So when a friend asked what Ar Tonelico is, I answered it’s basically the Atelier series but more for men and music fans. That description mostly works, though back then I don’t think Atelier was as female designed as it was in the PS3 era. At least I don’t remember the Iris games being specifically shoujo or shounen…

Anyway, for some reason it gets lumped in this anime RPG’s and lewd games from it’s era, and I guess for the PS2 it’s lewd. By that I mean very tame, but still open to messages about sex and innuendo. Play it for the music.

Story-6

Some terminolgoy before we get into the summary, since Ar Tonelico uses a lot of terms for unique races and the world state is unique. First, Reyvateil. This is the heroine’s of each game, and are a race of all girls who can sing to cast magic. They pair up with partners who help them through emotional issues which leads to stronger song magic via diving. Diving is basically VR therapy, though the in world character’s liken it to sex a lot. It basically has the same emotional weight to it. There’s a few NPC’s who comment on how suspicious dive shops are, as they can come across as love hotels. Those NPC’s also made me wonder if human females just can’t dive, as I don’t think a single human girl ever does.

As for the world state, there are two important details to be aware of. First, all the Ar Tonelico games take place on landmasses attached to giant towers. There’s a lot of backstory to this, but the important part is that beyond flying, a lot of travel in game is done via going through the tower which a lot of people can’t do. So there is strong disconnects between different groups of people. Also, the tower and the world react to programming languages. Song Magic, which Reyvateils cast, is basically singing in C# or Java to cast spells. The actual hymns are written in a special language just for these games, but can be translated. This makes for a fantasy world where the magic is being cast via programming in song. It’s a really cool concept.

The game jumps right in. Lyner, our main character, walks up to his lead politician father about the explosion and igh alert status. they argue for a bit becasue daddy wants Lyner away from fighting while Lyner(correctly) realizes he’s a fighter not a thinker. Shurelia, the highest up in the city, shows up and has Lyner, her guard, come with her to investigate the situation. They bring Lyner’s friend with them.

The three find a virus monster they can’t kill. They run with the usual friend sacrifice until they reach a point they can’t escape, but which luckily has an airship for Lyner to take. There’s a program Lyner is sent to find that would let them fight back against this immaterial and teleporting virus. This is the A plot for a while, finding the Hymn Crystal aka the program. Lyner sets out to the lower world of the tower and is immediately shot down. Plot B is finding a way back up the tower or fixing his airship.

From this point on the action slows down a bit but really Ar Tonelico is almost frantic in it’s story telling. Every scene is either a crisis or leads to a crisis for a while. It’s pretty easy to get caught up into it with how fast things just happen. Which is why I almost missed how much the story is really about Lyner growing as a person. While the Reyvateils are the obvious focus of the plot, each of the three main ones being essentially key to an arc, Lyner is the glue to the whole story and more then just the guy the girl’s fall for. It’s his story, and I feel like it’s really easy to forget that. His growth from a soldier who’s just kind of dumb and would be a horrible leader, to the actual leader of the heroes and a capable guy in general. Still an idiot though.

Back to the Reyvateils. Aurica is the first one you meet, and she’s a bundle of nerves and lacks a shred of self confidence. Her cosmosphere is very good versus evil themed after she gets her feet on the ground confidence wise. Misha is a confident women trapped in a kid’s body(though she does get turned into an adult and there’s a hidden way to switch her back and forth), her sphere deals with freedom versus duty. The final girl’s, Lyner’s boss Shurelia, cosmosphere is a magical girl show. It’s hard to read into the third girl of each game, since their sphere’s aren’t really the same as the rest. The message I read from it was that you shouldn’t let your birth define your happiness.

Regarding the romance, it’s weird. The game is split into 3 phases, with phase 2 being where you pick between Aurica and Misha. Phase 2 is mostly unique to your choice and has a romance arc that can end with them getting together in the future if you pick the phase 2 ending. Phase 3 shatters that romance by having Lyner being obsessed with Shurelia, heroine number 3. After about 10 minutes of phase 3, your heroine choice from before stops mattering. Shurelia is the main heroine for basically the rest of the game. Except the endings, where you get your phase 2 choice unless you finish diving into Shurelia where you get to pick. You can also max all three Cosmospheres, which end in wedding ceremonies, regardless of route chosen.

Basically Lyner is a playboy. A few characters do make fun of him for this kind of stuff, but when you look at the romance systems overall it’s very obvious. He’s basically playing the field, and kind of using the girls to get them stronger. He’s better then the villains, but he’s not exactly exemplary. Though they do play Lyner as enough of an idiot that I can accept this is him having no idea what romance is. The later games would seal off later Cosmosphere stuff when the route branches happen so that it doesn’t feel like this, but the third heroine always kind of steals the show. It’s just not as blatant as it is here.

