Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia

released on Jan 26, 2006

Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia is a role-playing video game developed by Gust Corporation for the PlayStation 2 and originally published by Banpresto in 2006. Journey throughout the world of Ar tonelico to find the key to destroying the viruses once and for all. Partner up with a Reyvateil, a girl who can create magic through songs, and fight your way back up the tower to save your home. Explore a Reyvateil's inner world with the revolutionary new Dive System, which allows you to go on "Virtual Dates" to increase their magical power.


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Genres

RPG


More Info on IGDB


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I absolutely adore the first two acts of this game, and the music is REALLY good (please inject Hymnos song into my veins)... but damn I the last stretch of the game kinda just exists huh. Great game, but I wish I could like it more.

It's pretty consistent in its quality but a bit lacking in areas (characters, game being way too easy) which brings it down as a package but I enjoyed my time.

A lot of love was put into it which you can see from the world and the songs both being the standout parts of the game imo.

also they introduced the last girl in the last part of the game and she was better than the other 2 girls who have been with you throughout the rest of the game so that's pretty funny


Ar Tonelico : Interesting yet unimpressive

Today ladies and gentleman, we are trying out a game which I wasn’t really planning on playing myself but since a friend of mine was really interested in trying it out and wanted to share the experience with me ! I decided to jump in since I wanted kind of a buffer game after playing 3 ultra-mega-ambitious RPG’s and didn’t wanna jump on playing (heck even re-playing for some) Xenoblade games just yet. With that said, the sales pitch he gave for being interested in Ar Tonelico definitely caught my attention. The friend in question is a composer and therefore is very interested in music as an artform, when he read about the universe the Ar Tonelico took place in, he was immediately charmed as it hits his sweet spot just right. He wasn’t the only one amongst my close mutual friends who recommended Ar Tonelico, he’s currently playing the game himself in Japanese, I had other friends who also like the universe and from what I’ve gathered from them, artistically speaking this is right up my alley.

Now I bare to mention that this is my first experience with a Gust title, Gust is a company mostly known for their long-running Atelier series which is an historically long RPG series which has existed since the PS1 and still comes out on a semi-yearly basis and are mostly focused on life-simulation, craftings and being “comfy” games rather than telling any sort of grand narrative. Not my cup of tea, as I usually tend to like my RPG to be a little bit more involved than that but I’m curious to try one of them someday. Ar Tonelico by comparison is an outlier in their line-up since it’s the closest thing to a typical RPG they’ve released however some light influence from the Atelier franchise can be seen here, to what extend I can’t really tell but crafting plays a somewhat minor role in the game design of the game.

The origin of the project is actually rather interesting, Akira Tsuchiya the main composer of the Atelier series as well as Ar Tonelico for which he also serves the role of director created the entire setting of the series while he was in college. It was initially the setting of a tabletop RPG he created for him and his friends to play in, over the years of course, he developed that universe until eventually, he was given the opportunity to adapt that tabletop game into an actual title for the PS2. Initially planned for the year 2000’s, the project continued to grow until it was released in 2006.

This means two things, one there are several and I mean several additional materials about the game from even before the release of the first game which will help you understand how absurdly well thought-out and unique the setting of the series is ! You can feel that a lot of work was put into creating that universe and describing how it works and the main component that holds it all together : Music and its effect on the world and on people as an art form. Second, that means that upon reading all of this, you probably will have quite a bit of high expectation coming into this game because of the sheer work that was put in creating it, from the concept arts, to the general artwork, to the setting and other stuff.

