[Locked] Velvet House

Mmm, you got that right.

It is bit annoying if you buy the game from the middle of tight-knit series, and you have no idea what's going on. So I guess it comes down to balance of "how much of stuff linking to past game we can squeeze in, without making it too confusing on the newcomers".

Starting out with a new world is quite common, especially since it allows for both old plot-lines to be carried out as a nod to fanbase, while telling an all-knew storyline.

But honestly speaking, I find it pretty funny how they make At3 a game that doesnt need its prequel to be played. I mean, speaking from the POV of a guy that knows his At, At3 is a total lol as a game. it doesnt have much characterization, the heroines past etc is almost as if all those are mere excuses for the Planet's Will thing, and due to the crapload of personas (the said Wills) involved, we hardly got to see any real development at all. The events obvious, the social structure is, although precise and specific, very shallow.

All in all I must say I'm pretty disappointed. The only things that retain their definite Ar tonelico feel are the AHPP story (Ar Ciel; Heal the Planet Project) and the hymns, which is as a whole, much better than its prequels.

I see, I see.

Sounds like a shame, but then again, I don't know my Ar Tonelico that good.

Though the RPG series I played so far were better with sequeling (though not always). Mass Effect 2 is probably the best example - the characters that carry over get quite a bit of development between two games, and new ones gain it to over the game (or at very least their backstories get fleshed-out). The choices from last game make quite a bit of nice differences (although only two or three make galactic-scale differences), and now the new decisions carry more weight, since if you screw up, everyone, including Commander Shepard (protagonist) can die in final battle. It's not like everything's seamless, but it was a vast better then ME1. Well, it can be argued that storytelling wasn't as much improved, as it kept predecessors level.

Well, to do it some justice, Ar tonelico 3 is by no means a bad game. It's just that you know, I started the whole Ar tonelico dealie with At2. And there was a lot of WTF moments. I even remember how I totally hated the art back then, and even more clearly how I loathed Luca, the girl in my av now. But when I replayed it, I experienced the scene again while knowing what would follow, somehow I understand it more and more. The part of her and others that I used to hate (and what made me slap the horrible but somewhat enjoyable game label) got explained, or rather, it was explained clearly but I took too long to notice. So by my 4th playthrough I totally love this game, it's the one rare thing I can proudly declare I'm a fanboy of.

Then I played At1. The experience was somewhat underwhelming except for certain parts like EXEC_CHRONICLE=KEY/. I didn't like it so much, but I still smiled anyway cuz it got the whole "oh well it's the prequel and I totally saw how they improved in the next installment" feel to it.

And I decided to buy a PS3 solely for this game. Since no TV in my house can be plugged to it, I gotta buy I new TV as well. And just to make my expectation bigger, the hymmnos albums were released way back, I've listened to them countless times, they were all crazy beautiful. The top songs aside, the less than prominent ones are also very good, both in music and lyrics. And from my experience with At2 and At1... grand hymns must be accompanied with grand meaning as well. Grand scenes. Grand emotions. The kind of set ups that don't lose in any way to the music and lyrics of the song itself. EXEC_VIENA/. is a perfect example of it for At2, and EXEC_CHRONICLE=KEY/. is for At1. So... just imagine how big my expectation is when I was about to play At3. I expected a whole ton of improvement from the masterpiece called At2. I was so curious what kind of sublime emotions I'll feel as I think about the events leading to and the emotions of the characters as EXEC_FLIP_ARPHAGE/. and EXEC_FLIP_FUSIONSPHERE/. are sung. So... can't exactly blame me for being very disappointed when everything turned out mediocre except the songs themselves...

I can understand, getting all pumped out for what you would think is an utter masterpiece and the find it only "decent" (or worse) always leaves that kind of bitter feeling.

In the end, eve developers are humans, and can screw-up. Not that it helps fans feelings or anything.

That's true Room, so true. But I do write sometimes, and I definitely get that "this shit aint gonna get into my works!" feeling more often than not. So I really don't get why would Tsuchiya Akira allow things like anime stereotype heroines, moe/ecchi fanservice in his games... when that's exactly the thing that he ditched in At2 and that's why it's the masterpiece it is!

Seriously the only things At2 need are proper translation (fuck you NISA), NG+ feature and hard mode. Nothing else, you don't fuck with a gem lest it turn bad.

What's with this boring biased discussion....

meruru!!! hello ;).

onee-sama~~ hi hi, how are you?

Oh hello~ hi hi you two~

I've been fine thank you~ though my leg is kinda hurt...

leg? whats wrong? you should take some rest for that leg =P

oh? awww anything I can do to help?

No no it's fine~ I can still walk around anyway~

ah ok then, what are you going to do today onee-sama? more gaming?

Why hurt?

It seems that I kinda strained it while jogging just now....



@Lookie
I don't know yet~ probably will until I beat the game~

D: massage it...

Never done any massage before....

Not really hard to do, just find where it hurts, and then rub, squeeze and kneed the area, not sure if it helps but circular motions seems to help a bit too when giving a massage. Try that and hopefully it should help with a bit of the pain.

I see... But I don't find that helping at all..