PixlBit

Ar Tonelico was one of the first double pack  sets I bought for the PS2 since i restored my collection and by that I mean being stupid a couple of years ago I sold my collection and now im almost back to where I was. So with that said the first games I got when I started getting back my lost collection was Ar Tonelico 1 & 2 and this reveiw will only be Melody of Elemia.

 Feb

Ar Tonelico: Melody of Elemia was produced by 505 games at E3 2006, Nippon Ichi Software America (NIS) announced that they would pick up Ar Tonelico, with an expected release date of October 31,2006 however that release date was delayed untill February 6, 2007,to provide more time for localization. The european version was released by 505 games on May 27,2007 the France,Italy and Spain versions are very rare due to a very liminted realease.

The story begins on the floating land mass named Sol Ciel, the setting for the game is an extremely tall tower call Ar Tonelico, and the plot is mainly about a relationship between humans and a artificial race called Reyvateil. The gameplay goes like this,players may explore dungeons and areas by moving in any direction and jumping. depending on the abilities of the Reyvateils in the party, various spells can also be cast to light candles, remove obstacles, and trigger switches.

Enemy creatures can be encountered at random as the player explores an area, a guage in the lower right corner of the screen indicates the liklihood of encountering an enemy, as well as the number of remaining encounters in the area. Each town presents several points of interest that may be reached, by selecting there name on a drop down menu, then navigated like a feild map, and additional points may show up after certain events etc are completed. The world map provides a 3D veiw of the world, which lists all of the locations currently accesible by the player and most place you visited can be revisited by clicking on it.

Ar Tonelico features a turned based battle system akin to thoughs in the Atelier Iris serious, the active party consist of up to three fighters in the front and one Reyvateil in the back,an action can be ordered for each fighter as there turn arrives, an action bar on top of the screen tells you turns in order,as long as the fighters remain alive the Reyvateil cant be touched and she can save her turns (up to three turns) and unleash a major heal or a major destruction spell both are devistating on the enemy or healing for you and your fighters take turns fighting like attack,defend ,or parry,etc.

Ar Tonelicos graphics are done very well its your normal graphics you come to expect from NIS,the soundtrack is awesome, i really enjoyed the music in this game more so then most soundtracks but for some reason I did like it and a matter of fact I ended up buying the soundtrack for the game, the voice acting is done very well, same kind you would hear from other NIS games,Ar Tonelico is a 70 hour plus RPG and is one of my favorites from NIS and the fact that they have a dating sim quality to it makes even better, basicly you can Dive in to a Reyvateils mind and by visiting a dive shop in town you can go into her cosmosphere and while playing the game you gather dive points which you can use in your dive into the Reyvateils mind and to make a long story short its another small world map in her mind that you go to different points and defeat bad spirits or find out clues and plots abot your Reyvateils and the fact that you can pick your own Reyvateil to travel with and you can develope relationships whith the one you pick, so its a very uniqie aspect in this fantastic RPG, so in short if you like rpgs and want another one from the great Nippon Itchi you will not want to pass this up.