I love the stat boosting system. Its like Chrono Cross were it's impossible to be over-leveled for an area thus making it boring. The item stat boosting in this pretty much keeps the game challenging and actually keeps mini-boss battles that were introduced in AI3 difficult as they should be and it obviously allowed GUST to make this a much better balanced game battlewise compared to their past games.

And Ar Tonelico II...won't stake my reputation on it or anything, but keep looking for updates sometime soon.

I've put in 22 hours now so far (spend a lot of time farming materials and grinding AP), midway through Chapter 5, and my opinion of the game, and the difficulty has not changed one bit.

Like Cetra said, it really is impossible to be too powerful for the next area. Even if you are like me and have synthesized everything possible up to that current point, and tried to maximize the best possible Ether Effects, it still is not enough to give you the edge.

I have 7 party members now, 3 actively fight, 3 you can switch in to do an attack, or to take damage for someone, and 1 person just doesn't participate (and gets no AP sadly). I really want to gather their Offensive Supports so I can do stuff like this:



I do not like how most things end up falling on the same base materials, or using a material that was a result of it, so you end up getting near the same Ether Effects on a lot of things. I can tweak it though, and I'm definitely going to try to get ATK/CRIT on Weapons, DEF/RES on Armor, and the rest on Accessories.

I like the personality Flay has with his English voice much more than his personality with his Japanese voice.

I'll give it a shot then. AI3 may have been a lot worse then the previous AI games, but I still had fun playing it. It wasn't a total trainwreck.

You say it has many AI3 elements, which might those be? I hope it's not the limited time you can spent in each area, or the whole quest system that made you go back to the same areas constantly. That's 2 of the things I really didn't like from AI3.

This game should be coming to me later this week. It should be a nice change of pace from all the BRAWLing I've been doing lately. I haven't played any of the AI games, but I've enjoyed some other NIS titles; and I'm becoming a fan of the company.

Hah well it has both aspects, but not exactly like AI3. There is a passage of time in fields but it won't kick you out of the field. Rather day turns to night and during the night time the enemy blobs become really fast making it hard to sword them for battle advantage. Enemies also become much stronger and so far during night I've had to avoid the mini-boss blobs as I simply can't kill them during the night-time. So you still feel this need to rush to get things done before night but at least the game won't kick you out of the area after a specific amount of time. I found that annoying in AI3 as well but the day-night cycle system in this is a much better refinement to that idea.

You also do return to the same areas on a regular basis. The school serves as a hub like the town did in AI3. However there is A LOT more to do inside the school than there was in the town in AI3. The areas in this are also much bigger than they were in AI3 and each one is better divided into sub-areas so you usually get to explore some new looking areas for a lot of the tasks even if they send you to a repeat area.

The battle system is also pretty much a highly refined AI3 system. Stuff like the burst gauge, card based turns, stunning, charged attacks, etc are all there like they were in AI3 but some of the aspects work slightly different. For example its really hard to get the burst gauge to fill up now.

I just want to point out that this statement is misleading. Character quests cannot be missed forever, however you do have limited chances to do them (once per Free Time). If you don't do a Character quest during Chapter 2, the ones you do in Chapter 3 would be the ones that you would've gotten in Chapter 2 if you did them then.



The battle system at its core is AI3, but with a bunch of improvements. Also, the school campus serves as a hub as AI3's town did. Time flows during dungeon crawling, but rather than limiting the time you can be in an area, once night falls, enemies get doubled stats and start kicking your ass. So while it's still a good idea to finish things quickly, you don't have to. Just prepare to fight some mean baddies.

The quest system is back in a sense, but completely optional. Doing the "jobs", as they call them give you cash, which WILL be needed unless you want to grind for cash later on. But it IS possible to skip them all. Also, they've narrowed down the quest types so there's no "kill X of Y enemy" quests anymore, which is good because those were boring as hell.

The assignment system (which is required) is kind of similar to the quest system, but the variety in assignments makes it a lot more fun than AI3 was. And the fact that there's a lot more dungeons certainly helps it.

Edit since Cetra posted as I was:

Actually, the Burst Gauge is arguably EASIER to fill up if you tweak Critical rate and hit weaknesses. But other than that, you're right. It is harder, but it does make you focus more on hitting weakness and Breaking the enemy rather than just hitting them with all your biggest damage or whatever.

