Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica

"Critical Review of Ar tonelico 2. Final Analysis – Buy it."

Introduction
Ar Tonelico 2: Melody of Metafalica is one of the newest games coming from the niche game creator NIS. It was created by the company GUST, localized by NIS and played by many. How does this game fare when compared to many of its RPG brethren? While AT1 made a graceful, yet simple dive that left hardly a splash into the ocean full of RPG's, AT2 performs a cannon ball that is so ungraceful and large that it slightly gets noticed.

Graphics
To begin with, we will analyze the most obvious trait of the game, the Graphics. The presentation is 2D sprites plastered over almost pastel like backgrounds. To say this game is colorful is an understatement because all the areas and sprites radiate with bright colors that seem to merge together into a delightful mosaic. While the sprites are low res and sub-par as far as today's standards are, it does give the game a nice old school feel and an atmosphere of intrigue most 3D RPGs are unable to obtain. The sprites consist of two distinct styles, the world map sprites which are dull at least and fell choppy in places and the battle sprites which look really nice even though some have awkward animation loops, some of the Reyvatail sprites. Overall, the sprites look nice, have an old school feeling, but are definitely dated, which is not always necessarily a bad thing.

The backgrounds, while colorful, range from being primarily painted images with some 2D overlap to give the feeling of 3D, which is primarily in the towns and 3D like cube areas where the graphics are not as nice, which consist of many 2D objects like plants placed about to mimic 3D. The contrast is mostly unnoticeable, so the slight change allows for a fresh feeling when moving from dungeon to town. While most of the towns look great, some do suffer from the fact that they are painted. The very first town piece that can be entered in the game, The Waterfall District, shows this. There is a buggy sitting on the side that the main character, Croix, can stand on. These slight mishaps defeat some of the realism. Luckily not all the areas suffer from this small problem. For the Dungeons, they look mostly like all old GUST dungeons, with many blocks and a square like feeling. To complement the dungeon style, this game as a very low camera. At first it will take some time getting used to the camera style because of its odd position. It hurts the eyes, even though the actual graphics are nice to look at, and can cause minor annoyance. After a short while of play, it is easier to deal with, but it was an annoying problem.

The large character portraits look beautiful, with many being well drawn. This is good because you end up staring at them and their heads for most of the game. This will be covered slightly later though. The only problem is that most of the images are just the same posing with a different face applied to the top. While simple and gets the point across, it does make some of the characters feel stiff and lifeless, which is compounded a little later with the characters personality. They skillfully avoid complete disaster by using sprite action to fill in the missing “umph” needed, but that only goes so far.

Overall, the graphics are what one expects from a GUST game. Enemies, backgrounds, and animations are reused, but overall the graphics remain solid. Because it is a niche title catered to the 2D market, it is fine, but it really needs to be updated. It would be hard to recommend this to anyone based on graphics alone, but other features gives this game some merits for 3D RPG fans to give it a try. Graphics is given a 6. The overall presentation is nice and colorful, but has trouble in dungeons and for being primarily outmodish. While Graphics do play an important part to an experience, the gameplay and specifically the story is what is most important to an RPG like this.

Gamplay
The Gameplay is split up into multiple parts, the dungeon crawling, the town hopping (etc.) and the battle screens. First, the dungeon crawling. As stated above, the camera is annoying. Besides that, this mechanic is like every other RPG, but unlike most GUST RPGs, they removed one feature, while pointless and not very useful, which gave these games a drive to move further even if it was a part of the game that was slow. They removed the ability to jump. Not a big deal, but it was always a nice addition. As the player runs through dungeons, random battles are encountered. What is nice about this is that while the battles are random, which can be very annoying at times, they have a gauge that depletes after each fight. Get in enough fights, and all random encounters are turned off. This helps eliminate some of the tedium created from the random battle system. As the game moves forward, this gauge becomes slightly useless because the gauge ends up depleting so little each fight that it could be considered almost non-existent.

In contrast to this, the town hopping and town events are mostly of typical fair also. This part of gameplay consists of diving in the Reyvatail's and learning new Song magic, having the Reyvatail's dive with each other, curing IPD's using the dive system, Synthesis and bathing. The two forms of Dive are mainly story events that allow you to gain more song magic (cast bigger and stronger magic.) The IPD curing is done in the same dive shop as the Reyvatail's dive event, but instead is performed on the many IPDs that can be defeated in battle. Curing them allows for them to be equipped to any of the playable characters, giving differing stat boosts. Fulfilling requirements causes the girls to join something called the cloche fan-club, which is related to Cloches special skill covered in the battle section of the review.

