist on the PC only. Dating sims don’t mean it’s an H-game and since this is a console release you won’t see that anyway. Ar Tonelico 2 is a T rated game, but that said the series does have a bit of a reputation for being the closed you can get to an H-game without having nudity or sex. Which I’ll have to admit is not necessarily far from the truth at times. There will be times playing the game you’ll probably not want anyone else around because they’ll get the wrong idea or you’ll just be plain too embarrassed to have someone else seeing you playing it. Which is pretty the prime reason the game doesn’t sell well. I don’t want that to scare you away because it is worth playing, however I give you fair warning in advance that this is probably the most mature T game you’ll buy, until we get Ar Tonlice 3 (but you can do a google search to understand what I say that).

All that about the game is what makes the game fun and entertaining is that it understands what sort of game it is and does not make any pretenses about that fact. It pretty much throws itself out there and just has fun. If you’re not laughing at the dialogue for being so heavily laced with the least subtle innuendoes imaginable you’re not enjoying the game for how it is meant to be, at least that’s my belief. The game isn’t meant to be taken seriously and it doesn’t take itself too seriously either.

On to the game itself though! The story follows Croix Bartel a Knight with the Grand Bell Organization in the Metafalss region of the Ar Ciel world. There are three towers on Ar Ciel that humans live on along with Reyvateil up away from the ruined planet surface. Ar Tonelico: Melody of Elemia took place on a different tower as does the third game. Reyvateils, oddly enough (not really odd considering the game), are all females. A Reyvateil is a special human that can sing songs to create magic spells, generally for combat purposes though there are non-combat songs. You can think of a Reyvateil as looking human, but being a little closer to being a machine at times since they do not function physically or mentally in the same ways as humans. This difference in Reyvateils versus humans and the sort of things that they have to do to maintain their life plays a focus in the series, but has a stronger role in this game. See in general, Reyvateil serve human together as partners and the stronger the bond between human and Reyvateil becomes the stronger their song magic is, another important feature of the game to be discussed later. However, in Metafalss there is an epidemic that is corrupting Reyvateil and turning them violent requiring the Knights of the Grand Bell Organization, such as Croix, to stop them by any means and capture them if possible. To complicate matters the land of Metafalss is falling apart quite literately and falling down to the planet surface so everyone is in fear of their impending death. So there is an effort going on to try to create a new land for themselves to live on that. Between the Reyvateil epidemic and trying to break free from their dying land Croix and his party have his hand full.

I’m being intentionally vague about the story so that you can experience it for yourself. While the story is not terrible complex or a masterpiece of storytelling it is still solidly done and engaging. However, where the writers really spent their efforts was in the characters, specifically the girls. See this is a dating sim and RPG and as such you’re giving the opportunity to spend time with three girls through the course of the game and learn more about them, who are all Reyveteils naturally. I’m going to begin with them and transition into the combat system since the girls, the dating sim elements and combat are all linked together so follow carefully.

As I was saying the real writing comes in the form of the dating sim segments of the game. Each girl has host of personal issues that they are dealing with when you start the game, but they hide them under layers and layers of mental barriers to keep from showing off all of their scars, as it were, to everyone. So on the outside they seem fine, but once you get to know them you realize that they all have a very troubled past for one reason or another. It is your job as Croix to explore the girls flaws, weaknesses and problems and bring them to able to except them and understand them better. You do all of this through the Cosmosphere, this is where that not quite human part of Reyveteils starts to come on as well as probably the first heavily innuendo-ized part of the game you’ll encounter.

