Ar tonelico 3: knell of ar ciear blahblah

[Rowan]

What a bloody mouthful.

Anyway, im about 6 hours in and im not sure if im enjoying it. The only reason I keep playing it is because im determined to make these girls strip, its the only appealing thing about the game. The innuendo was kinda funny at first, but now is a complete snooze. the best line was "I-I'm so excited to feel you come inside me!" but its getting all very repeptitive. Im also not sure what the hell all this diving shit means.. I know what benefits come from successfully paying money to go through some sub-story of each of the girl characters, but its incredibly bizarre.

Im just wondering if any of you on TFF have experienced this game or any of its predessesors and can enlighten me to a few aspects of the game I might not be picking up. The battle system itself is so very straight forward, but seems boring to me. I dont even need to make them strip to win fights. Its just a parade of mashing square.

[Andromeda]

I've played all three of the games. Ar Tonelico 2 is still one of my favorite games from the PS2 era. It has one of more enjoyable and rewarding combat systems, at least for me. I actually have a review for the game up on TFF.

Anyway, the one you're talking about was a bit of a regression for me from the second. The combat was fairly enjoyable, but not as much as the last one. The main method of victory in combat is powering up your songstress and then unleashing their attack. It is generally the quickest way. But it is pretty mindless compared the second game. There is only a couple of things you have to watch out for.

The bulk of the games entertainment comes from the story and the very loosely veiled innuendos that they throw at you. Unfortunately, they sort of went a little too far on trying to provide the fan service and upping the anty that they sort of forgot the rest of what made the games so enjoyable.

Anyway, for someone that's played the last two games it is still very rewarding story wise because it is the conclusion. While you can play it independent from the others there are a lot of reference and some characters from past games that only familiar players would know. So when enjoying the story you miss out on that.

The surprising thing about the story though is that it gets pretty dark the more you play it. The girl's backgrounds and things they go through in their cosmospheres are especially dark at times. They end up going pretty edgy all things around. It was a good conclusion to the trilogy, but not the best. Two is still the best in the series.

[SOLDIER #819]

If the game is too easy, you could play on Hard mode. I hear the difficulty is high enough to where it's fall under the "M" part of BDSM, as it makes you its whipping boy. So you get to strip girls and get your ass thoroughly kicked. Sexy!

[Andromeda]

Oh it definitely earned the Mature rating with all of the stripping you do of the characters. Though at least it is pretty fair, since even the guardian strip as well when they do their super moves. I don't remember how far into the game you have to be to get them, but they are pretty entertaining to see.

Also, if you keep playing, I'll give you the heads up that there is a timed boss fight, an invisibly timed one that is. You don't fail if you go over, but it does affect which ending you get. If you go over the time, the ending happens really early and you don't get to play most or all of the final act, which is very lengthy. If you get it in the right time, then you get the final act and you can get to see what would amount to a good or true ending. Figured I'd give you that heads up since I know some people have felt a little cheated by the bad ending they got because they didn't know about the time limit.

Unfortunately I don't remember which fight it was, but I'm pretty sure it was one of the last boss fights in the second act.