Ar Tonelico thread

Why does Misha have a drawing of sperms entering an egg on her chest?

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youtube.com/watch?v=u1GtMiKXE_E
youtube.com/watch?v=Thrl3fFGgdE
youtube.com/watch?v=nFdRhJpUKt0
youtube.com/watch?v=DbcS8kJueMQ
youtube.com/watch?v=5bavFOB3p_g
youtube.com/watch?v=8pFuGirPCLc
youtube.com/watch?v=Em1hMhL2IFs
youtube.com/watch?v=VqTK2NMmbww
youtube.com/watch?v=pHmBtQd4TC0
artonelico.wikia.com/wiki/ARM_Backup/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

It's all part of the constant sexual innuendos in the games.

That kanji in the middle means "seal".
Remind me is that where her install port is?

I know she wasn't a popular girl among the fanbase but Misha was pretty based for me. I loved her spunk.

> play Ar tonelico 2
> get invested with Cloche
> at the middle of the game they're a new Reyvatel
> loli with sad side story
> like her better but feel like cheating on Cloche
> never play the game again

Seeing how I felt like shit in a video game, this will luckily never happen to me in real life.

How does it make you feel that Ar Tonelico's artist drew the art on the right?

Cloche was the best in 2.
Misha in 1 and Finnel in 3.
Then you have the Ar no surge girls. I did love the nod to Ar tonelico in ar no surge.

But as ever the music made the game.
youtube.com/watch?v=u1GtMiKXE_E
youtube.com/watch?v=Thrl3fFGgdE
youtube.com/watch?v=nFdRhJpUKt0
Are some of my favorites.

Feels bad man, I don't dislike Ar Tonelico's art

it means she wants the sausage wizard

I somehow misplaced that one, but on the other two it's on the butt and neck.

>muh o-old style
>it's just traced photos

Wait, did the artist trace some old VN's arts?

It's the remake/remaster/resomeshitorother.

I miss ntny's art for Ciel/Ar nosurge. He's keeping busy trying to make his waifu real in VR these days though, doing the lord's work.

Why does everyone like At2 the most? I finished it recently and thought that 1 was much better.

>I know she wasn't a popular girl among the fanbase
You must be thinking of Aurica, everyone liked Misha more than her.

Makes me wonder how they went from the decent art style in Ar tonelico to that garbage. It just looks like any random low budget eroge.

Third girl is always the best.

Mir is very popular. Also, I liked the relationship between Luca and Cloche, especially if you fucked off with Mir and just let them deal with their problems as sisters.

My main complaint with AT2 was that Replekia was too strong and too easy to activate, tired of hearing it override other great music in battles.

1 Is good but 2 keeps the ball in the story department. I just found the MC of 1 to be a plank of wood. Croix was a bit better in that department. Sarcasm was his saving grace.
Fucking JURI SHITTERRS REEEEEEE!!!

...

>My main complaint with AT2 was that Replekia was too strong and too easy to activate, tired of hearing it override other great music in battles.
Well, both games suffered from being too easy. But Replekia even had that in the dev notes in the album, with Tsuchiya saying that it overpowered the music of any boss.
In any case, to flesh out my opinion a bit more, while it was nice how much more fleshed out and multi-faceted the reyvateils were this time, I found the plot itself to be rather dull, and incredibly poorly paced, in no small part thanks to all the endless shopkeeper events and the IPD bullshit (especially since I went with Jakuri and missed a talk topic so I had to grind up 80 of the fuckers to progress). It also had really severe asset and location reuse which made it feel lower budget, a problem that At1 didn't share.

>I just found the MC of 1 to be a plank of wood. Croix was a bit better in that department.
I found the two to be nearly identical. Croix is still annoyingly dense and easily flustered, he's just a little bit calmer than Lyner was. Also, At1's other party members were much more relevant, whereas in 2 Amarie only exists to develop Legalius and Cocona is a completely pointless character outside of the ending foreshadowing that she'll be in 3.

Alfman did nothing wrong.

Yea Croix was not much better in hindsight. I just think some of his sarcasm left a better impression on me. Lyner had nothing but the standard MC justice dialog.

Plus who could forget MAXXXXIMUM PENERTATION!!!!

