"Get by with a little help from your friends"

From the makers of the beloved (okay, beloved by me) Atelier Iris games comes "Ar tonelico", the curiously-named JRPG which takes the usual Nippon Ichi/Gust cuteness and focuses it squarely on the concepts of music, love, and romance. Quite an unusual setup for an RPG, admittedly, and a very female-centric vibe proceeds from the first moment to the last, making tonelico a must for the Shojo Beat set and a guilty pleasure for the rest of us.

Particularly in the storyline. You begin the game as Lyner, a quintessentially blonde, sword-wielding Japanese role-playing hero, who is out to save the world from nasty monsters threatening to take over the upper areas of the giant tower in which the game takes place. In your efforts to save the planet- er, save the tower- you will meet a host of allies, enemies, and various other personage, all of whom are drawn in that typical Gust manner-- very cute, and very upbeat. The hitch in Ar tonelico is that you will be linked with your magic users in a unique way: they're all adorable young females into whose subconscious minds Lyner must delve via the "Dive System" to unlock their stronger spells (called "songs" in this musically themed game) and other hidden powers... and sexy new costumes. Trust me, it'll make sense once you get to playing it, and you'll get into a healthy rhythm of battles, subconscious diving, songs-as-magic-spells, and a whole new twist on the usually stoic and bland fight/magic/defend/item/escape battle systems you usually see. More on that in a bit.

The first thing that'll grab most younger gamers out there will be the graphics. If you're used to 3D anti aliasing/bitmapping/texture mapping/etc etc, well, you're in for a shock. Mostly done in 2D, tonelico is quite old school to look at and stays that way throughout. For those of us who enjoy 2D: hooray! For the rest of you: d'oh. (It even comes with a free BEAUTIFUL 50+ page hardcover art book, as if to rub in the noses of 2D haters.) As is unfortunately typical for Gust games, there aren't nearly enough frames of animation for... well, basically anything in this title, but at least we're treated to one of the nicer soundtracks in recent memory to cover up for the visual flaws; for once I actually used the postgame BGM player to re-listen to some of the audio gems that tornelico gave us. I know it's hard to delineate from this badly written paragraph, but Ar tonelico is a visual & musical grab bag, full of weird, odd, good, bad, and tremendous.

As I mentioned above, the battle system is essentially a mildly altered version of the basic Dragon Quest turn based system, where you fight or defend or use items, etc. The key in battle is when to let your songstress' magical spells loose on the enemy, constantly building up their power during battle (defending her in battle makes her happy, and her songs increase in strength as a result-- women can be so needy) until you feel like unleashing a blast of magical musical energies. Do it just right and you'll get tons of items after battle, useful in the game's small item creation system- nowhere near as big and bold as the Atelier games', but a fun one nonetheless. Personally, I love an RPG with item synthing in it, so Ar tonelico gets a bonus point in my review. Sue me. No, wait, don't. What I'm getting at is, with a kooky battle system, item synthing, and a weird subconsciousness "Diving" system, Ar tonelico has a lot of wackiness (and multiple endings) packed into its 50-60 hours for your gaming dollar.

And in the end, it was that wackiness that drew me in and kept me there. The story is good, the characters are memorable, the music is great, the battles are intense, and even all the myriad fruity girlish aspects ("make her a teddy bear, Lyner!") couldn't turn me away. There's just a nutty, frilly charm to Ar tonelico that made me unable to put the game down. Who wants to keep playing the same old same old, over and over again? Try Ar tonelico-- it's lovely in its uniqueness, an anomaly in this world of cookie cutter gaming reruns.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/28/07