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.
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.
