Ar Tonelico 3

Ar Tonelico 3? Hell yeah another reason to avoid get the Ps3

I need to say this:

Whenever I dive into Saki it irked me to no end seeing that friggin' World Tree Alfage there.

What I meant, Quad, was that I can help create the personalities a given character can be assigned to. I would offer to help write more, but the story arcs are customisable by the player as I recall seeing in your post.

My reason to play this : Filament. 'Nuff said.

It's really painful and fun at the same time just reading through this T_T I've finished the previous two, and I'm really liking how they gave this a revamp. Another reason for myself to get a PS3.

I knew I should have gotten a job instead of going to graduate school T_T

I miss my Cocona!

Surprisingly, all the female characters are really charming in this game.

I'm currently in Phase 3, and just got 2 heart points with Finnel.



Same personality as a certain Misaka IMOUTO, no wonder heh.



I never played the first two so this is basically my first Ar tonelico game. Does Qoga features characters from previous games?

Yes for all I know.

Just to be safe:

Oh I see.

Well it sure was a reliever when in Qoga:

Oh... I think I see what you mean.

I was planning on letting the writer do that. There would be no preset personalities. The person creating them can give different characters different personalities as they see fit.

Though, once I get the base program done, I'll want someone to help me write a story to demo it. Maybe you can help with that?

Sounds good.

One thing I don't like. When I enable the purge vids, why don't they make it so that it plays, regardless of how I shake the controller? I can just disable it when I don't want it! DX

(Ranting because Triple Purge is already hard enough to get, and now I can't get it into the Extra because somehow my shaking is too boo it skipped the vid)

Lol, you get the Purge vids when you do it on a red beat. How you shake it doesn't matter... I think.

Honestly, after watching the purge vids for a 100 times, I still can't get enough of it.

Especially Finne's 2nd purge vid. Dat ass :x.

Orly. I need it only once, I just want to add them to the extra menu. But yeah, hard. Cleared up all single purges and first double purges. Second double purge and triple purge... ugh.

@quad: wut red beat. I never noticed D:
Thanks for making my purge vid collection much much easier... ;3

Attacking on red beats is what gives Beat Ups and lets you purge, too. o.o

I know Beat Up. Purge can be done even not on reds, just no vid.

Anyway, because I can rant.

First Ar tonelico 3 playthrough (True End path) done. Cocona ending get.

Score: 9/10

The most beautiful story I've ever seen, check. The most detailed one, check. Simply awesome, check. Very likable characters, check. Eargasmic music, check. This deserves a perfect score. However, two things I don't like...

One has to do with the game itself. I thought of it before I played it, and now I'm convinced. Purge is flat out unnecessary. The idea of becoming stronger by showing more skin is just... desperate. I can see how it appeals to hardcore otakus, but sorry, not my thing. The characters are based off anime stereotypes is okay, you pulled that off very brilliantly, but purge is flat out ridiculous. To me Ar tonelico is strictly the beauty of pure emotions conveyed in the story and hymmnos. I remembered feeling very awed when someone in youtube said while hymmnos is translatable, you don't need to read the translations to feel the message the song is trying to tell you. The heart can translate it, language is simply the tool used to deliver the details.

So to me the idea of purging isn't just unnecessary, it is somewhat demeaning too. I, as someone who fell in love with the purity of emotions told in the series, am disappointed by the decision of implementing that idea. It shadows the true beauty of Ar tonelico; the beauty of sincere feelings. Rrha yea ra chs ieeya. That is Ar tonelico-like to me, not the purge.

Second is about the localization. It's... horrible. Changing names for no reason whatsoever, bad dubbing, typos, translation that betrays the 'feel' of the character, bugs that should never make it out of QC session, plain stupidity in porting the kana readings despite obvious hints in the story AND readily available sources for the proper spelling...

And the game title. Fine, you can change Ar tonelico 3 to Ar tonelico Qoga; Knell of Ar Ciel. Qoga means end in hymmnos, and there's a possibility of Ar tonelico 3 being the end of the saga, so it's perfectly acceptable. Knell of Ar Ciel... sounds meh, but whatever. Still okay. But come on, the way you're whoring that line in-game is just ridiculous. Stupid. Childish. You just have to do shout outs to the game title that much eh? Please. Okay. maaaaybe it's acceptable if you yank with a line that roughly resembles that for shout outs... but what you did was atrocious. 'Knell of Ar Ciel' is repeated over and over, when it's freaking obvious (why not modify the japanese voice to say that too?) that the lines originally said aren't remotely similar to that shitty shout out you're doing. This is beyond mistranslation, NISA. If you're feeling that creative then don't yank with a perfected masterpiece, go write your own instead. And say what? All this is after the horrible abomination of Ar tonelico 2 localization you gave us. All this is after you promised shit won't happen again, your translator has spent time to learn hymmnos specifically for this project and such. The way I see it, you're just going "HAR HAR WE UNDERSTAND HYMMNOS NOW SUCK IT HOMIES WE'RE TINKERIN' WITH YER GAMES TROLOLLOL". Disppointment can't even begin to cover the overwhelmingly negative emotions I'm feeling towards you. I think a team of two, one with decent Japanese language skills and the other being a sincere fan of Ar tonelico would do a better job of localizing this instead of you, the professional.

---

Now, off to hunt everything else in the game. I dunno if I'll attempt the Max Money trophy though.

Didn't read all of your review since I don't wanna spoil myself (Didn't know there was a cocona ending lol)

Anyways, I agree with your 9/10. Really awesome game.

Worry not, it has no spoiler whatsoever. It was a rant.

I would go as far to say that combat in general should not have been included in this. Or at least a system more like AT1/AT2. The way it is like this, you stand around until a Red Beat, press [], repeat. Purge a bit, Flipsphere, win. Maybe use O to get an enemy away from your Reyvatail.

Then again, combat in anything other than AT1 was really easy. The only difficulty I had was taking on level 9 IPDs during Phase 3 of AT2.

Three things I agree with you:

1. Cocona = first get cause she's most awesome!
2. Ar Tonelico series has an epic story.
3. The localization is shit.

Something I don't agree with is your take on "Purging". Though it's true that the change sorts of undermines the pure emotions every girl, no, every character wants to share we should all remember that this is the team's first take on the PS3 console. They had to think of a way of using the PS3's superior technology to bait both old and new users alike to play the game, and without showing something different from the last two games, new users wouldn't bother picking it up. I also give them credit since they were able to connect 'purging' into the plot to make it look like its not just pure fanservice.

I don't believe grading based on numbers or stars gives justice to a game but I would give this a perfect 10. The story is deeply engaging because it's so easy to symphathize with the characters. The characters all have depth and they all develop as the story goes unlike some doormats and cliches other games want to feed their audience. The hymnos songs sounds awesome, feels awesome, and with special emphasis on Exec_Fusionsphere (finnel's song)- touchingly awesome! I would consider this a benchmark for all other similar JRPGs because they did most of their tasks right... that is until NISA butchered the localization.

Now just to add to the rant... Cocona is supposed to be Thirteen years old but because of someone's messed up ideals she was placed in a time capsule and forcedly aged to Sixteen years old! This is not your story you shouldn't have the right to change any numbers there. It creates a big flaw in changing her age since she was 11 years old in AT2 before it took her 2 years to reach the third tower which makes her 13. If you change her age to 16 it would imply she wasted 3 years in a coma, or did she decide to forget about her mission to practice V-boarding for 3 years while constantly thinking about Croah?