"Nothing special. Move along people."

Ar Tonelico is a game which made waves in Japan. But really, it shouldn't have. The game is extremely rife with cookie cutter RPG cliches as well as boring anime cliches, with nothing whatsoever to make it stand out aside from one aspect that is poorly implemented.

The graphics are lousy. They're typical 2-D graphics applied onto a 3-D isometric prism and unfortunately the 2-D graphics do nothing to stand out with typical anime sprites and boring backgrounds. The effects of movement such as a gate opening or other things of that nature are very poorly animated, almost as if it was a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. There are some anime stills that are beautiful but they're not counted simply because they're not in the major portions of the game and they were slapped onto the game and don't really show any abilities of the PlayStation 2's ability to render beautiful 2-D graphics. There will be your occasional anime cutscene but these are short as well as very poorly animated.

The music is odd. Some of the music is really good, after all this came from the composers of the Atelier Iris series, but for some reason there's also a lot of uninspired tracks that don't evoke any emotion whatsoever. Being a game that appeals to the niche otaku market, there are tons of Japanese vocal tracks, a lot of which sound like jibberish, some that are just poorly made, and others that are really good but rarely appear in the game at all. What the hell Gust?

The gameplay is boring. The world map and town exploration revolves of boring menus, the battle system is your standard turn based combat with the only twist being that your magic users can sing and constantly power up their spells to devastate enemies with ludicrous amounts of damage, usually the reward being rare items. Of course with that last comment the rare items aren't so rare anymore when the methodology to acquire said items is available to you every battle. There's an item creation system, a boring system that lets you power up your items with crystals attached to them, really, you've seen this all before. No twists are added whatsoever so this is pretty much just like any other RPG. Oh and the final nail in the coffin is that this game is ludicrously, absurdly short.

The only real unique twist to the game is the Cosmosphere system which throws this game into the dating sim category. The Cosmosphere system is where you can explore the minds of the girls that are attracted to the protagonist, Lyner, and honestly it's a lot more interesting than the main game because seeing the inner psyches of the girls and watching them grow more attached to Lyner is actually pretty interesting. In fact, the Cosmosphere is more interesting than the main game itself!

The story is bland. You play as Lyner, whose home is being attacked by monsters, and you escape to find a way to destroy said monsters. Along the way, there's an evil deity being resurrected, and the story is populated with bland RPG cliches; shy, submissive spellcaster, mysterious rogue, fun loving girl, etc. The characterizations are just...really off sometimes. Lyner will come off as being determined in a serious cutscene and then in the next really important boss battle he'll call himself a fool for no reason. And Lyner himself is appointed leader halfway through the game for no reason whatsoever. The game gets a lot dumber in its characterizations with some of the characters spouting off nonsense at the most random of times. This nonsense is supposed to be funny, but fails utterly and is the equivalent of the early South Park episodes that relied on constant swear words in order to be funny.

Oh and be prepared for lots of dumb running gags. For example, the game loves to show that LYNER IS STUPID, over and over again, and it's just not funny and comes up at the most random and inopportune of moments. Same with AURICA IS SHY, and JACK IS HORNY. It's really immature, in addition to when the game cracks out all the sexual innuendo that has no purpose whatsoever. The only twist to the storyline is that you can pair Lyner up with three different girls, hence where you go into their Cosmosphere to resolve their issues and grow more attached to them. Problem is the development in and out of the optional Cosmosphere system with the girls is totally ignored by the main storyline and while you can go into the Cosmosphere and turn Aurica into a bold, confident young woman, in the main storyline she'll still be as spineless and as shy as ever.

Really I can't recommend this game at all. It has nothing new to offer save the Cosmosphere system and even then that's poorly implemented. A lot of anime fanboys will buy this just because there's anime in it but really, those of you who are looking for a genuinely good game, look elsewhere.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 05/07/07