A Gaming Journal

Ar tonelico: Qoga Tips

As I was playing close to my 40th hour of Ar tonelico: Qoga, I realized I was pretty obsessed with the game. I also realized there's a lot of stuff they don't tell you how to do (or at least they don't tell you very well), so I thought I'd compile a list of tips I learned while playing. Some of this is obvious stuff, but hopefully it has something for everyone. Feel free to comment and add anything you like, and I'll update the post.

COMBAT OVERVIEW

Combat seems to be the most convoluted part of the entire game. The details are barely explained, and you're never told how everything fits together. Mix this with a poorly-explained Purge system and you have a lot of confusion. A quick basic overview: at the core, combat is about making sure your Reyvateil doesn't die. (Though it's only Game Over if all your characters die). She is not controllable, and stands in the back singing; your three main characters are meant to engage the enemy and keep them off her until she has enough Burst (the rapidly increasing percentage) to execute a Song Magic that will kill everyone.

When a monster gets inside the glowing circle your Reyvateil is in, she takes damage and stops singing - you can execute a Blowback with the Circle button which instantly knocks the enemy away, but is on a 5-ish second timer. You'll be doing this lots.

Now, that's the theory of combat. In the beginning of the game, you'll never get to use Song Magic because enemies die from your main characters beating the snot out of them too quickly. Later on, the only way to kill them is by using Song Magic.

Because you auto-move to the closest enemy when you hit the attack button and blocking is automatic, you really will be spending most of the time staring at that Harmograph during a battle. You do more damage when you time a strike with a vertically-high beat, but the extra damage is negligible especially if you just keep spamming the attack button, so it isn't worth waiting for only high beats. The most important thing to remember is the color of the beats. There are red and green beats; if you attack when your indicator is directly on a red beat, you'll get a "BEAT UP" message which makes the Reyvateil's heart grow. Why this matters is explained later, in the Purge section.

COMBAT

• You can usually get two Beat Ups on a single red beat, so mash the attack multiple times, even if there's just one beat.
• Since you defend by doing nothing on the controller, try not to touch the analog stick during battle unless you need to get around; just hammer the attack and don't worry so much about staying on the monster, that way you'll auto-block everything.
• Remember Blowback works instantly, wherever you are in the battlefield, so don't worry about having to be near the Reyvateil.
• The best way to tell how many hit points an enemy has left is if you try to use Song Magic (press A). You don't have to fire it off, but the screen then tells you how many enemies there are, their exact HP and location. You can then just cancel out.
• Supermoves are fun to do (and spawn some dialogue with your Reyvateils when you rest), but each one drains your HP and doesn't do that much additional damage, so don't use them too often. In later levels, this won't matter because your Reyvateil will heal you for everything you lose and more. You can see the button combinations to use a Supermove by looking at your Status screen (pressing Triangle gets you to the next page)
• Doing a Supermove on a red beat will grow the heart quicker than a regular attack.
• Make sure to synthesis Supermoves, because that is the only way to get the Ultra Supermoves, which are awesome. While not particularly powerful (except Tatsumi's) compared to Song Magic, it comes with an anime cutscene and they strip naked, so everyone wins.
• When you grind for DP (which you have to do if you want to see everything in the Cosmospheres), don't always go for the highest level dungeon. A lot of times, a lower dungeon is better, where you can wail through the enemy without resorting to Song Magic and still get 200-300DP per fight for 10 seconds of work, instead of getting 400-500DP for a 5 minute fight.
• Even though DP are stored separately for each Reyvateil, they each earn the same after a fight, regardless of who participated. This does not hold true if one of the Reyvateils is gone from your party (and most of the time, one of them is)...so save your grinding for when you have both Reyvateils, unless you don't care at all about the other one.
• If you're grinding, try to find the most effective, quickest way to kill the enemy, so you can grind most efficiently. In the event you can't kill the enemy with just your vanguard, try to get your Reyvateil up to level 2 purge ASAP; not only does her Burst fill faster, her Song Magic does far more damage with a higher Purge level. I've found at Level 2 Purge, a Burst of about 15,000% can kill anything and everything, and it isn't that hard to get there, so most fights are done in under a minute.

