Singing a Different Tune
Ar Tonelico is one of the most weirdly attractive RPGs to ever hit the PS2. Here's why.
Published: February 21, 2007
Upon seeing the box for the game, you may be tempted to think this is a quasi-2D masterpiece on the level of something like Valkyrie Profile or Disgaea, and I'll happily admit that the character designs and art are gloriously high-res and absolutely gorgeous. The rest of the game, though, is anywhere from mediocre to downright cringe-worthy. The world map is actually done in 3D, but a choppy, sparsely textured 3D, and it just doesn't look right (though it is definitely the best way to show the scale of the world, which is vertical more than horizontal). The sprites in the game, though, suffer from far, far too few frames of animation, even for something as simple as a run animation. When you see a character smoothly skimming along while using a couple jerky frames of animation, it just makes it seem like developer Gust didn't try. If nothing else, though, at least the video clips in the game are fairly nice.
Aurally, it's a completely different story. Though the voice acting will largely depend on your ability to stomach whiney, high-pitched girl voices if you keep the English dub on (you can always switch to the original Japanese voices at any time), the music in the game is absolutely stellar. Right from the very first song, with a choir belting out a bombastic "RRRROCKY OCKY AHHHH!" (a phrase that has since become the replacement in the office for "hello"), the epic tone of the game and focus on female voices is apparent. Even when all the instruments are swept away and a simple lute and vocal solo are played, the music is just top notch. Plus, a dude raps about what I think are fish sticks in the battle music for the first Phase of the game. Fish sticks, man!
Okay, I'll admit it, part of me kept playing the game because I'm a big, fat pervy creepo and I wanted to see what kind of sexy costume would crop up in the game. The fact that both of the Reyvateils were fighting over Lyner and both had overtly sexual outfits used to try to seduce him in their heads meant that, yeah, the guy part of me was totally grinning ear to ear. I wanted to get Lyner to stop being such a douche and just grow a spine long enough to romance one of the girls -- or, well, both.
In fact, it's probably safe to say that there's enough give and take in the Cosmosphere/talking bits of the game to qualify it as a sort of light dating sim, and you know what? I'm cool with that. I don't mind a little dating sim in my Japanese RPG with supporting cast girls whose breasts can't possibly fit into a D cup bra. I don't mind because a) I love huge boobs and b) because the battle system and, eventually, storyline won me over and kept me going past all the teen fantasy segments.
I'll take my DD-breasted pirate eye patch-wearing head of a mega-corporation and my overly-bosomy former Reyvateil bar owner that can belt out a wonderfully sweet tune along with my impressively deep battle system and nice little localization touches here and there. I'll even take sub-par animation and a lead character that is gratingly bland. Why? Because, despite its pedantic handling of some topics and questionable dialogue parts, the game never takes itself too seriously. That, and it's actually a pretty awesome RPG at that.
Plus, y'know, boobs.
