Ar Nosurge is the current final game in the Exa_Pico line of RPG’s, which is made up of Ar Tonelico 1-3 and the Nosurge games. I’m going to talk broadly about Ar Tonelico for a bit before getting into the review, since I am going to be referencing Ar Tonelico a decent amount. Note, this is going to be a long post, there’s a lot to talk about.

Ar Tonelico is a special set of RPG’s. Starting on the PS2 and ending on the PS3, they are some of the first RPG’s to insert entire visual novels into them, and I’m not talking about the little short social link kind of thing. They have entire side modes dedicated to just the relationship between the hero and the girl and both the good and bad sides of really the girl in general. From someone with some psychology interest, it’s actually really cool and there’s a lot to read into in each game about what everything means and how they chose to show different traits and issues someone can have, even things they would never admit to.

Then there’s the music, which has to be good since Song Magic is how combat works. Ar Tonelico is one of a small list of game’s I love the music from even though it sounds like nothing else I listen to. They created their own language and made some truly epic arrangements. It helps that the hymmnos play at very big plot moments which only adds to the grandness of them. So both in combat music is good and the big plot moments get some great stuff.

Last of course is how adult some of it is. There’s the innuendos of course. The above bit of stuff about visual novels is part of a mechanic called diving, which is often likened to sex in world. It is necessary for Reivyateils(I think that’s the spelling) to have a partner dive into them to craft stronger song magic. It’s basically as intimate as sex and as important as therapy. The actual VN bits are called Cosmospheres, which is what I’m going to refer to Ar Nosurges as because Gemnimetrics is less cool sounding and harder to spell for some reason. They are not exactly the same thing, but the core concept is the same.

There’s other stuff to that is adult focused, though visually not incredibly adult. There’s a big cosplay focus, as along with song magic you unlock costumes for the Revyateils which boost there stats. It’s to me, a tasteful RPG series that is honest and doesn’t hide lewd stuff out of shame nor does it avoid talking about it. It’s an important part of relationships after all and the series would lose out if it hid all of it.

Finally there’s the talk topics and crafting storylines. Basically there’s a lot of side content that just has characters talk about things other then the imminent threat that more RPGs from that era needed. It gives the characters more time to show who they are and offers takes on events from the story from both sides without stopping the actual story scene to have everyone explain their thoughts, or offers really silly world building. Then there’s the extra’s menu, which for a PS2 set of games was better then most Vn’s. Music player, talk topics replayer, art gallery, the entire Cosmoshperes for replay, costume viewer(I think) and more. Of course it is also this series the killed my completionist side for like 7 years… but I’ll get into that when that game comes up.

Okay, so I played the Vita version of this game. It includes all the dlc, which includes more talk scenes with swimsuits, some extra costumes, an extra cosmosphere, and one that apparently adds jiggle to a character model. Beyond that, the only other version available in English, PS3, apparently still has some major bugs on it to this day, main of which is the costume menu is just broke which kills some rewards late game and a clear game bonus. At some point I will play that version if the more recent releases are not brought to the English market. Note that the Steam release is a no either way, as it has been censored do to demands by Steam. To many lewd loli’s.

We’ll start with lewd, since the game kind of front loads that. The first two cgs you get as part of the story(and some of the few main story cgs) are of Cass naked, bathing, and Nay, naked and showering. Both have soap suds or such to keep them “decent,” but both also have very young bodies. After this, it will be hours before lewd cgs like that turn up. These are likely what Steam had censored.

The first Cosmosphere dive also has a lewd(kinda) cg of Cass mounting Delta with what looks like sperm/saliva on her hands. Again, it will be almost part 2 of three of the game before anything like that pops up again. There’s a spattering of cgs and special moves with some lewd stuff from there on, but the most in your face stuff is really in the first 1-3 hours of the game. The games does lewd it’s models with the purification ceremony, in which a girl with song magic takes a bath with a guy who has dived into them to place crystals in her body for power. Basically swimsuit time. The dlc that the Vita has adds 5 more girls into swimwear, so you have Nay, Cass, -Censored-,-Spoilers-, and Sarly for flat girls and Ion and Kanon(only girl with jiggle that is dlc, and it is very obvious) for busty.