PURGING

• Seeing the full animations for Purging are based on whether or not you Purge (hold a shoulder button and shake the controller) on a red beat instead of a normal one. If you're feeling in a hurry, only Purge on a normal beat, and it skips all the animations. If you want to see everything, Purge on a red beat. There are no other differences in power for the Purge itself.
• Even though the game tells you you can Purge multiple levels at once early on, you can't until about level 5 Cosmosphere (it will explicitly tell you again). At first you can purge two levels at once, and at Level 6 Cosmosphere you can purge 3 at once.
• There are different animations based on how you Purge. If you purge 1 level at a time, you get a slightly different animation than if you purge 2 at once, or 3 at once. The 3 at once is the most fan-servicey, with lots of close-ups and camera zooms on...certain places. Other than that, there's no real reason I've found to multi-level Purge.
• During a multi-level Purge, once you get the first "Purge Ready!", it won't track how many levels you can do, you have to guess. It takes roughly 5 red beats (you have to actually HIT the enemy too, if you don't connect or they block it doesn't count) for each Purge level; so about 15 for a 3 level multi Purge. Counting beats isn't accurate because different Reyvateils have different Purge rates, so people have lots of methods of dealing with this. The best one I've found is to fight normally (trying to hit all the red beats you can) until the Burst gauge is about 5000-6000%. At that point, hold down three shoulder buttons and shake, and you should go straight into a level 3 Purge, if you're up to level 6 in the Cosmosphere.
• When in level 4 Purge (aka Purge EX aka Flipshere), remember you have to hit X when the beats are EXACTLY on your indicator bar. I was instinctively hitting too early, so I had to adjust my reflexes to hit it a bit later than I normally would. This made a huge difference in the damage I did...though the first time watching a Flipsphere movie, you might just want to watch it.
• Each shoulder button you press during a purge has an element assigned to it, along with whatever extra effect the Hyuma you've programmed into it does. The elemental effect protects you from that element, and gives you that element's damage -- for example, L1 is fire. If you purge holding L1, it would protect you vs fire, give you a fire attack, and launch whatever buff/de-buff the Hyuma assigned to L1 does. This is the risk in multi-leveling purging; if you purge one at a time, you get buffs continually and a really fast filling Burst rate; if you multi-level purge, you get nothing until the very end.
• Keep this in mind when you assign Hyumas...it's always good to have a set pattern of how you Purge (L1, L2, R1, R2 is the order I do it). Assign your Hyumas appropriately from there; for instance, I have Attack Up as R2, the last one, because I like Purging, and I never want to buff my fighters to kill a monster before I can finish all Purge levels. I also have Healing as L1 (first) and Defense Up as L2 (second), so from the beginning, I am constantly healing myself and defending properly. This makes fighting a LOT easier.
• You have a ton of Hyumas with overlapping skills so you can outfit all your Reyvateils' personae, and not just be stuck with one. While your highest level Hyumas should go on your favorite persona, make sure all the rest of them are outfitted too, in case the game forces you to fight with them.

TALK TOPICS

• If you care at all about the talk topics, be prepared to double back a lot. A large amount of the topics will show up in places you have been to in the past (two of them show up in the first area of the game, only after you're in Phase II!)
• Talk to everyone, multiple times through the game. This is the best way to get group talk topics, and a lot of times it happens on people you've already talked to, based on events that happen during the story.
• Always rest until you don't have any more talking events fire. Don't trust the game to tell you if a girl wants to talk; sometimes a talk happens without that icon, usually for Supermove reactions and things like that.

EXPLORING/SYNTHESIS

• When doing synthesis, keep in mind it doesn't show items as available if you have them equipped.
• Don't even bother buying armor or weapons from a shop unless you need them for synthesis. The pain of comparing stats to already-equipped gear is so ridiculous it makes the entire process worthless.
• Pressing SELECT while exploring will show a colored arrow with all the exits. This can be exceptionally helpful in determining where to go or how to explore, since the maps aren't always drawn understandably.
• Some of the dungeons get really complicated to navigate. If you start having to deal with ridiculous amounts of split passages and a huge area, focus on killing all the random monsters first. Your mental map gets really skewed when you're thrown into battle every 10 seconds during exploration, so being able to focus just on exploring will help a lot in keeping all the corridors straight.
• Sometimes you have to do synthesis with one or more people specific people. These are usually the Supermoves. In the event you're free to choose, the only difference is the speech in the event itself (you can go back and synthesize the same item with the other Reyvateil to get the other event) and who names it. Keep in mind since synthesizing takes DP, you can choose which one synthesizes based on that.

DIVING

• This game really likes to do spontaneous events in the Cosmospheres that cost a ridiculous amount of DP. Past level 4 or so, always make sure to have at least 1500-2000 before doing a single event that is marked with [DP], which means there will be a DP reduction in the scene. More is always better, though - there is one particular event that is 5000DP, and it doesn't tell you beforehand. It's also a good idea to have a huge amount like 10k so you can do two levels back to back without worry. Remember you can quit out of a Cosmosphere any time if you need to grind, and you'll only lose the Leaf you paid to Dive.
• Look at every single area of the Cosmosphere all the time, even if there's only one Star on the map. Sometimes there will be 'hidden' events, usually costing a lot of DP, and almost always entertaining and embarrassing. If a destination is 1DP, there is nothing there.
• In the event there are two stars to go to, look at which one has the higher Importance. Side events usually have 1 or 2 stars, whereas main story are always 3. Remember you CAN lock yourself out of events if you don't do them in order, so be careful and save before you Dive.

INSTALLING SONG MAGIC

• This took me the longest time to get used to from At1 and At2 - you can't control what spell a Reyvateil is casting. They have one specific spell, which changes power and range and animation based on the Purge level they are at when they cast it. Each persona also has its own spell.
• Stripping a Reyvateil at night to install higher level Hyumas seems to be temporary. They seem to have a base level that grows based on how deep you are in their Cosmosphere, and they'll auto-strip to whatever level they are naturally at when you start talking to them. Just because you bribe them up to level 3 or 4 doesn't mean they will stay there. When you leave and come back, they'll probably be at a lower level again. So save your items until you really have a high level Hyuma to install; it isn't like they aren't naked all the time anyway.
• Each girl has items or food they like the best, sold by the Wandering Bird vendors as gifts. These are usually really expensive (3-6k Leaf each) but if you match them with the right girl, they give a HUGE bonus for stripping. Each girl's preferences are shown on her Status screen (hit Triangle to get to the next page). When offering an item, their bar will automatically adjust on the highlighted item to show how far up it will take them.
• When the above fails, buy Charbroiled BBQ in bulk -- it's dirt cheap and they all love it. You can only bribe them so many times before they refuse though.
• The hyuma you choose also has an influence on the background music of combat, which adjusts the peaks and beats of the harmograph.