Quite honestly, neither are that great.

you can't save her

Did you play the NISA version? I went with the retranslation and I really can't think of Croix having been sarcastic much at all. It's possible that NISA's version of Croix was quite different.

The battle system was better (loved the timing thing) and the diving was more fleshed out IIRC. Then again maybe I just preferred the waifus in 2

Oh well.

Yea I had it when it came out, still have my boxed copy. I know NISAs translation was potato teir and have got the retranslated version downloaded and on my backlog for a replay as soon as i finish Lunar 2. They must have added all his sarcastic shit to "spice him up".

>tfw you bought Ciel nosurge on launch, kept up with the every-other-month DLC chapters, and then played Ar nosurge

It's a crime how few people played the games as they were intended to be played. Not even I did, since Ar was pushed out while Ciel was still not finished (on chapter 10 out of 12) due to business nonsense.

Who thought a Vita VN/life sim prequel to a PS3 JRPG would be a good idea and smooth transition?

>been waiting for new announce from Tsuchiya for years
>it's some shitty mobage
Franchise status is the same as HL3 now.
I do prefer AT1 too. Some will disagree but AT strongest side is world building and not the plot or characters, and AT1 was more focused on world building than AT2. Also they couldn't repeat all the good plot twists such as magic being an advanced technology etc.

Some day my moon will be good enough to read Ciel.

>Who thought a Vita VN/life sim prequel to a PS3 JRPG would be a good idea and smooth transition?
You guess.

I like 2s music better.

youtube.com/watch?v=DbcS8kJueMQ
youtube.com/watch?v=5bavFOB3p_g

I honestly have trouble picking a favourite. And don't even get me started on the actual hymns and Stellatram's fanworks.

Ciel Offline isn't the same experience, and by then Ciel online's server's will be down.

You had to be with her for 2 years, feeling guilty when you didn't play for a week and turned it on to have her pout thinking that you left and she'd never see you again. Spending holidays with her, wondering what the next chapter will uncover in between the insane wait times, getting so insanely hyped when Ar was announced and wondering what the preview info meant for the remaining chapters of Ciel, etc. Such a wild ride.

I love you Tsuchiya but business/marketing is clearly not your thing.

Also I can't believe he's making an awful looking mobile game/anime tie-in. I mean, I'll still play/watch it because it's Tsuchiya, but I'm expecting the worst.

The music sure was good, but 1's was also great. I liked 1's hymnnos more; none of the songs in 2 came close to Misha's Purger.

Also Luca had the best crafting theme, hands down. Though I can't find it on the soundtrack.

youtube.com/watch?v=8pFuGirPCLc

Both soundtracks were great, yeah. 3 was also pretty good at times. Ec Tisia and Harmonics Tilia for example.

Also, the song you're looking for starts at 0:32 in this track here.
youtube.com/watch?v=Em1hMhL2IFs

So, which chucklefuck at Gust though that making AT3 the way that they did was a good idea?

The music in 2 was definitely more consistent in quality but music in 1 was better placed and gave strongest impact.
EXEC_COSMOFLIPS was literally the reason I got into to the series after watching it on youtube.

Not really: AT1's worldbuilding was poorly done in comparison to AT2 and AT3's due to its inconsistencies in the way Song Magic worked (being supposed to be intangible holograms but having Lyner touch them for example) and that it had next to no influence in the story. On the other hand, AT2's lack of land and AT3's constant conflict between Reyvateils and humans were part of the setting and actually shaped their stories.

Also, I don't think anyone expected the IPD syndrome to be caused by damaged hardware and an accumulation of negative feelings instead of just being a computer virus in 2.

Why was the third one so bad?

>play Ar Nosurge
>love it
>watch Ciel
>replay Ar Nosurge
>love it even more
I will never experience Ciel/Ar the correct way but fuck man, this is good too

I noticed the other week that while Tsuchiya was the localisation director for Ar tonelico 1 and 3, he wasn't involved with 2's western release. That's probably why it ended up such a shitshow compared to the others.

M A X I M U M C O M F Y

Why is she so bubbly?