On the note with Kanon, I guess I should mention the character models. Nay and Prim/Prime are the main models I want to draw attention to, since the camera certainly does. Nay is the main contender for what the hell is she wearing, with her ass cheeks basically being on full display. She is a main NPC and is on screen a lot compared to other characters, and her ass is probably on screen more then her face. She is also the only character who’s butt is defined on her model to any level so it is actually hard not to notice it. I really wanted a cg that was just her butt just to see what it would look like without the bleh models, and you kind of get that but not on the level I wanted. Prim on the other hand, looks naked from the back. It(I’ll get into Prim’s gender later…) has some flesh colored almost cloak thing covering their back, but from a distance it’s just skin and no other clothes go down their back or butt at all. For about half the game, I thought only their tail provided coverage at all.

So while the game does have lewd moments, they are few and far between. As for the innuendo that Ar Tonelico games are known for, it doesn’t do that a lot, mostly just some adult topics popping up during side content. Both main girls(Ion and Cass) are hesitant about letting people dive into them at the start and there is some talk of it being really important and not just something you do, but once you the guy dives into their girl it’s basically never brought up again. The thing here is that it easily could have ran with the dive=sex stuff with Chaining, which allows other girls(anyone with song magic) to connect their cosmospheres into anothers. I don’t think they ever make the obvious threesome jokes. To be fair, this game is more serious throughout in its story and diving then Ar Tonelico often was. The couples are also pretty set so the writing doesn’t have to juggle multiple love interests so the embarrassment stuff is a lot more controlled. Most of the game’s fun writing is in the synthesizing stuff, which I guess means it’s time to talk gameplay.

So before talking about combat, I want to talk about side content, as you will be spending far more time synthing and diving then fighting do to how the game is set up. Neither of these systems are complex, and are basically the same as Ar Tonelico 1-3. Diving is how you get better big attacks and basically accessories while reading a visual novel, with some choices being more expensive on dive points(earned from combat) to earn those accessories or proceed through the world. Synthing is the usual get stuff to make stuff and is where all the good equipment comes from it, and each synth also comes with a cutscene for both pairs of characters you control. There are around 48 items per shop and 4 shops. So 192 items to make, and double that for cutscenes as to get everything you need to make each one twice. Synthing is technically optional, but to get the true endings you do need to go through the whole thing.

Ok, combat time. There are no real dungeons and so maybe to deal with that design they made it so that when you get into a fight, you fight every enemy in that area. Group by group until the battle is over. There are 5 ways for a fight to end. You run out of turns, you kill everything, you die, you run, or you cast Song Magic.

When a fight starts you pick a song spell to charge for the fight. As you perform good in the fight the spell will grow in strength and at the top of the screen the game will tell you how many enemies groups will be killed by casting the song spell. Ending a fight by killing everything using song magic gives really good mutlipliers and is the general goal of every fight. This does kind of give fights a similar feel, as your end goal is always launch spell which every Exa Pico game has, except Ciel which lacks combat at all.

So what do you do while the spell is charging? You use the male half of the two combat characters to beat down the enemies. 1-4 of the total enemies, in a 3*3 grid, will have exclamation points near them, and your goal is to either kill them or break them(it took until the final boss for me to notice enemies had a yellow break bar under their health). Breaking cancels that enemies attack for the turn. Any enemies you fail to disable will attack when you run out of moves, and then you have x number of guards before your turn comes up again.

The melee character is given(eventually) 4 moves to play with in a fight each corresponding with a button. Square is your rapid attack and is where most of your damage is going to come from. Triangle is your group attack. X is your big hit, mainly used for breaking or moving enemies in the grid for the triangle attack to hit more. O is a power up that lets you use a stronger version of the other buttons. Holding R1 does something similar, though that costs a different resource. So fights kind of play out like puzzles with a timer for combos(which increase things), where you want to beat up specific enemies so that they can’t do anything. If you succeed you get all your attacks back and a big charge to the song magic. Fail and they attack. Repeat until the battle ends.