The Synthesis is like all the other GUST games and AT1. The player takes items; puts them in the magical game blender and out pops a new item, which is usually accompanied by a lot of test. All the above events are heavily text driven, which can really slow down the gameplay. The bathing part is where the girls are put in a tube and the player watches them swim around (sounds kinky does it?). The girls can swim by crystals that are placed in the waters by the player and the girls can level them. (That is right; they level up differently from other characters.)

Instead of being a wide world map, it is menu driven, but the player never spends much time there. AT1 was similar, and had a nicer over-world menu, but this one gets the job done fine.

The last part of gameplay is the battle system. This system is sort of unique in its own right, and has a hit and miss attitude. The Battles consist of two distinct phases, Attack and Defend. Which you enter first depends on level compared to your enemies and also has a random effect added to it, Before the first phase (which ever it is) happens, the player has the option to choose a song magic to begin charging.

In the “Attack phase”, the player controls the two front attackers with the X and Square button. The player can choose from three varying attack styles that help build up the Reyvatail song gauge in battle, but overall it is just hit the button as fast as possible. Later, when moves power up, a wait time is added to build up stronger attacks, which adds a nice element of strategy to the overall system. The Reyvatail just sits in the back and sings. That is all they are good for. There actions are mainly controled with the circle button. Press it to fire their song magic and to bring up the menu to select different songs. If a song is used, there is a wait time to use it again, and songs are powered up the more phases the magic sits through before it is used.

Each front man can perform up to 4 different actions which affect the Reyvatail in some way and level up different attributes of the Reyvatails. Up attack will level up your special moves and allow Cloche to use Replekia, Forward gives a boost to the magic gauge, down syncs the Reyvatails (which can give special magics and a longer attack time if they get completely synced) and back gives the Reyvatails some MP. A little dot will appear while you mash buttons. Light it up with specific attacks being performed to level up the song magic.

In the “Defense phase”, the two main attackers guard the Reyvatail they are paired with from the select menu. The player has to hit the button corresponding to the character that is being attacked when the right moment occurs (the little bar hits the red zone in the attack time gauge) to block damage. The closer to the red zone, the less damage will be taken. Miss it and the characters will die easily. This two phase system is okay, but suffers problems.

The last part of the battle system is the Triangle menu (which can only be used in the attack phase.) You select items from here, and can select a special attack Cloche can only use called Replekia . This is a special attack that is based on the IPDs you have join the cloche Fan-club. It basically increases the song magic being used (only attack magic by the way) to allow for more damage. The more IPD's in the club, the stronger the magic boost. (I think I covered everything there is a lot when you think about it, but most have the same functions that have been seen before.)

One major problem for the attack phase is the simplicity. It really is just hit the button and can get rather boring after a long play session. You can spice it up with the different attacks, but in the end you find yourself repeating the exact same pattern. Most battles play the same, and at later levels, they really become redundant. The main problem with the defend phase is the block feature. Certain enemies cause messages to appear in tiny letters on the screen or cause the entire screen to brighten up and shake. These distractions make it really hard to time the next block, causing you to lose a lot of health or even die because the game was forcing your attention away from blocking.

Besides those grips, it is an interesting blend that can stand, but not really run. It is a great proto-type for the next battle system, but these problems slightly hold it back. Because it does get rather dull, have major issues with the defense phase (The fact that the text and certain attacks latterly distract you from defending.) and the characters are rather similar (They have different charge attacks, but using Croix and Cocona is really no different from using one of the other pairs in the game) drag this system down. The system is unique though, and is well worth the try. I would give this battle system a 7/10.

Sound
Now onto the sound. The music has a very melodic blend to it that helps give many of the areas a distinct vibe. Most of the music is very well done and is well placed throughout the game. The hymns are nice to listen to (but not as good as the first ones) and really liven up the game. One major problem with the music is that it blends together to the point that most is not very memorable. There are plenty of good pieces, nothing really good except for a few songs that are memorable. Even the hymns, the songs that game are about fall short because of harmony issues. While they have nice rhythm, the songs feel disjointed when compared to the first one and they take a very long time to grow on you (but once they do, they are not too bad. They can be quite enjoyable.) As for the voices, they are not very good. Like most dubs (and even the original Japanese), the voices are portrayed poorly, lack quality and can grind at your brain. Best to turn them off. Overall, sound is alright. A 7/10

Story
Now onto the most critical part of an RPG, the story. It is... Bad. The characters are unlikable for most of the game, the plot is as predictable as a bull staring at a red cape and the writing was poorly written, translated and executed. Besides maybe one of the characters, none were well written. They come off as bland and annoying most of the time. Even later in the game when the writing slightly improved, you will have already given up on them. This does not mean there is no depth to the characters. The game desperately tries to establish that. It just falls short. (For crying out loud, the side characters were more interesting than the main cast.) Croix is written like every anime character, and most of the other cast falls into their respective arch-type (with the necessary little twist to give the felling of being fresh, but not being really fresh).

