Breaking apart Ar Tonelico

Today I would like to seriously dive into one of my favourite franchises of all time. No really I say this a lot but this game has my heart.Ar Tonelico: the Melody of Elemia, is a wonderfully constructed game, everything from its music, art assets, combat system and dialogue systems merge together absolutely seamlessly to create an experience quite unlike any other. It is for this reason I think Ar Tonelico is the perfect game to break up into atoms and observe what makes it so outstanding.  Not only do I think Ar Tonelico delivered perfectly on each game atom but it went beyond this and integrated them so well into one experience you instantly forget you are playing a game. Because of this game I will never turn my nose at sprite based graphics again.

• AvatarsAr Tonelico has a very amazing system for interacting with all the different players. Essentially you play as Lyner Barsett for most of the game, and your interactions with the other non player characters are what drive this amazingly atmospheric and musical adventure.Reyveteils are an ancient female humanoid race genetically engineered to communicate with the Tower of Ar Tonelico. They do this by singing in  the Hymmnos language (oh yeah did I mention this game has a fully functional language that was designed for the purpose of singing?) which is meant to replace an ancient language the inhabitants used to communicate with the Goddess. this language is extremely complex and very well thought out, but its main purpose is for granting magical powers to reyveteils who communicate to the tower by singing in it. For the first parts of the game, Lyner is accompanied by the Reyvateils Aurica and Misha, who stand at the back of the line during battles to charge up their song magic.Unlike most games where you just have to level grind to power up your attacks, Ar Tonelico requires you to initiate in a Dive with the Reyvateil and enter her soul space. During these sequences you interact with the Reyvateil, and the personifications of her deepest  hidden flaws, and darkest secrets.  You really need to earn the trust of a Reyvateil for her to allow you to dive into her, which is achieved by simply talking to them while you are at an inn. The dive scenarios can be a little more like a Visual Novel, and are very story / narrative driven, however these sequences are usually very emotionally demanding and are not afraid to shy away from serious subjects. They demand you to go out of your way to get things for the Reyvateil and you actually feel bad when she scolds you for letting an attack hit her in battle. The character interactions in this game are really brought to life by the invested feeling you have towards the Reyvateils but this is just one aspect of the game that makes it amazing.
  • Resourcesagain, the development team absolutely NAILED this game atom. with a simple synthesis system known as Grathmelding. Grathmelding is a mechanic derived from the Alchemy systems the same developers used for their Atelier series. except Ar Tonelico didn't fully center the game around this mechanic, it was just there and damn was it cool. Through out the different areas of the game you will be collecting items left right and center. Grathmelding essentially allows you to take these items and use them as base compounds and alloys and synthesize them into almost anything; including weapons, armor,  health potions and even more ingredients. A lot of times you find you have an inventory full of absolutely useless items like a metal rod and seasoning salt but I found myself going out of my way just to find some of these ingredients so I could become stronger. Grathmelding also gives you an opportunity to spend time with Reyvateils who usually try to pick a name for the item you are making, (but Lyners names always sound cooler).Another important part of grathmelding is the use of Grathnode Crystals. These add Stat bonus's to your item depending on what the item is used for. There are different types of Grathnode crystals and 4 different levels, and if you use them correctly you will definitely notice a difference.other notable collectables are a trading card game, (which just allows for more cool interactions) and talk topics which gives you an excuse to talk to your Reyvateils at the inns and earn their trust.