There’s a couple of other side mechanics too, like the “personality” of your singer deciding speed of charge and other actions she does, friend skills, your harmonic level which decides how much healing and bonus attacks the girl does as she charges, and of course the combo gauge. It’s overwhelming at the start but made a lot of sense once I unlocked some moves. I just wish equipment and items didn’t use short hand names for all their bonuses, making reading them confusing at best.

The last in battle thing of note is how health works. The girl is the one with the health bar, the guy just guards her. Her health bar is split into 4 sections. Outside of a small pool of items, there is no way to heal over a section. So if a boss breaks a gauge per turn that fight will end in four turns no matter what. It’s a weird way to do health, since the sections really just make over powered healing items worthless unless they specify barrier healing. Actually one of the best healing items in the game is an aphrodisiac. Because why not?

The equipment system is the last gameplay thing of note. On one hand you have crystals/accessories which can only be equipped in the many pool locations around the world. You start with one slot per character, and gain another slot in one character per talk topic level. Talk topics are gained from a lot of different sources, and mostly exist to give different takes and reactions on events. The crystals effects are varied but mostly either raise a stat very slightly, boost song magic stuff, boost harmonic gauge rate(the bar on the bottom that controls R1 attacks and the bonus effects of the girl), and boost guard efficiency. There is also jammer block. Jammer is the only status effect in the game, it ends your turn immediately or is where the enemy lowers your song power. Not sure.

On the other hand of gear you have the actual equipment menus. Both characters of each set(I’ll explain in story) have a general accessory set called RNA . These are mostly stat raises with some bonus effects like extra item uses or more damage on units attacking that round. The actual interesting and honestly complicated equipment systems are cathodes(guys) and TxBIOS(girls). The guy equipment is set up by in battle attack, so you equip cathodes to specific buttons. Cathode’s mostly raise damage under different rules or raise the harmonics gauge gain rate. The girls also have their equipment separated into four different groups, and it’s by level of the harmonics gauge. Their gear mostly improves song healing and support actions and only comes into effect when the gauge is high enough. Gear is really powerful in this game, but really hard to compare. Generally go for the highest number bonus or more uses I guess? You unlock more slots for cathodes and TxBIOS as you level up to 3 per attack/level.

Last thing, this game really feels like it should be portable. Dungeons are like at most 2 rooms long. Most towns are menus and then single small areas. There’s only like 15 areas in the game. The story is really fast paced and because of how fights work, you don’t need to grind or fight that often and can end fights whenever you want. Cutscenes are mostly short bits. Basically the game feels really segmented in a way where this being on Vita or Switch makes a lot of sense. Nothing takes long to do, there’s just a lot of small things to do.

Story

I honestly am not sure where to start exactly. This is one of those cases where I don’t want to spoil things since I really like the plot of this, whether it be the main story or the side stuff. There’s a few things I feel I need to talk about though, at least to make some of the above stuff make sense.

So in this game you play as two different teams. The one you start as is Delta and Cass, and then eventually you get to Earthes and Ion. Both of these are romances, so the game follows two pairs as they deal with some big stuff. It is a plot mechanic that you can switch between the two teams because Earthes is actually you.

Earthes is a robot that is controlled literally by the player, and Ion’s love interest. This makes Ion’s love interest the player. This is not the most meta thing the game does with this, but it does use that concept for some fun writing on Delta’s side. I honestly don’t care for Ion’s as much. Earthes can only communicate in unvoiced multiple choice answers that are one of three flavors. Good guy, lazy, and full pervert. You honestly get a choice that talks about Ion’s boobs or yuri in basically every third choice. It can make it hard to get why Ion is in love with you or take the very serious story seriously…

Anyway, because Earthes is more of a concept then a character, Ion has to carry the plot of her side of the story herself. Ion is a good girl who likes machines. There’s a bit more to her because of her origins that is explored in the cosmosphere stuff, but that’s basically her character in the main narrative. She just wants the best solution with the most happiness for everyone involved. You don’t actually even get her method for that until like 70% of the way through the main story. Basically I didn’t care much for her except when she was gut punching the whole meta thing. That was interesting.

