Ar tonelico: Was yea ra chs hymmnos mea

"Punching someone while singing sounds villany."

THAT'S RIGHT, MAY THAT BE A LESSON TO YOU.

Down with another game it seems... being unemployed, it's fabulous isn't it? (no, it actually isn't! it shouldn't even be a laughing matter ;___;)

Ok to start, I decided to tackle this game out of blue because I realized that even though I love the Ar tonelico hymme soundtracks to death, I didn't actually play the actual game. I wouldn't be much of a fan if I didn't play the game that the tracks were originally made for. I even named my psn/gamertag/steam after an Ar tonelico counterpart cuz the song IS JUST THAT AWESOME (EXEC_HYMME_MOISKYRIE/. btw - pronounced moi-s kyrie)... but anyway, onto the game~

Story 3.5/5
The game's has three arcs (aka. phases) and there's a chance for you to "finish" the game at the end of any of those three arcs. Knowing there were multiple endings, I decided to tackle them all! In retrospect though, I didn't find it was quite worth it to go through the same multiple times to get/see all the endings. On top of the three arcs, there were two paths which focused on different girls depending on which path you chose to take. The differences between the two paths were rather minuscule imho but it determined which girl you ended up with at the end.

Here's a world that lived humans and highly advanced artificial female beings called Reyvateil who sang song magic which drew power from the Ar Tonelico tower. Peace at the time was disrupted by the emergence of "Viruses" which intruded into the tower system itself and caused the AI in the tower to go haywire and go against the humans. Mr. Hero was then dispatched out to the lower world outside the tower to find the crystal that can suppress the virus.

The main story was pretty interesting, plus the side stories were quite amusing. HOWEVER! The translator. WHY. The translation and editing job was disgusting. It really ruined the flow of the story and conversations... I swear they must've translated it all without the proper context which was why speech was inconsistent with a LOT of poorly chosen wording. It was worse when the Japanese dialog did not match the English text that was displayed. The script had so much potential for humor and seriousness but... it was far too broken to be saved.

Characters 3/5
The hero, Lyner, was played by a newbie voice actor. His acting skills - I mean, lack thereof - lacked the right emotion and realism I hoped for. That reflected on the character itself... not to mention, even after choosing a definitive path to take in the story and like that girl more (or enough) to end up with her at the end of the game, the lines given to him made it seem like he didn't really have THAT much care as to which girl to pick. And! [spoiler]I thought there was a huge story/reason behind his loss of memory but in reality HE JUST HAS A REALLY BAD MEMORY! HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN?! Misha's path was so disappointing...[/spoiler] He's a flirt and doesn't remember who he's flirted with! What scum!

Aurica's personality was a bit boring, except the fact that she's really bad at naming things and has a weird taste in synthesis items (a bbq meat soda drink?). [spoiler]The fact that she was suddenly revealed as a descendant of one of the first Origin Reyvateils is kinda wtf.[/spoiler] Misha and her background was a bit more interesting even though I don't particularly like Nogawa Sakura. :b Shurelia's neat and cute.

I liked Jack at first. Then I stopped liking him. KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY MISHA! I CHOSE HER PATH, SHE'S MINE SO F OFF! Radolf is too pure to be real. Ayatane is so obvious but he's cool. Kruche's useful for her capsule tablets ;b...

Graphics 3/5
The art portraits of the characters were gorgeous... until you get badly animated butt ugly purple dragons casting your spells. It felt like low budget part has finally come into play. I'd rather have 2 frame pixel art animation, then it'd at least blend in with the rest of the pixel world.

Reused pixel people were a bit meh especially the obvious hooded mustache man who owns an inn in firefly alley, flirts with girls (and gets beat up by the hero) at nemo, sells funbuns at platina, and is a merchant at kululu village. The guy's up to something I tell you.

There was this one (and only) animated scene (not including the intro) that occured in the middle of the game... awkward placement considering there weren't any other animated scenes ever again. I was forced to listen to the English voiceover during the scene too! How cruel!

Sound 6/5
Sorry I cheated. The MUSIC was indeed awesome but the other parts were not so lovely. Voices: the Japanese track was included, but sadly only parts of it made it. Actually I forgot to check if the English track was full voiced... but the English dialog is so nasty, I wouldn't wanna hear them say "Uh oh!" and "Oh no!" anyways. There were a few glitchy moments where voiced dialogs would lose a line or two and some voices were cut half way.

As I mentioned, the MUSIC was the awesome, mainly the hymmes. The game had a Dolby Digital sound option which I wasn't able to take advantage of considering my, uh, stereo TV. I'm not sure if it's related, but when the hymme songs were played, any vocalized dialog would get drowned by the song (I kept it on stereo setting!). SO! In reality, sound should be 4.5/5.

Gameplay 3.5/5
I enjoyed the battle system but my main complaint is the SLOWNESS. On top of the slow response time, LAG! and jitters the game had during battle, battles almost felt too tedious at times. The whole HP consumption to use special moves was a bit of an annoying concept at first, but I got used to it when I got my hands on some auto hp regen stuff. The idea of making you lengthen your battle just so you can get more better items was a bit tiring but I persisted my way through to ensure I always got FULL DROPS.

The city selection map was amusing. It reminded me of my orztown project. However with the lack of traveling from point to point (instead of selecting the area to get there) made the world feel a lot smaller than it was. Well I can't say that's all bad though... less world map traveling the better sometimes yeah?

So the selling point of this game is the dating aspect a la eroge style but, eh, not so much. You can get all friendly with all the girls if you want, but it wouldn't get you the ending you want without following the proper path during the right moment in the game. So every time you rested at a rest spot or at an inn, you or the girl would come to you or go to their room and you'd just talk the night away. Conversation topics had to be unlocked by reaching certain criteria (some are automatically given to you, others took more work if you cared to complete the topic chart). Filling the chart nets you the ability to mind dive into their conscious, find out more about them and then usually followed with a new costume and some spells. I must say, the simulation adventure game (that totally copied Key's Air lol) in a particular dive was an amusing extra.

Ok now sexual innuendos. Lots of them. In the "dives" aspect, makes the girls "vulnerable" and completely "exposed". Then there's the "install" aspect. YES the guy INSTALLS INTO THE GIRL! That is, installing crystals that boost up their spells. The guy has to take responsibility for installing into the girl... or so a particular Reyvateil said. And apparently installing hurts. And installing deep is possible too. Installing means to trust the person who installs into them... so not anyone can install, of course.

Ok, enough of that!

Overall 3.5/5
An innovative battle system for a great story and amusing activities. A serious localization failure but the music was ultimate. If only they put more effort into cleaning out the little buggies and small annoying irritations here and there, I think the game would get more and better feedback from people. I think I'll take a break from AT in general, as much as I think Croix looks awesomely cool in AT2... he'll have to wait.

For the record: I did mainly two playthroughs and clocked in about 35 and 30 hours for each. 7/7 endings viewed. I did -not- choose Aurica for my first playthrough save (Aurica's path) and I chose Misha for my 2nd playthrough save (Misha's path).