  • GoalsAr Tonelico has such a gigantic story that you can have up to several different goals at one time without even the slightest bit of conflict. Sometimes you are tasked with finding the ingredients to grathmeld a teddy bear to make a reyvateil feel better about something that happened in her soul space, there is a whole story line following a Reyvateil who must sing for the rest of her life in order to protect the world from the virus. you are put into rescue and escape scenarios, there were rush to the goal scenarios. I know one of my main goals was getting to the highest Dive level with my Reyvateil so I could use  what is considered the most Dangerous weapon in Ar Ciel(the world)the song known as METHOD_METAFALICA/ a patch for the original EXEC_METAFALICA/ which had such high flow and spectrum requirements that it killed any Reyvateil who ended up trying to sing it.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Thrl3fFGgdE(the lore for this game is actually so breath taking, I only wish I could get into half of it here but I will just tell you it is one hell of a story with one HELL of a sound track)
  • MechanicsI know it seems like this game may have everything, and it may seem for a second that its reign comes to an end when I say the words "turn based" but hold on to your hats for just a second. This was the highest action turn based experience I have ever played, and with all the crazy upgrades I was getting with grathmelding and Reyveteil diving, I could not help but to jump head first into as many battles as I could.at first glance the battle system is so confusing and the learning curve is pretty heavy. But the large amount of dynamics makes for an interesting experience, lets start with the out of battle experiencesthis is what it looks like outside on the map, to the top left you have elemental blasts, toggling between them doesn't really make a difference, they are mainly used to break down doors or activate triggers.the bottom right is the enemy gauge, it will start flashing red when you are approaching an enemy and when the gauge is depleted it means there are no more enemies left on the map.here is what it looks like inside a cosmosphere Dive points at the top right are collected by using powerful song magic in battle. but be careful, each location in the cosmosphere will cost a certain amount of DP.Finally we get to the battle, if you are to lazy to scroll back up to the first image I provided here. (cuase there is aLOT to take in)
  • the first thing to point out is that you can choose to attack defend or use a special attack depending on your circumstance. at any given time you may activate a song magic by pressing triangle.so lets look at some of these bars. the first one is to the right of the Reyvateil and that is her Burst variation. every time that bar fills to the top her song magic levels up and becomes more powerful. Although it can take a while and is only worth it on harder enemies, level 4 attacks are always very cool and powerful.the bar at the bottom is your harmonics meter. this will go up based on the reyvateils harmonics speed(the pink side ) and your success in attacking an enemy (blue side)when the harmonics bars merge in the center, you will unlock special attacks from Lyner and the other vangaurd (Vangaurd protect the reyvateil)the oscillating bar is your harmonics speed(pink bar in battle), and the curve above it is your burst variation(right of the revy in battle). you will notice 4 cartesian lines, the slope at which represents the speed of your burst variation at that level in the song magic.this changes depending on what costumes the Reyvateil wears which are unlocked by successfully completing a level in the Cosmosphere.finally the GD-resist helps slow down your MP consumption, the higher this is the better.
  • Game States and InformationAt all times in Ar Tonelico you are contributing towards a different ending. the game recognizes which Reyvateil you have been paying more attention to and certain in game cut scenes force you to choose a side. There are several different endings that you can recieve at least one for each reyvateil as well as a true ending and a bad ending. all of your decisions will effect this outcome but it is best not to try to let this ware you down because there is so much enjoyment out of just charging on through at your own pace. Also the Games difficulty will ramp up suddenly at a few points during the game. this is so you don't ignore the many wonderful systems to increase your attack power such as grathmelding, Diving into reyvateils and implanting grathnode crystals into them. Once you have fresh equipment for all your party and new high level song magic the game won't seem as difficult.
  • ThemeThis is a big one. there is so much to Ar Tonelico it is very difficult to pinpoint one specific theme. Not only are you emotionally invested in your Reyvateil partner (personally I was torn when we had to split up and I could only go with one) but the entire worlds aesthetics were enough to make me put the controller down and look at the beautiful 2D art work and listen to the music.Music is definitely a big part of this game. The Gust Sound Team are one of my biggest inspirations when it comes to music composition and you can really tell the passion they put into making the music of Ar Tonelico come to life in more than just a back track, but as an actual core mechanic of the game.Another big part of the game was the way other humans treated Reyvateils. Particularly a military group known as Tenba are notorious for treating their Reyvateils very poorly despite the fact that they needed to be treated properly in order for you to use them at their full potential. The game tried to make it very clear that Reyvateils had emotions and weren't just tools for the use in battle. In later installments there is even a reversal of power where Reyvatiels are trying to wipe out Humans as the inferior race.