Allow me to break this down to you then: Cocona isn't pointless because she also serves to give Croix and Cloche development and to show how the society deals with having an IPD in their family, as well as showing how a properly trained Reyvateil can actually fight in the frontlines. Similarly, Amarie and Leglius have the purpose of showing how it was to live chasing after Chester's shadow and the oppresive life style the people of Mio had for the former, and the latter is always conflicted about following his feelings or his orders from the Grand Bell until Alfman's fall, not to mention how he is always giving Croix advice.

No, he just killed a lot people, used the IPDs as lab rats to then dispose of them, made Cloche's life hell, his plan would have sunk Metafalss into the Sea of Death had Raki not intervened and at the end of it all, he just ran off to Sol Cluster to playa sky pirates

Not like 1's and 3's localizations were stellar either. That's a point in which the whole series is cursed.

Because it wasn't bad. It was a worthy conclusion to the trilogy's story.

Ultimate best girl coming through.

I love Shurelia, she is my all time favorite waifu. She is so wise and cute.

How do I know which route to pick?

Though the Purger in both versions are some of the lesser songs due to not reflecting any of the themes the game has, which makes them pale in comparison to other stuff like the opening themes, Phantasmagoria, Harmonious, Linker, Chronicle Key, Implanta, all the versions of Metafalica, Sphilia or the whole Sublimation suite.

He actually had some sarcasm during the synthesis and shop events, especially when Cynthia was involved, but he had next to nothing of that in the main story.

>Cocona isn't pointless because she also serves to give Croix and Cloche development and to show how the society deals with having an IPD in their family,
Cocona does almost nothing for Croix or Cloche. All she does for Croix is give him a moment to disregard orders to defend her, contrasting with his own actions at the very start of the game, which is about as hamfisted as character development can get. She serves no purpose for Cloche and isn't even used as the character for Luca to cure the IPD infection; that's done by some random NPC in the slums, while Cocona getting IPD is just largely ignored.
>as well as showing how a properly trained Reyvateil can actually fight in the frontlines.
Fair point, but if anything that's really just a set up for 3. Either way she pretty much disappears from the game after phase 1, having no notable events and very little dialogue from then until the end. The characters barely give a second thought to finding out she's a Reyvateil, and despite her talking early on about wanting to be useful to Croix with song magic, that topic never comes up again.
>Similarly, Amarie and Leglius...
I said Amarie was a pointless character, not Leglius. She has no character beyond "muh Chester" and "muh triggering Leglius development", and like Cocona, barely exists outside of these events. Her coming from Kanakana Pier is of very little consequence to anything, because she's such an unimportant character in general.

Alfman went with the best plan he had to save as many lives as he possibly could. You see in Cloche's Infelsphere events that he wants to support her more humane plans but tells her she needs to have realistic goals and processes first.
>and at the end of it all, he just ran off to Sol Cluster to playa sky pirates
He did come back at the last 10 minutes. But this is another example of At2 poorly handling side characters; he just falls off the face of the planet after phase 2 ends.

You decide with your dick.

Misha was such a shitty heroine that Gust themselves have confirmed already her route is non-canon.

Make space, best hymnos coming through.

youtube.com/watch?v=VqTK2NMmbww
youtube.com/watch?v=pHmBtQd4TC0

Is Ar Tonelico definitely dead because Gust only do yuri anymore or is there still hope ?

You never played AT1, did you?

It's dead because Bamco own the licence and Gust now belong to KT.

METHOD_METAFALICA > EXEC_with.METHOD_METAFALICA
EXEC_PHANTASMAGORIA > EXEC_with.METHOD_METAFALICA
COSMOFLIP is top tier.

So who the hell was Raki after all?

Ar Tonelico is Banpresto and Gust work
Banpresto now belongs to Bandai and Gust belongs to Tecmo Koei
Yeah, RIP series

It's finished.

How was Qoga btw? I want to try it, but people keep bashing it for being a tryhard tales game.

Seriously!?


But how did they get away with Shurelia in Ar no surge ?

It is pretty shit gameplay wise, but music is still elder god tier and writing is passable.

Other than gameplay it's your usual ar tonelico game.

How would you compare the story to At1 and 2?

Around the same as at1, definitely worse than at2, there are also a lot of cringe, seriously never play it with someone else around.

Cocona also serves as the first friend Cloche makes that shares her love for Gergo at the beginning of her route, and what happened with her being contained and Croix going berserk in an ultimately doomed effort to protect her isn't hamfisted, but a perfectly natural reaction to the situation. Plus, the way he beats up his own comrades to rescue her also sets up the possibility of Croix defecting to the Sacred Army in the Luca route.

