Ar Tonelico is kinda good. It's pretty neat. It's like really nice.
It's a genuinely incredible artistic and musical direction put into a fairly fun gameplay system, with somewhat annoying dungeon design and borderline nonexistent difficulty.
The plot itself is nice and conveys its general themes of understanding and harmony between people fairly well, but the highlight of the writing comes in the form of both main girls' cosmospheres, and the general handling of the struggles, development and relationship with the main protagonist.
One fairly pervasive issue with the game is its insistence on making you backtrack through previously visited areas fairly often, especially in Phase 2 and a little 3, but it's more of a light blemish than an all-encompassing problem to me.

All in all, I'm glad to have played it, it's a lovely little game that might not break any new ground but I know I'll cherish it in some small part of me.

Reviewed on Dec 22, 2022


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