Gameplay-6

So I want to go over the drop system, since it affects the entire combat system and is an interesting idea. Basically, each enemy in the game has 4 drops and they are guaranteed if you hit the requirements. Those requirements are based on the gauges at the bottom of the screen.

The blue/purple bigger one is the gauge that interacts with the actual combat party members. Every time they attack the blue gauge goes up, and when hit it drops. The purple side fills up over time. When they fill up, singing speeds up and a crystal next to the smaller gauge fills. If you have 3 of these crystals filled you get all 4 drops.

Thing is you only start a fight with one crystal. To get the other two you need to hit the enemy with song magic or cast support spells and wait a long time. Based on I think damage, the gauge will fill up and when filled create another crystal. Depending on damage multiple gauges can fill at once. Thing is, the blue/purple gauge if filled without any crystals will just stay filled until another crystal is created.

So basically you need to cast to create the crystals and then endure until they fill. Early on and for weak fights, getting past gem 2 is hard. By end game, gem 4 will likely fill up every fight simple because enemies can get pretty tanky. Unless you engage in the game’s weapon/armor customization, then the game becomes a joke.

The customization system is pretty simple. Each piece of equipment can have up to 4 slots, level 1-4. Spells have all four for each of them. You can insert crystals at the same level or lower into those slots. A decent chunk of these are just stat boosts. Some of the most broken ones can triple your damage. These crystals are also used in a lot of crafting, where higher ranked crystals create higher ranked items which can broken down into higher rank crystals. With some playing around, you can break the game with this. Though it’s still easily beatable with barely touching the system.

Back to the in battle crystals. They effect singing speed, aka how fast the casting number goes up which translated to higher damage or effects. They also unlock your attackers skills. Each frontline party member has 4 total skills. 3 attack skills that cost 10%* tier level HP, and a support or passive skill. Lyner and the church guy get defensive stuff, the gunman gets blind immune. Only two get support skills, one of these being a healing skill which is completely free, usable at 1 crystal. I used that a lot in run 1, as it saves items and you don’t have to switch to a healing song.

So the dating half of the game is kind of light actually, despite taking up like 1/3 of the script. Each girl has a list of talk topics, sorted by cosmosphere level. Once you get enough topics you can access farther into a girl’s cosmosphere, getting more visual novel content and more songs for combat. Topics come from a varitey of things, though you only need 2 or three per level, and there are around 10. You usually get 1 or 2 for free, so you really don’t need to go out of your way for these. Outside of completion, talk topics are really just an extension of the visual novel side of the game, used for a bit more content with the girls and Lyner just talking about events or items you are carrying.

Cosmosphere progress is super easy, get dive points and go to the next star on the travel map. Dive points are reward from fights based on damage dealt and party size, but beyond farming a bit for Shurelia when she joins at the tail end of the game, you will likely have way to many dive points. Each girl has their own count, but the early game forces different parties on you often, so both Misha and Aurica will get more then enough. The only other use for dive points is increasing song use count at the end of a girl’s cosmosphere. Each song has like between 2-5 uses, and they regain partial use per battle or all at a rest point. Increasing the count is essentially an endgame feature, as it comes at point where honestly you can stop fighting all together and still beat the game.

The unlockable gallery needs to be mentioned since what it contains is so weird. As seen above, you start with a card collection. This has a list of all the item, monster, people, and secret(tips) cards. So it’s the bestiary of sorts, a bad item list that just has images and names, and some light bios. Cards are just a boss drop, loot, or mainly gotten from buying card packs. It’s easily the most forgettable thing in this menu.

Next is the Reyvateil Reference. It shows completion for the three girls, and summaries for the cosmosphere levels. It grades you for some reason. Nothing in this is replayable so it’s kind of pointless.

Hymn Concert is the big story songs. No idea why this is separate from the Music Hall, which is also a song player.

Grathnode is the crystals you can add to weapons and armor and songs for customization. I have no idea why this is here, but no item gallery. Did they think the cards were enough, even though a decent chunk of the items in the game aren’t on cards?

Gallery is a cg slideshow gallery. No idea why it’s a slideshow and not an image gallery. It also has backgrounds and a few promo images.

Movie Theater is any full animated cutcenes and a few song attack animations.

Ecchi/Lewd-3

More then I remembered, but really calling it a lewd game feels like a lie. It has innuendo. A decent amount of in fact. A lot of details around Reyvateil are blatantly related as some mirror to some kind of sex act and while the game doesn’t linger on these, it’s not shy about them.

All the game’s cgs come from the cosmospheres, and there’s a few odd choices. The first cg I saw in the whole game was Aurica as a schoolgirl picking up a book. I just… don’t get why that needed an image. Basically all of Misha’s cgs fit something, like her freedom versus detainment theme is very obvious from her cgs and her story in general. Aurica’s cgs are kind of all over the place, though I guess it’s innocence versus corruption? Shurelia is normal girl themed, I guess.

