Ar Tonelico 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.

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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?

EXEC_FLIP_FUSIONSPHERE/.

And yes, I agree on the part that purge isn't pure fanservice. Still, seeing how they managed to come up with such a beautiful story, I can't dismiss the thought that surely they could've came up with something different to fully utilize PS3 capabilities...

As for the localization, bleh, it's shitty to the point I'd rather not think about it. If they MUST change Cocona's age, they should've at least change the other numbers too. Changing only her age messes with the continuity. So she's aged 5 years but the event is 2 years after the previous game? Wtf!?

For names. Salapator -> Salapatra, justification please. Alfage... the credit explicitly states it's Arphage goddammit. Riversia Protocol... credits, and wtf everything about the song screams rebirth. The stupidity is beyond wrong kana reading AND laziness to check the credits. Wanna go more into this? We have a thread dedicated to it. Feel free to add to the list if you find more.
http://artonelico.isisview.org/viewtopic.php?f=144&t=2893

@Quad: I like the battle system actually. Especially in hard mode, things are quite challenging. But I wonder why the burst is limited to 1000000% now.

Alright, just finished it here. Took me some time but was kinda busy.

Anyways, Finnel true ending win. I'm glad the game lets you start over at phase2. I was already worried about starting the whole thing all over again. I'm not interrested in Finnel's other endings, I don't want to ruin that moment. I guess I'm gonna go for Tyria and Cocona before selling the game. Also, I wasn't affected by the english localization as Qoga was my first game of the series.

As far as the soundtrack goes, my fav goes to this one, even more than finnel's song :p.

Selling the game?! Blasphemy!

And yes Cosmoflips is awesome because 1. It really does sound great, 2. It reminds me of Ar-ru.

Ar-Ru heh, I wonder if I should buy her DLCs.


Btw, where does this song play again? I keep searching on youtube but can't find it lol.

Oh right, it's before Ar Ru's boss fight.

Finally finished the game, and... no Master of Unlocking. |:
I raged so hard...

Bleh, done Saki's routes now. Onto Tyria and Cocona~!

LOL, that trophy was irritating and it's only a bronze trophy, but I got it on my first playthrough and gotten Saki's ending.I even obtained the max money trophy, it was easy as hell. Come to think of it, I stopped play few months back after I did so. I have no motivation to platinum the game and I totally dislike the main female leads this time round.
I do like several of the personas more like Soma, if only she was bustier....

I got the game.. *Dances*

More like borrowing one for now, since my friend has to go out of town for 2 months, and he already finished one ending in 4 days...lol

Lol, if I played for the majority of 96 hours (let's say I sleep 32 hours those days, and game the rest, so 64 hours), I would've gotten almost all of the endings. In 45 hours, I got both of Saki's ends and the bad ends. Now that I can skip text and scenes, Finnel and others should only add 20 hours or so to get all of them.

Did you get all the talk topics and party talk topics?

Fucking missed one somehow, Im thinking of either restarting from a point before that (since I multi save files) or just keep going and get the missed one when I go for another route.

anti bug spray

I bought the limited edition recently and I enjoyed it. The battle system was very barebones, but I did love the idea of matching the rhythm of the song for higher damage. If they reworked the system for a possible 4th game I'd say it'd be on par with a Tales game.

The cosmospheres were really fun to dive into, and although the story was a bit bland, I enjoyed it. Phase 4 was definitely the highlight of the story though.

Ye, at some point I enjoyed diving more than playing the main game lol.

Get the DLC then!