Ar tonelico: Qoga
Playtime: 6 hours (6 hours total)
I am completely obsessed with the Ar tonelico series. The first one hooked me on its style - part romance, part psychology, part music, part emotional catharsis, part dirty innuendo; it was such an incredible mix of everything I loved, and I'd never seen anything like it.
Then Ar tonelico 2 came out, and I was blown away. I was so taken in by this world and these characters that it became everything to me, and I set out to make a strategy guide for it. I played through the game about 6 times, detailing each and every item, talk topic, CG screen and Cosmosphere. Then I dropped it like a hot stone when I realized I couldn't do visual design worth a shit.
In the back of my mind, I thought I always remembered the series, but I was shocked when I got an e-mail about Ar tonelico: Qoga shipping, so in reality I had completely forgotten. And what I've played so far has been, while fun, nowhere near as good as the first two. While the world itself is still interesting, the main characters are not. Nor is the combat.
Ar tonelico has always been about character depth; half the game is you diving so deep into another person's innermost thoughts that you cure neuroses they didn't even know they had. That said, each game had exactly two archetypes as the main heroines: the cute, shy, apologetic, annoying-as-hell Japanese male fantasy (Aurica, Luca, Saki) and the colder independent tsundere-type (Misha, Cloche, Finnel).
Ar tonelico 2 was amazing because the archetypes of Luca and Cloche were subverted, twisted, retold and explored in a way that was absolutely fascinating and unexpected. In Ar tonelico 3, both Saki and Finnel have essentially the same personality, which is of the cute/shy/apologetic/annoying maiden. Thankfully, Finnel has slightly less apologizing and no worringly immature third-person self references, but from what I've heard, neither evolve much through the rest of the game. These are meant to be the two leading characters, the ones I am most invested in, and I really want nothing to do with either of them. They both act like hyperactive overly-emotional children, and I spend all my time wishing for a gay romance with Tatsumi. Which, if my theory is correct, I'll actually get.
The worst part is they're now throwing in multiple personality disorder, which materializes in Reyvateils as them becoming a whole other person. So now Saki is literally three unique people, all looking and acting completely different. And every single alternate personality is better than the original; same with Finnel. So now not only is it confusing, it's frustrating...I can't actually like any of Saki's other selves, because they aren't the 'true' Saki, and any relationship I have will be with the thumb-sucking 'Saki is sorry!' spewing puddle instead of anything more interesting.
They certainly aren't skimping on the sexual overtones, though, which have grown so much they can now be classified as the genre of the game. Ar tonelico 1 had some risque lines and a huge amount of double entendres, Ar tonelico 2 upped this with lesbian hot tubbing, and Ar tonelico 3 tops it all by having stripping as part of the actual battle system. And the character interaction. And magic spell choice. And pretty much everything else. At every turn, the girls are either in a state of undress or being embarrassed about being in a state of undress.
I'm also having trouble even getting to the stage where I can Purge (read: strip) them in combat...enemies die so fast I never have a chance to even do anything. That isn't to say it's easy, because I can also die just as quickly. And the best part is, I have no idea what I'm doing badly or well. It just happens. I have to keep saving because I have no idea if I'm going to have a bad roll next combat and have my ass kicked by slimes. In the end, your numbers just grow big enough you survive everything regardless.
What has surprised me is the amount of grinding I've had to do - not for experience; I couldn't care less about my character level, but for dive points. The problem is, you never have enough. I've had to grind and re-do four areas to get enough dive points for the first level of each Cosmosphere, and I wasn't able to finish the second level. And I've barely started the game.
Saving is also annoying. PS3's save system has always irritated me. It's ugly, slow, and clunky...this is worsened because Ar tonelico 3 forces you to save twice every time (once for game, once for system). While I don't begin to understand the mechanics of programming for the PS3, surely they could've stored that system info in the header of the save file that gets scanned when the game is started?
I did, however, find something that made me ridiculously happy: the inclusion of a Boss Key during the Cosmosphere. For those not familiar with it, a boss key was a key combination you could hit in early video games to hide what you were doing under the guise of a spreadsheet or something productive. In the Cosmosphere, hitting Select will bring up a weather map, or various other inoffensive images over the top of your naked Saki. (I recently found out this was in Ar tonelico 2 as well, but I never noticed)
Time will tell if Ar tonelico 3 will grow on me, but despite all my bitching, I'm enjoying myself and in it for the long haul.