Aurica and Misha each get 3 lewd cgs. Each girl gets frozen in a crystal, nude for some reason. They also both have attempted seduction/sex cgs. Misha has a tied to a rock cg that I guess can be sexual, while Aurica has a sexy demon image. That’s about the extent of the sexy cgs.

Of course there’s also just the cosplay in general. Not much is done with it beyond standing portraits and battle spites, but cosplay like this was pretty rare for PS2 games. The two main girls get 10 costumes, while Shurelia gets 2. I’m not going to list them, there’s too many.

I kind of wish the Tenba president had a cg. Her outfit and design just screamed lewd potential, but she’s barely in the game and being human, isn’t in any cgs. Same with Krusche, the other female party member.

Final Thoughts

First, I love Ar Tonelico’s music. Only game I’d ever replay just for the songs. Phantasmorgia is an awesome piece, and I usually don’t feel anything for a game’s music. Though the battle music weirds me out, why is there an English rap if a fight takes to long?

Summing up my feelings on the core game, it’s average. I think it has cool moments that are kind of ruined by either being repetitive or shooting themselves in the foot with it’s half baked romance arcs. The repetitive thing gets me more though. During Misha’s route, there’s a scene where Lyner remembers a villains words form earlier, two scenes in a row. Two flashbacks basically back to back of the same event. He even reaches the same conclusion twice. The cosmosphere’s and talk topics also can this, with Lyner learning something about Aurica/Misha he already knew but because the story and cosmosphere stuff is separate, he has to learn twice. The true endings are also very weak. I think the normal endings are actually better emotionally.

Combat is a cool idea, but becomes very samey. Either you stall the fight for the Reyvateil’s spell to one shot, or you have the song be a buff to kill the enemies with attacks. The fighter’s needed more options in combat, which I don’t remember ever happening in the series. Enemy variety helps, there’s not enough. Crafting and customization might actually be the more fun part.

Lewd content is forgettable. It’s important, but not what you should play this for.

I also can’t say I’m fan a of the violence never fixes things message the game throws out around the middle. Not that it’s a bad message, but that it tends to get mishandled a lot. Lyner beats some goons being either racist toward a Reyvateil or trying to pick up Misha, and he gets reprimanded for using violence to solve the issue. It’s a very preachy moment that is incredibly important for Lyner’s character, but on Misha’s version of the event he then lets himself get beaten to prove the message, which is always stupid. Letting someone else use violence also doesn’t solve anything, and rarely do people stop because you willingly became a punching bag. Putting your life in danger to prove violence is wrong is not an answer to violence. It’s not the worse version of this moral that I’ve seen, I just can’t care for it with how often it’s poorly used.

So real story, this game made me quit being a completionist for years. Shurelia’s talk topic list is full of missable stuff. I don’t remember the exact one, but one of her conversations I just couldn’t get. Spent 2 or so hours trying different combinations of things. Looked at the guide a few times, nothing worked. I gave up, finished the run and never finished the game. I then just stopped caring about completion for 6 years, subbing trophies and achievements in for actually finishing a game. Until about a year before this blog came up, which was thanks to Akiba’s Trip 2 and a completely random sentence my brother said to. It was something like “You don’t care about 100%” or something silly like that, but it hit me hard for some reason. I’m really glad to have finally put this behind me. I know that is a stupid story, but the smallest things can influence people in the weirdest ways.

PS2 Save for Ar Tonelico 1 here

Saves to each ending and a full extra menu. None of the talk topics and cosmoshpere stuff is replayable from the gallery sadly.

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Gameplay: 6/10 Eroticness: 3/10 Story: 6/10

Completion:

Going in I had to make a note of missable talk topics. Then once I beat the game for the first time I realized I had to get all the grathnodes, cards, talk topics, and full cosmosphere.

Grathnodes are pretty easy. There’s a merchant who sells a couple you don’t have who restocks every fight. I followed a money making trick and it took around 2 hours to buy them all. Cards are a bit harder, had to go to a guide for card packs(and ones I was missing that had to be found), and then I used save states combined with the money trick to get all those. Then you have to beat the game to update the clear save.

Talk Topics aren’t really hard, there’s just a few specific ones that needed to be watched as they were easy to fumble. Like Shurelia needing you to go to the top of the tower before you get the airship for two conversations that are also missed if you progress to fast in her dives. Or crafting the ocarina for Misha while she’s not in the party, which you only have two chances to do. Then some grinding for outfits and done. A special note goes to the topic for Shurelia that requires you to clear the other two first, and those two having one that requires Shurelia to be cleared first. As if two separate runs wasn’t already needed. I also want to note that in this entry in the series, there is no way to tell which topics you’ve seen. Taking a break for this game wasn’t really an option do to that.

Then of course the second run of the game to deal with the split, which honestly I barely needed to do if I wasn’t setting up ending saves. Almost all route specific content is done by the end of phase 2, if you only cared about 100% extra menu just get the bad end as soon as you get any talk topics you are missing.