There is a machine called the Dive System that allows a Reyveteil and human to becoming mentally linked. While attached to the machine the human partner is transported into the mind of the Reyveteil, which is called their Cosmosphere and there you experience the girls on a deeper level. There are levels to them and the deeper you go means you’ve bonded stronger with the girl and she’s accepted you more. As you travel about the Cosmosphere and complete tasks you will gain Song Magic, which is one of the primary rewards and purposes of doing anything in the Cosmosphere. Learning Song Magic grants them the use of that during battles. Some tasks will end up strengthen or adding to the Song Magic or grant new ones. However, to do anything in the Cosmosphere you need dive points, points that are gained from winning battles. Collect enough points and you activate a task when in the Cosmosphere, though in general it is unlikely you’ll ever be hurting for points. Each girl has her own pool of dive points though, so you’ll have to trade them out in battles to get the points you need.

In battles you can have only two Reyveteils set and two guardians (humans) that protect the Reyveteils. Each Reyveteil works better with a different guardian so you’ll want to link together the proper guardians so that you can get the best results from the girls in battles. Speaking of combat, while this isn’t meant to sound like a negative, it is probably the busiest interface for battle I’ve seen until I played Cross Edge. Take a look below at the attached screenshots to see what I mean. You are slowly introduced to the aspects of the combat, but once you get them all you realize there are a lot of different things happening at once. So I’ll break combat down into segments.

You have attack phases and defense phases. Starting with the attack phase only the guardians can actually make attacks in combat. Reyveteils have their Song Magic, but it functions differently than the standard attack so I’ll get to that later. In the attack phase you have a certain amount of time to make attack judged by a meter on the lower right, once the meter is gone the attack phase is over. Certain attacks can restore back some of the meter extending your fight. While you have time to attack you can attack as often as possible. A guardian has its own action meter that once filled can act. Your two guardians are mapped to a different face button, so you can execute commands quickly and at the same time if you wish. The different attacks you have are mapped to the right stick push down and attack will execute a different attack than up and attack, this has a purpose for the girls as well, but I’ll get to that later.

Once the attack phase is completed the defense phase begins where you have to defend the girls from the monsters. See the monsters and enemies you fight are only focused on tried to kill the Reyveteils, since Reyveteils in general are stronger and capable of doing significantly more damage with their Song Magic than normal humans. So as guardians you must use yourself as a shield. Once again they are mapped to face buttons and use the same meter as before except this time it is a timing action. The monster’s attacks will select a girl and the linked guardian will be called to defend. When the attack is made your meter will display a line on the meter that moves across to indicate how soon the attack will hit. You’re job as the player is to push the face button when that line crosses with the indicated “Perfect Defense” mark. In other words it’s a rhythm game get the time perfect and all damage is voided, fail and the girl takes the full damage, get somewhere in between and the damage is reduced. Once the monsters make their attack the defense phase is over and returns to your attack phase and it continues until either you or the enemy are dead.

And now we get the Reyveteils purpose in combat. There are several things you have to do with them. First when any battle starts you are given the Song Magic menu and you can select between either of the two Reyveteils’ Song Magic to use. Once selected the attack phase will begin. So long as time is moving forward the Reyveteils will sing and their singing is shown on the Song Meter that shows their progress. Song Magic doesn’t have a meter to fill up to say the song is ready to be use, it just as a meter to show how long you’ve been singing which equals the strength. You will easily see numbers in the 10,000% range early on in the game. However, the longer the girls sing the more MP is consumed, once all MP is gone the song disappears and they have to rest and regen their MP back, which happens when they are not singing while in battle. At any point during the attack phase you can stop them and tell them use the Song Magic and its effectiveness will be based on their Song Meter.

However, there is a second factor, as if the combat could get anymore busy, huh? See the girls have needs in combat (yeah I know sounds weird, but it is the best way to say it). There is a grid inside that attack phase action meter that shows their needs. Remember when I said the right stick controls the type of attacks you do as guardians. Well, see that grid tells you which direction to push to fulfill their needs. If you meet their needs the Harmonics Gauge increases, which is at the bottom center of the screen and displays as two waves, each representing how well the guardian and the linked Reyveteil are in tune with each other during combat.

