Ar tonelico 2 Visual Guide

After almost two months, I’ve finished two full playthroughs of Ar tonelico 2, and have written everything down, from story notes to synthesis results to talk topics.  I have made sure I got 100% of everything in my playthroughs, which I know now will be in my guide.
Now comes the fun part - actually pulling [...]

As I’ve been playing through the game with the PCSX2 emulator, I noticed something — all the times the game froze on my PS2 (usually in battle) still happen in PCSX2, but after about 8 seconds, everything always eventually chugs back to life.  I didn’t really think too much about it until I reached the [...]

Phase IV really is the phase of secret scenes.  My first non-guide playthrough months ago, I thought I was thoroughly exploring things…but only now do I see exactly how much I missed.  And the missable scenes in Ar tonelico 2 aren’t just throw-away scenes, or even just character development; these missable scenes are what put [...]

Phase III is now done as well.  Cloche’s play through is always so much faster, since I don’t have to notate much, and it’s a great double-check on what I found on my initial runthrough.
So now I’m onto Phase IV, which is really pretty close to the end of the game.  I’m already thinking about [...]

Well, my internet has been out since Friday — bad for me, good for the guide!  I was able to finish Cloche’s Phase II write up, and get a good chunk into Phase III.  Now, I say get a good chunk in, but I spent 6 hours writing and noting and I haven’t even made [...]

One thing I just ran into that I think is going to be great for the guide….the fact that the choices you make in the Cosmosphere sometimes have an effect on levels deeper on.  As an example, a choice you make in Luca’s level 3 changes something that happens in her level 5.  I’m curious [...]

Last weekend I spent both days going through Phase I, taking notes.  I was lucky enough to spend all of this weekend doing the same thing!
There were a number of things I missed on my first note-taking playthrough for Phase I, and only fully realized how much that was when I was finished.  After researching [...]

So the first thing I learned from doing a mock-up of the first page was there was a lot of data I’m not writing down properly in my notes; most notably, item and monster number annotations.  It’s far easier to note everything down as you go than to go back and re-note everything, which is [...]

After spending two full days this weekend writing 2000 lines of unwrapped text, I finally finished all my note-taking on the entirety of Phase I, for Luca and Cloche’s path.  It was actually really interesting seeing the minor differences throughout, though most of it was exactly the same.
Now that Phase I is complete, instead of [...]

I got to spend the past couple of nights starting my notes, and while I did not get very far game-wise (just got Leglius), I’ve managed to settle on a pretty decent way for me to note everything that’s going on.
Firstly, I decided to go back on what I said earlier, and turn the frame [...]