As for the plot, not much to be said except it has its typical elements with the same cliches I have seen in other places. The game tries so hard to establish a balance and a shade of gray type story, but it completely falls flat because of the art (look at the character and you can practically tell his role) and the fact that the amount of text to get there drains you of all caring.

The story starts something like this. The main character Croix is fighting off a plague of IPD's (which are crazy Reyvatails.) He and his sister, Cocona, are also getting ready for Luca, his childhood friend to come visit. While preparing, he gets sent on a mission to save the Holy Maiden cloche. From there, you should see where this is going. While not entirely predictable, it becomes very apparent after your group makes it to Luca's home where the story will go from there. In fact, not much surprised me as I was playing the game. Maybe one or two things, but I saw most, if not, all of it coming.

As you might have read every where else, this game has a lot of innuendos that were littered throughout. It reeks of giving a sense that the company felt it would not sell without it. It was poorly done and most is obvious and in bad taste. They can have their innuendos, they just need to have more wit and hide them better. It needs to be a a-ha moment, I did not see it coming. Not a, oh look another one.

On the subject of story, this game suffers from extreme text abuse. It has so much text that it will slowly peel away the fun of the game leaving you hitting the X button as fast as possible just to get back to gameplay. Text is fine, but this game tortures you with so much that by the time you finally feel like the worst of it is gone, you end up with more. Every time you go into a shop, there is text, every time you cure an IPD, lots of text, every other area in the dungeons has a text event. The pacing suffers because of it, the story suffers because of the abundance, and the poor translation is more noticeable because of it.

Now, this series is supposed to have a lot of text in a way because of the diving feature. You dive into Reyvatail, read a lot about her and gain magic. This is fine until you realize the half the diving group is rather un-exciting and annoying. They have new infelsphere (which is mandatory) which adds a lot more text also. The stores exhibit the over text problem very well. Enter a store, talk about an item. Get item. Talk about it more. Enter the synthesis. Talk about the item half way through. Talk about the item for a long time after it was made. Just too much text.

Even with all the complaints, the story holds what most GUST games stories hold, A little infectious quality that causes you to want to play more even if you are not enjoying it. It is the way the presentation, story and characters interact that can spur some interest. I would give the story a 4/10. We have seen it before, the big decision is not that difficult and most of it gets drowned out by the large amounts of text. (oh and the characters are very unlikable.. especially Luca.)

I think I covered everything, or the four main things.

The Good
- Beautiful Graphics immerse you into a simple 2D world.
- The Battle system is a unique blend of Valkyrie Profile, Ar tonelico 1 with a touch or real time combat thrown in.
- Has the same infectious quality all GUST games have.
- Game has decent length. About 40 hours with just a run through and about 52 getting everything possible one run through will give you.
- Has replay-ability if you can get into the story (because of the 4 endings and differing path.)

The Bad
-The dialogue in this game is littered with typos and problems. Even ignoring that, the script is not that spectacular.
-The story is definitely a hit-or-miss for many. While there is some charm to be had, it is buried beneath to much text, aggravation and typos. It also suffered from to much innuendo placed within the dialogue, causing the game to come off as tacky instead of witty.
-Most of the main characters are unlikable until later in the game. It takes so long to actually get invested that you missed 2/5's of the game.
-The Camera can be a problem, but can be overcome.
-As stated above, there is too much text with the pacing being awkward. This causes the game to be uninteresting and appear slow even though the story is supposed to be picking up.
-While the battle system is interesting, it has hit and miss moments. Being able to block is a plus, but the fact that text, animations and even just faintly not paying attention can cause the flow of battle to change too drastically.

Final thoughts
Overall, the game comes off as a disappointment. While showing much potential in many areas, the aggravation to get to the pay off will leave you emotionally deprived. This was a decent try at trying something different with the 2D RPG genre, but the innovations fail because of the many little things that drag the innovations down.

For recommendation, should you buy it? Considering all the typos, half the language tracks being missing, the game breaking glitch, the failure of a story, lack of pacing, the obvious innuendo jokes and un-interesting characters, yes you should buy it.

Being a review, you are looking to purchase a game based on my opinions. You will make you own decision eventually. For all its faults, this game still has the old school charm. It is definitely a game for 2D fans, but I find it hard to recommend to anyone else. The battle system would be a good reason though, being the blend that it is. If only the plot was better. Still buy it though.

Final Scores
Graphics: 6/10
Gamplay: 7/10
Sound: 7/10
Story: 4/10

Final Score : 6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/11/09, Updated 03/16/09

Game Release: Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica (US, 01/20/09)