Music is an essential core-part of the Exa_Pico universe in which the series takes place in and the origin of life and the universe as it came to be is all rooted in musical science which is nuts even if I don’t understand a single speck of it. They even created their own fictional language called Hymnos which is designed specifically to sound good musically speaking and you got several beautiful vocal tracks in the game sung in said fake language and yes, if you’re willing to dig deeper, you can translate that shit ! It’s an actual language, it's nuts !
The game takes place on the floating continent of Sol Ciel, a long time ago humanity used to live on the surface and used the power of songs in order to accomplish all sorts of technological and medical advancement. The world is held together by a gigantic tower acting like some sort of supercomputer by the name of Ar Tonelico and people either live on its bases or higher up the towers in floating cities. A couple of years ago, a man-made tragedy whose origins has been lost to time divided the population of Sol Ciel between the Upper world and the Lower World with Ar Tonelico managing pretty much all of the world power. However, one day, viruses started attacking the Tower, it’s up to Lyner a Apostle of Elemia to deal with the issue, after failing to push back the virus menace, he takes an airship and crashes to the surface world after being tasked by a woman named Shurelia to find something called an “Hymn Crystal” which can stop the virus invasion.

Shurelia herself is a Reyvateil, a subspecies of humans that are mostly part machines and the only remaining people who can use the power of songs in order to accomplish all sorts of things through the uses of Song magic. Throughout his adventure, Lyner will meet 2 of those Reyvateil which are the main 2 heroines of the game Aurica and Misha (the latter of which seems to know him even if he doesn’t remember) as well as a bunch of colorful individual on his quest to find a way to stop the virus invasion.

I think I still need to emphasize that a lot of work went into creating the setting of the universe and it definitely is an intriguing world which functions in a really unique and interesting way. I’d say that artistically speaking and in terms of ambition, the game holds its ground fairly well especially in the music department. Most of the music sung in Hymnos were composed and performed by the absurdly talented Akiko Shikata, a popular japanese singer specialized in chorus-style music, she’s mostly known for her work on Umineko these days for which she sung the opening of both the visual novel and the anime but she got her debut in the world of video game composition with Ar Tonelico. The music in the game in general is one of its strong suits, especially all of the vocal tracks, the rest of the soundtrack is of a rather standard quality even though not unpleasant…

Yeah standard…

Because see, this is where Ar Tonelico falls really short in my opinion, for such a unique setting and unique origin behind the creation of the game, the end-result is a bit of a wet fart if you ask my opinion. Story wise the game is divided in 3 acts, a classic plot structure but also not really. In most stories with 3 acts, you’d expect the 3 acts (called “Phase” in this game) to be a beginning, a middle and an end but in reality this game pacing is a bit all over the place. The game is short, capping at around 30h but at times, the story feels like they crammed the storyline of 3 separate video games into one title and it definitely shows, events goes by fast, characters arcs gets rushed, lots of things are left on the side and very little of the game’s promising setting is actually fleshed out or well established to the point that you would get more out of reading the Ar Tonelico wiki entry on the game than expecting the plot to tell you about the rather fascinating but ultimately fruitless details.

And when I say it’s the story of 3 games, I mean it, each game starts with an initial conflict kicking the plot into high gear followed by a series of small side-ventures and concludes into a climatic finale which makes you feel like you’re in the end of the game but actually you don’t. Heck Phase 2 even ends on a credit roll despite 10h still remaining on the counter…
The actual writing by itself is the most cookie-cutter RPG schlop you’ve seen time and time again and it’s not particularly good schlop either. The main character for exemple is a bland goody two shoe with a heart of gold, the brain of a bird and denser than the surface of Saturn. He will have his affection pursued by the 2 main heroines of the game which are no more or less interesting than him.

At the start of the game, you get the choice between either Aurica or Misha : Aurica has the better toolkit for battle, you get to use her for a lot more time and as such you will likely keep her in your party for longer just for her raw damage output alone, however she has the personality of a doormat, always needing Lyner to save her ass and never really speaking up about her problems or about anything really until the very late stage of the game. Misha is a bit more interesting, she’s supposedly Lyner childhood friend but he doesn’t seem to remember much about her, her role is central to the narrative as she is later revealed to be the star singer, a core part of the tower necessary to keep the viruses away with the issue being that she has to keep singing forever. However, while Misha has a bit more meat on her bone, she’s a pretty generic childhood friend archetype, she seems to have a lot of things going for her but it’s presented with no real finesse or substance whatsoever and a lot of the pay-offs about the mysteries surrounding her are honestly pretty underwhelming.