Meeting the girls’ needs serves three purposes in battle, down the rabbit hole we go further. The first purpose increases the level on the guardians’ attacks during the attack phases. The higher the level the stronger and cooler their attacks, get it high enough and they do into EX Level and pull off a super move. The second purpose is to strengthen and improve the song magic. As I said before in the Cosmosphere you can add and get new Song Magic, some will be linked in a chain of progression. So you’ll start at a “Level 1” type of that Song Magic meet the needs and it will be upgraded to “Level 2” and its properties will usually get stronger or change. The third purpose to improve the Harmonics Gauge until both of the Reyveteils’ wave patterns overlap, once overlapped the two Reyveteil become Synchronized and they perform a Synchronity Chain that is their super move.

And one final note on combat that I found to be one of the best features I’ve seen from any RPG. This game has random battles, however before you groan there is a but in here. See there are random battles, but on the dungeon map there is an encounter meter. This meter changes colors to tell you how likely you’re going to be getting a random battle, the more you move the more it changes until it flashes pretty much telling you that you’re going to be getting a battle soon if not already. However, there’s more to it. After you complete a battle the meter depletes some. Once the meter is completely gone you will not get anymore random battles until you completely leave the dungeon and return. So you can burn them all off if you want and then go explore the entire map free of worry, it does limit grinding, but the game doesn’t really require any sort of grinding to beat the game. So I think it is one of the best features to have so you can have random battles, but also know when you’re in danger and know that eventually it ends, quite awesome.

And thus concludes Ar Tonelico 2’s combat lesson, oh and Ar Tonelico 1’s combat is nothing like this. So yeah, you’ll have to learn a completely different system for that. I will admit the system is complicated, but when you get into the game it does not rush you with introducing the elements. And so when it comes time you’ll be ready for it and in the end you’ll be making use of everything and it’ll be second nature. Because the combat system is so deep and complex it actually makes what seems like could be a really shallow JRPG surprisingly deep and engaging. Because it is always active you have to always be paying attention and you can’t spam buttons to survive or else your girls will die, they have significantly less HP than the guardians. There are items and a menu system for combat if you were wondering, but that is pretty standard fare for RPGs that it was not needed to be focused on. Combat is one of the most rewarding parts of the game since almost everything ends up feeding into it. The only thing that can be a little disappointing is that because the system is so active and busy you may find yourself paying attention to the interface and not the beautiful sprites, so it can be a game that spectators get more out of at times.

Since this is a GUST game you should know that it is going to have a crafting system. If you’ve played an Atelier game then you should be pretty familiar since it is almost ripped straight out from them. Since alchemy is not the focus on the game like it is there is a little simpler, but still there are hundreds of items to find and make. On top of that you have to pick which of the three girls you will craft with and crafting with a different girl will create different items. So there is a lot to retry and explore making it a surprisingly deeper entry than you would initially expect. And the comments from the characters after the items can be some almost more entertaining than the creation process at times.

One of the most important parts of the Ar Tonelico series has become the music. They keep the same singers for the series so it creates a great unity between the games for anyone that plays all of the games. There are quite a few songs with vocals, but even the songs without vocals are a joy to listen to. In a game where songs are everything the music has to be set to a high bar and it manages to make it and in many places exceed it. There ends up being a very ethereal quality to a lot of the vocals that makes for a very unique sound and you’ll probably find yourself listen to them frequently. For music lovers the songs are enough of a reason to place if everything else isn’t so far.

Graphically though the game is very clearly a PS2 era game that is not trying to push the graphics. It is sprite based as I said before with the world itself jumping between a sprite feel and 3-D feel. It in general works for the game, but the environments can feel a little bland. The effort though has been put into the sprites, which all of the monsters are animated sprites and all of the characters. There are quite a few monsters that are entertaining to watch themselves. But on top of that this is a dating sim game too, so there are plenty of 2D drawings of all of the characters, specifically the three girls. They all have several costumes that you unlock through the Cosmosphere, which do have stats attached to them. So most of the artistic talent is in the places you’d expect.

