sabato 12 settembre 2015

Ar Tonelico: Melody of Elemia

Listening to: Do I really need to say it?

So, another random revival it is.
This alone should speak by itself.

I finally had the chance to play this title myself. I already watched a series of Let's Play of this and Ar Tonelico II some years ago, before playing Ar Tonelico Qoga (i.e. Ar Tonelico III), so - unfortunately - I already knew of the story and the plot twists. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it a lot.

Let me just say this: Ar Tonelico is a phenomenal game. Sure, it's a bit old and a few parts of the gameplay kinda aged bad (yes, backtracking, I'm looking at you), but it's nowhere near enough to ruin the overall enjoyment.

Let's start with the obvious best: the music is absolutely great. And I'm not talking only of the hymmnos, but also of the actual soundtrack. Every single track is perfect for the scene it's used in, and most of them are great even when you just listen to them outside of the game.

The plot is not inferior in any way. AT conveys a lot of messages and ideas to the player, and does so in a great way. I won't say more on this, because you need to play it to fully understand it.

Longevity is quite good too. I finished the game in about 30h, and I never got tired of it. That's also because the gameplay itself is great, aside from one or two little things.
One of those is the already-mentioned backtracking, which is a bit annoying at times, but considering you can escape from battles with a 100% success rate it's not that bad. The other thing I wished it was different is the difficulty. Especially in most of Phase 2 the game's really easy, and it's hard to get hyped for battles when even bosses are defeated in 2 minutes or so. I mean, I didn't even farm so that was unexpected.
It might be because I started fleeing more often, but Phase 3 was a bit harder, though still kinda easy.

So, what now? I'll play AT2 as well of course, but I guess I'll take a short break before that.

Even considering my huge Steam library and my almost-as-big PS3 one, not only I don't regret playing this one bit, but if you call yourself a JRPG fan, I strongly encourage you to play this as well. I guarantee you won't regret it.