With 2 heroines put on the forefront and a main character who exists mostly for the player to project themselves on him, you guessed it, it’s one of those RPG’s with the central gimmick of its story being pursuing romance with either of these two ladies. The way of doing so is actually pretty unique, you first have to gather discussion topics around the world, discuss these topics by resting at a save point or an inn and then gather stamps to unlock part of their “cosmosphere”. Cosmosphere is a virtual world inside the Reyvateils mind that humans can access via a process called “diving” at a certain facility in the game. There are multiple layers to the cosmosphere that you unlock as you get to know the character better and collect more discussion topics, once inside the Cosmosphere however, the game pretty much turns into a visual novel where you spend a currency called “DP” which Reyvateils gain in battle in order to unlock certain scenes and complete the current level of the cosmosphere. It’s through this system that you’ll get to know the finer details of each heroine's backstory as well as the inner machinations of their mind but also craft new Song Magic for them to use in battle.

While a cool idea in theory, a lot of the cosmosphere revolve around humorous and pretty inconsequential story beat which tries to be serious at times but fail at delivering any kind of emotional impact, the game tries to have a lot of abstract narrative when it comes to the girls but ultimately fail at making any point brought up interesting. Some scenes are just empty trauma dumping without much added value behind it, humorous gag scenes or just random horny fanservice (with both girls having an entire level of their cosmosphere dedicated to BDSM shenanigans). Each level of the cosmosphere features one of the characters in a different outfit that you get to unlock by the end and gives advantages in battle which is pretty neat I suppose. The progression of the cosmosphere is also overall pretty linear and any additional tinkering you might do in them is just a waste of DP (spending thousands of DP to learn about lingerie without any added benefit gameplay or wise sure is something the game does) and even then the cosmosphere isn’t the determining factor to choose which girl you’re gonna end up with. On one hand, that means you will likely see all of the cosmosphere of both girls but also that means that there’s no penalty for prioritizing stuff.
Rather, the determining factor to ending up with one of the girls is a route split in the middle of the game with a choice pretty much locking you into one of the character routes like in a typical visual novel. The route split by itself is pretty cool for replayability but in the end very little actually changes between the two routes except that Aurica’s route focus more on the world and Misha’s route focus more on her perspective on the situation at hand and is therefore a more personal story and one which is most worth experiencing, the end-game is still the same no matter who you choose with only certain endings and scenes changing depending on which girl you chose. In fact, the girl you didn’t choose gets a bit shafted by the narrative and while they still might have a role to play, they won’t be doing much, that won’t stop them from still trying to pursue your affection as if nothing really mattered at all and their fate was sealed.

So who did I end up with ?

Neither, no that doesn’t mean you can fuck up and end up alone like in other similar type of games or that you can embrace the power of polygamy but in a surprise twist of event, the last 10h of the game introduces a new romantic option with none other than Shurelia, the woman who sends you on your mission to begin with and Lyner’s superior. When this happened, I was kind of lowkey confused, introducing a romantic plot line this late into the game after spending 20h with the main 2 heroines, that must mean they have quite a bit of confidence in their writing to pull off something like that and turns out it’s true because Shurelia is the best girl of the three. Her personality embraces the idea of gap moe, where there’s a clear distinction between her position of superiority to Lyner and how she actually is and wants to be treated, she has the most relevance to the overall lore of the series and all of her interventions are filled not only with cute interactions but interesting tidbits about the gameworld (about time we dived into it even if it’s a bit late). Her cosmosphere is a bit lacking, composed mostly of a made up scenario rather than anything really fleshing her out, but she seems to have lots of fun coming up with the silly nonsense in her head and that makes her strangely endearing in a way. I don’t know man, she’s just really neat and managed to steal the spotlight entirely upon joining your party.

The rest of the cast is fine, they’re all kinda cliché but their designs and personality are great, like I said the entire package doesn’t lack in charm but the execution is just a bit lacking, it’s kind of a bog standard JRPG plot with bog standard characters and character interaction and most of what’s interesting about the main premise and the setting of the game isn’t really well exploited or fleshed out at all and when they are it’s either sparse or too late to make an impact on me. I don’t necessarily dislike the game story but it probably won’t leave that much of an impact on me, it’s pretty forgettable and it’s quite a shame considering what we’re working with here.