Also, what about Cocona's role during Hibernation, where she was pretty much asking Croix to kill her for him to have a chance at stopping Lakra? I wouldn't say that counts as having "no notable events".

About Amarie having being of no consequence, considering she's the one who gave Soope to Luca, discovering her as the true Maiden and giving access to the Infelsphere to the party, being the first to discover Frelia, which also kickstarted the whole Hibernation sequence, and also being who informed the party that Infel Phira was being reformatted at Lakra, I can't agree with that assessment.

About Alfman, Cloche also proposed to him realistic and humane plans but always shot them down with political-based arguments despite the little ridiculous fact that going humane instead of utilitarian from the start would have benefitted them more due to how Replekia and Metafalica are 100% dependent on the IPDs' feelings. And it still doesn't change the fact that had his plan been successful, Metafalss would have perished, not to mention how he ran away during mid-Phase 2 or how he disappeared to Sol Cluster after the game ended.

Will we ever get another game that makes music every part of its setting, art, lore, and characters like Ar Tonelico? I feel like it created its own sub genre, and does it well to the point I feel this series will always have a place in my heart.

Oh boy, now I am just curious. Thanks, I'll check it out soon, need a new jarpig to play anyway.

An overzealous robot guard for Frelia who also serves as administrator program for Sol Marta.

Check the copyrights at the bottom of Ar nosurge's official site.

It just was

Better than AT1, worse than AT2.

Shit I actually meant Shun.

>Plus, the way he beats up his own comrades to rescue her also sets up the possibility of Croix defecting to the Sacred Army in the Luca route.
Fair enough, but I didn't do Luca's route.
>Also, what about Cocona's role during Hibernation, where she was pretty much asking Croix to kill her for him to have a chance at stopping Lakra? I wouldn't say that counts as having "no notable events".
I'd completely forgotten about that already, so make of that what you will.
>About Amarie having being of no consequence, considering she's the one who gave Soope to Luca, discovering her as the true Maiden and giving access to the Infelsphere to the party
All things that never come up again. Soope too also disappears completely from the entire game after phase 2 except to drop off more Infelsphere keys every now and then. It's like someone decided they didn't want a mascot character in the story scenes and just wrote him out, despite him showing up fairly regularly in phase 1.
> being the first to discover Frelia
Pure dumb luck.
>and also being who informed the party that Infel Phira was being reformatted at Lakra
That falls under "muh Chester". The party needed to know about Lakra, and Amarie did little better a of of telling them than a random sacred army defector would have. She has no character outside of Chester and Leglius, as I said. Hell, she gets less screentime than any of the shopkeepers do.
>Replekia and Metafalica are 100% dependent on the IPDs' feelings. And...
He had no way to know this.
>not to mention how he ran away during mid-Phase 2
His running away was just his method of trying to save as many people as reasonably possible. At least he's consistent.
>or how he disappeared to Sol Cluster after the game ended.
Is this covered in extra material? The last you see of him in the game was him collapsing after you beat the final boss, unless I missed an event somewhere during that insanely long epilogue.

Brutal Legend

A human engineer that was in love with Frelia since they both were kids, and who almost got killed during an operation to rescue her from Sol Marta by Raki. Ultimately, Raki recognized who he was from chats she had with Frelia, and assessing he could be useful as a guardian to Frelia, she digitalized his consciousness and transformed him into his current form, Shun.

You miss out on a lot of world building and plot stuff if you don't check out the extra materials like the Ar Portal columns or the setting encyclopedias.

Now that Vita hacking is a thing and soon USB Vita storage when is someone gonna start the ciel translation project that goes on for a million years and never gets finished

By golly it actually fills all criteria, fuck Tim Schaefer though.

Where exactly can I read about this?

Mule is a spiteful bitch with a sad past and blood on her hands, Cloche is a pure girl who acts though due to trauma and responsibility.
To think you'd let your love for our mistress be blinded like this, shame on you.

Yea that's what i remember about it. Lyner just did nothing for me. To be honest its a waste of time to consider Lyner and Croix or even Aoto as Characters. Considering we are meant to care more about the Girls. Yes they have a back story etc but they are just flat.