As for the other pair… Delta is an amnesiac 20~ something year old running a restaurant that only serves a dish called Chazen, which is suppose to be fried rice. He serves boiled rice with some salt on it as his only dish. This gets run into the ground throughout the game, though does show he doesn’t think much. Cass is his tsundere close “friend” who is keeping on an eye on Delta both because she loves him, and because he caused a very big problem last year. Now for the actual plot of the game.

Our story starts with us learning that the planet of Ra Ciela was destroyed by its very own inhabitants. They intended to convert the energy from the planet into energy to teleport to a new planet, but someone caused that to fail. Floating in space in a big spaceship, our cast slept for I think 500~ years or 2000~. I swear the game listed both, but anyway that’s not important. Upon waking up the humans were under attack by a race called the Sharl. This is where the story begins with Delta and Cass. You see, Delta had opened the shielding that stopped the Sharl from invading the one human settlement on the ship for unknown reasons and was discharged from the militia of the town. This incident is very rarely brought up later in the game, but is actually dealt with in a light novel that apparently has been translated. That all gets covered in the first hour of gameplay.

Now for an aside to explain some characters I’ve mentioned. Nay is the ruler of Felion, and a self made hero of the people living something like a double life. Prim/Pram is a genom born of Cass and Delta’s minds. Prime, the one in their actual head, is a guy while I think Prim is a girl or non gendered do to being a genom. The game doesn’t translate their stuff right but that is the main difference between them, other then where they exist.

Moving on a bit, a time jump happens after Delta and Cass get captured. This is when Ciel Nosurge occurs, and I have to talk about it for a bit. Ciel is basically a tomogatchi game where Ion is the tomogatchi. The goal of the game is to both marry her, and to see her memories of Ra Ciela. This builds the character relationships to make them more meaningful in Ar and sets some stuff up for references, but I really don’t think Ciel is necessary to enjoy Ar. Just about anything that felt lacking in exposition was either in the game’s glossary or implied enough to be easy to understand. It could definitely improve the experience but the core plot of this is stand alone.

Now this is where talking about the story gets muddy as it is also where it starts getting interesting. You have some justified racism powered by misinformation and orange and blue morality, the meta stuff that pops up and becomes very important to the conflicts, a small cast of old friends operating under very different goals, and a very beat to beat story that rarely wastes time and is easy to have moving as the game lacks dungeons or any none narrative filler. This is one of the few RPGs where the combat doesn’t destroy the stories pacing as honestly, it needs to be slowed down here and there.

If you need a break from the darkish story, there’s always the silly crafting world building. There’s four themed crafters and they build some things that really make you question the rules of their world. Like one was just making ice cream that decided to form a hexagon and just stopped melting. She slapped a foundation on it and made it equippable. There’s an RNA that turns the wearer into extoplasm in a world with no confirmed ghosts, but it does have angels as another crafter made a couple’s meal where if you eat it an angel decides to take your soul. There’s also an interesting thing with the Sharl here, and I guess I should explain that other race now?

So back on Ra Ciela there were humans and another race called Genom. They were kinda like summoned beasts, taking form of animals and bipedal creatures, that lived among humans and gifting people Song Magic use. The Genom were peaceful and came from the depths of human souls to live among humans. Then humans killed them, kinda. It’s not went into detail(just like how bad the planet was before they blew it up) but the Genom were extinct, kinda. They existed still in a collective of wills and pulling a will out of that and putting it into artificial bodies is what births the Sharl. So saying the Sharl are Genom wouldn’t be wrong. Both of these races lack gender, but the Sharl are basically demi human girls. Harpies, mermaids and elves make up the bulk of the ones we see. The few times we see Sharl forming romantic relations it is always with a guy. Sharl are also really innocent and childlike, kinda being a race that just wants to enjoy life and living very long to do that.

