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NEWS: Ar no Surge RPG Linked to Ar Tonelico With Shurelia's Return

What's bad about liking the first one? You're making no sense.

It's weird because the character Shurelia is part of the Ar Tonelico series which was a multi-media project between Gust Corporation and Banpresto (most likely part of the reason that they started a new series with Surge Concerto as opposed to continuing Ar Tonelico, the other part being that Ar Tonelico is just over). These two companies have since become subsidiaries of different larger entities. So I'm wondering if there was some sort of licensing agreement for the IP with regards to Shurelia with Namco Bandai to allow them to use the character or if characters in Ar Tonelico are owned wholly by Gust (and therefore Tecmo Koei).

I personally loved the first Tonelico the best. Not only did it have a balanced story that only occasionally bordered on silly moments (but did not go over the top with them), but Lyner, Ayatane, Aurica, Misha and Shurelia also appeared in Cross Edge. There was even one character in AT that I personally loved meeting for the first time, but he wasn't playable sadly.

AT2 was okay, but I can't give it anything higher than a C minus. The battle system was a bit shoddy with its attack and defense phases. And yes, in agreement, I couldn't stand either Cloche or Luca. Those girls need to check themselves into a mental ward (especially Luca, damn what a head case) because they don't know how to use their brains nor do they know how to treat Croix with any level of respect. Jacqli was kind of an attitude case at times and I wasn't a huge fan of hers either (yeah I know who she is, but I also don't care). I feel like I connected more with Shun, Leglius and Amarie than anyone else on the team.

mewpudding101 wrote:

What's bad about liking the first one? You're making no sense.

Well for one Aurica is the worst. Just terrible. I loathe everything about her. Secondly Lyner's an asshole.

Thirdly the battle system is boooooorrrriiiiiiing.

Its not a total loss, Misha is great, and theres some really good songs, but thats about it.

Ar Tonelico 2 is not only my favorite of the Ar Tonelico trilogy but tied for my favorite PS2 RPG (the other being Tales of the Abyss). AT3 was alright, but certainly not nearly as good AT2. I liked it more than AT1 though. Still need to get around to NG+ and do the Finnel and, er, 3rd girl endings.

I haaaaaated Lyner for what he did to Misha late in the game. And Aurica is a horrible, horrible character. Her entire character is that she has massive dependency issues and she never really fixes that from what I recall. I found her obnoxiou and unsympathetic and laughed at her when she pops up during the split on Misha's route and is losing her goddamned mind because Lyner wasn't there or something.

Cloche and Luca were great characters. They had interests and character arcs that didn't revolve around the main character and rely on him to solve everything for them. It's funny seeing Luca criticized for being a 'head case' when such issues are par the course for VNs and anime. Extra funny to see them criticized for 'not using their brains' by someone with the favorite character of Aurica, especially since this is a rare game that completely ejects the main guy from the end of their character issues. Jacqli was the only character for which I felt Croix ending up romantically involved with worked or felt right. Not that there wasn't room for improvement, but man, that Jacqli's ending scene with Croix was beautiful.

Anyway, there's this thing called character development and sometimes people start out as unpleasant people or otherwise do less than great things. Then they grow from it. That's how character growth works. Sometimes their relationships change too. Luca and Cloche's relationship growth was one of the best things I've seen in an RPG (again, even if there was room for improvement in some areas). Also, I find it odd how people so utterly hated Luca, apparently just because of that scene in the prison cell. It's like no one cares about her or her situation, just HOW DARE SHE TAKE ADVANTAGE OF CROIX LIKE THAT. And really, while her cosmosphere gets pretty weird, she's not even much of a headcase. Hell, she's not even the most fucked up character in this little series (hi, Finnel and Aurica).

The 3rd game's battle system sure needed some work, but at least it didn't encourage you to drag out the battles to get better loot. It also had the least interesting story. The only good stuff was about Misha or Mir, and the latter's stuff was only at the very end of the game. Overall story was still meh.

And seriously, fudge Lyner and Aurica.

As for Misha, sorry, but after reading all the extra material in the Toukousphere, I can only see her as blowing her problems out of proportion, as the Star Singers only have to sing for 30 years and then they are free to do as they please for the other 110~ years of life they have left with a full-on welfare program sponsored by Platina's government, only needing to use some of their time to train a little their successors. She even flat-out stated she was being a drama queen about it in her Lv.6 Cosmosphere just to attract Lyner's attention.

As for Lyner, Tsuchiya himself admitted he dropped the ball horribly with that scene with Misha because he felt he was being too verbose with what he wanted to convey on it: it was originally something along the lines "I'll fight to release you from your duty and make a world where no one else has to sacrifice themselves for a peaceful world. For that, I need you to please sing to keep Mir sealed for the time being. I need you to fight in the best way you can". And because of summarizing that, we ended up with "Misha, can't you sing again?", which leads to Misha storming off due to having misinterpreted Lyner's words, and because everyone gets so enraged at this, they miss out how Lyner right afterwards goes to apologize to and console Misha and begins wondering what point there is for her to be singing if that doesn't bring anyone any measure of happiness.

I haaaaaated Lyner for what he did to Misha late in the game. And Aurica is a horrible, horrible character. Her entire character is that she has massive dependency issues and she never really fixes that from what I recall. I found her obnoxiou and unsympathetic and laughed at her when she pops up during the split on Misha's route and is losing her goddamned mind because Lyner wasn't there or something.

Cloche and Luca were great characters. They had interests and character arcs that didn't revolve around the main character and rely on him to solve everything for them. It's funny seeing Luca criticized for being a 'head case' when such issues are par the course for VNs and anime. Extra funny to see them criticized for 'not using their brains' by someone with the favorite character of Aurica, especially since this is a rare game that completely ejects the main guy from the end of their character issues. Jacqli was the only character for which I felt Croix ending up romantically involved with worked or felt right. Not that there wasn't room for improvement, but man, that Jacqli's ending scene with Croix was beautiful.

Anyway, there's this thing called character development and sometimes people start out as unpleasant people or otherwise do less than great things. Then they grow from it. That's how character growth works. Sometimes their relationships change too. Luca and Cloche's relationship growth was one of the best things I've seen in an RPG (again, even if there was room for improvement in some areas). Also, I find it odd how people so utterly hated Luca, apparently just because of that scene in the prison cell. It's like no one cares about her or her situation, just HOW DARE SHE TAKE ADVANTAGE OF CROIX LIKE THAT. And really, while her cosmosphere gets pretty weird, she's not even much of a headcase. Hell, she's not even the most fucked up character in this little series (hi, Finnel and Aurica).

And, belvadeer, saying AT2's battle system was shoddy, that puts you in the minority, considering Ar nosurge's battle system is heavily based on it and was the one that got the largest support on the trilogy from the fans on both sides of the world. I'd even wager that it's considered the best battle system Gust has made and that it's tied with Mana Khemia 2's for that spot.

And you might want to call several plot points for AT3 ridiculous, for unfortunately for you, they have canon justification, especially Saki's cake power: she emits waveforms that distort those of the matter she chooses around her and reforms them into the shape of cakes, all of which is based on the Third Tower-exclusive EXEC_FLIP/. program. And it isn't like it's the only instance of it in the game: Arphage, Fusionsphere, and even the Persona Changes all run under the same general principles as that program. The detail is that EXEC_FLIP/. was never perfected and therefore, it has such large energy requirements that if the user uses it too much, she will end up killing herself due to the consumption of her life force.