But an RPG isn’t just a story and a set of characters it’s also a gameplay and here, I’d say that the game fumbles the bag a bit more. In theory, Ar Tonelico has a lot of cool ideas when it comes to its gameplay, the battle system is a mix of ATB system and something similar to the Valkyrie Profile franchise. You got 3 active party members and one Reyvateil which goal is going to cast spells by charging them up and unleashing them on the enemies, the goal is going to let your party member do chip damage and prevent your Reyvateil from dying or losing focus while she’s charging her spell, it’s all pretty neat stuff honestly…

Except the game’s easy as shit…

Most enemies in the game can easily be one shot by a well charged super blast if they don’t get one shot by your active party members and they can’t really fight back in any decent capacity. The overall game balance of this game is kinda below the gutter, the game has a lot of customization options like the “Grathnode” crystals which can be attached to any piece of equipment to give massive bonuses, one of which is just… more damage ? See, in this game you can add additional elemental effects to your weapon, the thing is that these don’t act like a buff but instead a separate state of damage entirely. So if you managed early on to stack 100 points in one elemental statistics, you’ll be dealing your own damage + elemental damages for a single normal attack, meaning you pretty deal 2x of your own damage output.

Even without these broken strategies however, it’s still very easy to cheese most fights, the 3 Reyvateils you get all have a wide variety of spells which all causes to deal massive damage in an AOE fashion and the dominant strategy for almost every boss fight in the game is to just charge your strongest spell to a ridiculous amount of percentage and one shot them that way, it works almost every single time and is the optimal strategy for most if not every fights. The battle system overall is pretty fun but the issue is that it’s mathematically impossible to make the most of it, heck at some point the game just run out of new enemies to throw at you so most of the enemies are literally monsters from earlier areas with literally the same stats and I wonder what was even the point of doing this ? There’s exactly two fights which managed to wipe my entire active part but with the way healing works in this game, you can save your ass super quickly and you pretty much need to make you unoptimized on purpose in order to see the game over screen (and these were the last 2 bosses of the game).

The dungeon design is also very barebone, I will commend tho, they have a pretty unique encounter system. It’s basically random encounters but with an indicator on the bottom right of the screen showing you when it’s gonna happen kinda like the moon phases in the SMT series, in fact after multiple encounters, you don’t have any encounters period which is neat. But yeah other than that, I found that the dungeon design leaves a lot to be desired, the game alternates between the same 3 themes especially once you start climbing up the tower and if it wasn’t enough, the game kinda blows its whole load in the first phase so several hours of both phase 2 and especially phase 3 are spent revisiting previous areas, so it’s recycling on top of recycling.

Speaking of Phase 3, I’d say that it kind of artificially lengthen the story, the reasons to kick off the new conflict is a bit weak and most of it consist in a random fetch quest around previously visited areas which concludes in somewhat of a wet fart but I heard it was done mostly to prepare the terrain for the sequel so I’m letting that slide. The game is also pretty cheap looking, for how good the artwork of the gam is, it looks more like a cheap mobile game rather than a console RPG from 2006 but maybe Gust couldn’t afford better which is a bit of a shame.

Overall, I didn’t had an unpleasant time with Ar Tonelico, but looking at the packaging, you’d expect something with a little bit more meat on its bone, it’s a plot bordering between baby’s first RPG and otaku pandering nonsense but you can’t deny that it has its charm. The game clearly suffers from a bad case of first game syndrome and I heard the sequel is at least marginally better and exploits the universe of the game better, so I’m staying curious about this.

a música que toca no marco zero de uma explosão nuclear e a música que um pássaro cria pra alegrar sua manhã são amigas, andam de mãos dadas, cochicham uma com a outra, observam meninos no shopping

came for the music stayed for the music
corny but very soulful
best enjoyed with liberal usage of speedup