Customization in the game comes from an unlikely source and will probably be one of those moments you’ll either laugh your head off from or turn away. It will also be one of those things that you will probably make sure no one is around. Have I made you curious or turned you away enough yet? The customization plays in two parts. For the human characters as you get into the game there are rogue Reyveteils that you end up saving and they all come with stats and can be assigned to aid the guardians. So depending on your play style you can get a variety of different bonuses in battle from them. The girls, the Reyveteils (there are female guardians), the way they are customized is quite amusing to say the least. This is how it works, during the progress of the game you will earn Dualithnode Crystals which come with bonuses attached. The way that the girls gain those bonuses is by placing the crystals in a large bath and taking a bath and absorbing the bonuses. Yeah, I just said that you customize your girls by making them take baths. It gets better, but I will take a moment to say that the girls will not always get every single bonus. They will move about the bath gaining certain bonuses depending on where the crystals are placed in the water and where they are placed. So it is a little bit of a guessing game, but you can put toys in the bath (yes toys) that will draw their attention and if you put a crystal between them it improves the chances of them gaining the bonuses you want them to. Remember when I said it gets better, the girls bathe together and this can trigger bath scenes. You can also pick oils to put in the water as well. So yeah, customization is fun! Oh and Ar Tonelico 1’s customization was even funnier than that for completely different reasons (ask me and I’ll explain).

And finally, the quirk factor for Ar Tonelico 2. In actuality, the entire review nearly reads as a list of quirks. This game thrives on existing in that weird zone that it lives alone. It is a JRPG and a dating sim mashed together, I think that is more than enough, but it doesn’t stop there. The writing adds to this factor with its dialogue, specifically the not very subtle sexual innuendoes. It is quite hilarious to play the game and see how many you can pick up, because pretty much everything ends up being an innuendo. As I said before if you’re not laughing, you’re not enjoying the game.

Reason to Play:

Well the reason to play is the quirkiness factor honestly. The game is so niche and unique that you just have to play because it is an experience. The combat is a blast, the dialogue is just too funny to ignore and you get to experience a dating sim, if you never have. Is it a true dating sim, no because you don’t really date them per say. But you will end up having to pick a girl by the end of the game and get a specific ending. On top of that there is actually two story paths in the game which play out quite different from each other, which is very welcome considering most JRPGs that provide that sort of choice of siding with one side or the other ends up meaning almost nothing story or map wise and here it does. The reason you should play this game is becomes it’s Ar Tonelico and no one in the US would be brave enough to do this, it’s only something that the Japanese could have brought us.

Ar Tonelico 2: Melody of Metafalica is one of the games that you will almost never see again. It is not an amazing masterpiece of almost anything, but it knows it. It has fun with what it wants to do and doesn’t care if there are other paragons of JRPGs out there. If you pick up this game you will want to make you have a good sense of humor, but you should be laughing to enjoy the game. If you’re offended by the contents then this is not a game for you. But any one that loves JRPGs should give it a shot. You won’t regret it.

Story – 7/10 – The main story is good, but nothing amazing. The real story is with the characters and that is quite solid.
Combat System – 9.5/10 – The combat is deep and complex, but introduced slowly enough not to be intimidating, unfortunately it is so busy you might not get to enjoy the sprites.
Customization – 9.5/10 – You make your girls take baths to customize them, is there really much more to be said?
Graphics – 5/10 – This is standard PS2 stuff from a budget company, the real art is in the sprites and 2D profiles.
Characters – 9.5/10 – It might seem like a shallow game, but the characters are the focus and there are some really surprising developments with the girls. The girls are worth the price alone.
Uniqueness/Quirkiness – 9.5/10 – It’s not the first do this, but it did this very well and you won’t a more quirky game out there than this pretty much.

Overall – 9.5/10 (Not an average)