So one of the crafter’s creates an item called the Class Change, and it changes Sharls into mermaids. This is not a magic crazy effect as apparently there is a whole line of these items just around. So Sharl can just become whatever demi human type they want. This is only touched on when crafting that item. Never again. It’s that kind of fun crafting trivia that makes me love this series for its world building. Small things that mean a lot to the people themselves, but is just interesting to the player. A game world really should be more then just what you see and interact with.

Finally, Cass is one of my favorite tsundere’s I’ve seen. I could of lived with less physical violence toward her love interest, but she’s one of the rare justified tsunderes. Thanks to the cosmosphere the game touches on a lot of her internal issues with Delta and herself that makes her lack of honesty make a lot of sense. Like her body type. Cass is stuck as around a pre teen because she’s an incarnant, basically a human modified into a an almost sharl. This causes her angst as the guy she likes is in his 20s+ and likes curvier women while she’s stuck as she is till the day she dies. Also, the guy she likes has amnesia and can’t be trusted. Actually giving her reasons to not be honest helps sell the whole tsundere act instead of her just being embarrassed or jealous.

Verdict/Final Thoughts

I enjoyed most of the game. Had some console issues, some of the difficulty spikes near the end of chapter 1 were bull because I didn’t prep right, but after that the game coasted. In fact, the boss fights went from kinda intense to throwaway as the game went on, just feeling like big wastes of time because of how little you actually do in combat versus one target. Use healing item if needed, spam the same attacks, guard against 3-6 moves. Repeat until win. Normal fights were way more interesting, though I do wish they had made another game with this engine and added more to it.

I loved the synthing stuff, the main story was interesting, and the talk topics/diving stuff was nice. I don’t think this game is brought up very often when meta stuff is concerned, but it really should. It’s an integral part of the plot and while the Ion x Player stuff isn’t my cup of tea the stuff with Delta and the other uses of the meta stuff were interesting. The few times the game called out players felt like a nice touch on the themes, though some would probably hate those bits.

I will confess that I wish the up front lewd stuff was different. As it is, it is really hard to recommend this game to most people as around 1-2 hours in they will get to content that will kill the game for them when the game almost never does anything like that again, and the other occasions make a lot more sense. It’s a mix of how thrown in they feel and how lacking in similar content the rest of the game is(those are the only two fully nude cgs in the game). Like if the purification ceremony was in cg form and looked like those cgs then I’d probably feel they belong more, but as they are they are kind of a hurdle to enjoying what I think is a gem. I’m guessing the steam release in Japan has those removed, and while I’m not a fan of that it does let more people enjoy the rest of the game so I’m kind of mixed on it. I won’t play the Steam version but it is the one I would recommend to friends kinda situation.

So yeah. I do think the songs in this are weaker then Ar Tonelico, though that might be nostalgia and only listening the big pieces from the older games. Overall though this game is good.

Vita save for Ar Nosurge ~Ode to an Unborn Star~

Save has the entire extras menu unlocked, a save to all three ending splits and a save to the first switch over which has a scene with an achievement in it.

Gameplay: 6/10 Eroticness: 5/10 Story: 8/10

Completion-

Beat the game having used all song spells, complete all cosmospheres, craft everything twice, and get all talk topics. That last one is probably the most do everything of the lot, as the Vita version adds in 6 more girls to the talk topics and they can come from anything. There’s a grand total of 4 missable topics in the game, all with windows of like a cutscene to get them. Like early on you get a train pass and right after that you would normally get on that train, right? Do that and a topic is missed as you are suppose to randomly continue through that area and fight a monster to save a new friend.

There’s one topic I want to bring special mention to. Nelo’s 5-5, or her second one with Earthes. The exact unlock is unknown but the guess on the Japanese wiki is to do a lot of conversations with Nay. Thing is it only seems to track conversations done after meeting Nelo or something. There is a fix though. Do everything else with nay and then recraft the Sham Croquette Cathode as Earthes. For whatever reason, that unlocks this conversation.