Ah Aoto i don't even think he had a backstory. He was just some dumb shit hick steeplejack. But in fairness the 3rd game was disapointing in many ways. Was nice to see Cocoona again and the small reference to Mir. I did like the new insane Hymmnos in EXEC_Z.

Soope still appears in the Infelsphere to give instructions and inform about each level's theme and purpose, as well as being the main source of encouragement for the heroines in the fourth level, and being the guide for fifth one. He's also who explicitly drops the bomb on Infel being the designer of the Infelsphere and giving the full explanation on why singing only the EXEC part of Metafalica is no more than suicide, and why a METHOD part exists too.

Also, Alfman did know about how these songs were completely dependent on the IPDs' feelings, after all he had Loude working in researching everything related to them, even though he never managed to find out what the Maiden of Mio's role was or about the METHOD part of Metafalica. And running away to save as many people as possible, when what he did was just abandon everyone to their luck except for his closest followers? That's absurd, and even the characters themselves call him out on this when he gives that excuse in the game.

Here: artonelico.wikia.com/wiki/ARM_Backup/

Yes, I know Soope was in the Infelsphere, I was saying that he stops ever showing up in the real world. Pay attention.
> Alfman did know about how these songs were completely dependent on the IPDs' feelings, after all he had Loude working in researching everything related to them
Loude was a lying, scheming traitor. What makes you think he told Alfman anything?
>And running away to save as many people as possible, when what he did was just abandon everyone to their luck except for his closest followers?
Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. He took the people he considered useful to make a new world with. Granted it's not rigidly saving "the many", but it was his attempt at saving humanity in the long run.

Aoto does have a back story, but like always, it just gets alluded to in the game and expanded in the extra material: his parents were researchers in Archia until they finally defected due to the annihilation of the Ancient Faction, and while they managed to keep themselves hidden for some time in Ciela Gate, Raphael eventually found them and had them killed. It was during that time that Gengai, who was friends with Aoto's father Leo, brought him to the Blue Canyon Hamlet to save his life.

Thanks.

In retrospective AT2 had a real fucking dark setting, with huge disparity between the rich and the poor, Reyvateils being treated like shit and often dying due to lack of diliquity, with IPDs pushed away from society in slums and living with a ticking bomb in their head, the world being nothing more than a metal compass with some dirt on it barely able to provide any kind of sustenance.
No shit Metafalica wasn't going to work, god bless Infel for cheating.

Ok then i will rephrase. He has a shit backstory. Atleast Croix and Lyner are knights and have a reason to go about the world ELMA_DS and the IPDs respectivly. Fucking Aoto just has a dieing guy say "here take this girl".

The problem isn't a shit backstory, the problem is Tsuchiya putting half the story in extra materials that were never localised instead of in the fucking game.

Honestly speaking, Soope really had no role to play in the real world after Phase 1 among other things due to Luca being the only one who could understand him. But he still has his last moment of glory when he disappears at the end of Phase 4 to become the crystal for METHOD_METAFALICA/.

Because Loude was the one who desealed the Maiden of Mio on the world again after 400 years and who have Cloche the song to get that position: METHOD_ALTERNATION/.

Plus, it was in his best interests to get Metafalica executed correctly because otherwise he could never get his hands on a Heart of the Land to bring back to his homeland. That he lost his patience and forced Luca to sing the EXEC part alone or that he switched gears to stealing the Heart Nenesha left behind are entirely separate issues.

As for Alfman, that comes to me as a pathetic attempt at justifying himself, considering that he didn't know where he was going to find a new land, not to mention that he was failing to account for the possibility of all remaining land in Ar Ciel being inhabited already.

You're wrong about the Reyvateils: the government supplies them with free Diquility doses every time they need them and are treated with utmost respect fue to the Maiden being one and the fact Metafalica can only be sung by a Reyvateil, as said in the entry for Diquility in AT2's in-game glossary. The only ones who get treated as shit are the IPDs fue to their outbreaks and the policies the pre-Alfman Grand Bell had when it came to them: exterminion instead of containment.

If they were in the game, it'd only have worsened the problem some idiots have with these games of "people never shut up!!! Too much text!!! MUH battlus!!11111"