Also, as an addendum, Burst damage now increases ALL damage (not just special skills), but by a lesser amount, and generally lasts longer.

Well, technically during Chapter 11 there is a cutoff point for everything Char Quest related.

As soon as you hit Free Time in 11, all other possible quests for any character is cut-off once you finish the set for someone. If you did all of Jessica's, then you can't do Nicole's. If you do not end up finishing anyone then you can't do any. It's sort of a critical decision point that locks you into a certain ending.

Almost everyone have 5 quests (one has 4), some of which do not appear until certain Chapters, and others are available in every Chapter.

8 Endings as a result of this.

Okay, I bought this. If it sucks, Miles, you are gonna suffer. >>:U

No but seriously, I don't think I've ever played a game by these folks so I'm not sure what to expect, but for some reason I have a lot of faith in this. The artwork looks really nice, and from the generic reactions in this thread (I've tried not to read any of the technical stuff since I like finding that kinda thing out for myself), it definitely seems good.

Here's to good faith!

I do sort of wish there was more voice work in the game. Or rather, I wish a lot of the things that they chose not to dub (a good 40~50% of the game has no voices in english), they would have.

A minor issue that I can overlook though. Despite it being a big chunk, it goes by rather fast, and at least 25% of that is entirely optional. Plus I am more focused on the battle system, despite Gust designing the game so you do not want to fight all the time.

I'm tempted to start this right away. Does the plot depend in any way on having played the previous Gust releases?

Not that I've seen, considering so far out of what we have, the only games that are related are Atelier Iris 1 & 2 (which comes before 1). 3 is in an "alternate universe" but makes references to 1 & 2, and Ar Tonelico is its own series.

Mana Khemia is also its own series, although I wouldn't put it past Gust to make references to one of their previous works in some shape or form.

Yeah, this is correct, even that side comment about references!

Just made it to chapter 5. I really like the way the support characters work in this game. Plus having more than 3 characters makes it easy to send someone low on SP out of the current team to regain it really quickly. This makes it easier to explore at night since I have unlimited healing. How many chapters does this game have anyway?

I noticed that NISAmerica is getting better at localization. I haven't noticed as many bugs and typos this time around. The voice acting isn't bad either. I like the nice fonts they use in the menu system too. The past Gust games they localized were a bit sloppy but this one seems professional so far. I just hope it holds out for the rest of the game. I won't really whine about the voice cuts. From what I heard voice acting can be costly in the US so smaller companies can't always fully voice games like the Japanese versions.

Twelve. Eleven is your point of no return, in a sense.

So... you're saying I'm not the only one who noticed all the bugs and typos in their other localisations? I'm telling ya, sometimes I wondered if I imagined them all. Nobody ever talks about that.

This game does seem to be localised well, but I'm only a little way into of the first chapter so... what do I know? It seems like a lot of fun so far. It also seems really deep. The whole thing in Atelier Iris where you select the ingredients to try and make your synthesized items as good as can be... the equivalent system here seems a lot more in depth. Good thing, because I loved that aspect.

I can't claim to understand... anything much about the in depth aspects of synthesis right now though. I dare say it all will become clear as I get further into the game.

There are some typos later on, but they are very few, and of course the one thing most purists have been ranting about is how the personalities of the characters are much different in Japanese than they are in English.

I finished the game yesterday, after clocking in around 75 hours. Quite possibly the most challenging Gust game ever to date.

The only REAL complaint I have about everything is that the first five chapters are pretty much a tutorial to the game itself. Once you're past that then you are good to go for the remainder of the game.

I will probably spend any extra free time I have working on getting the other endings in the game, and then on the last ending I choose go with, work on completely maxing out the Grow Book so I will be prepared in New Game Plus and can focus on just creating the needed stuff.

Just finished it today, gotta say, loving Gust! With the exception of Atelier Iris 3, the games seem to get better. I enjoyed this game as much as Ar Tonelico, a feat I thought was impossible for them.

I was especially happy with the way the combat system was refined, support characters can step in to take hits, and later on they even get unique traits for doing these step-ins both the defend type and the assault type. Love these fast paced battle systems. Also the burst gauge and the finishing strike was a nice touch, though I would have prefered they would work with others as well, I really didn't want to keep Vayne in the support group. Hope the AT2 combat system is as refreshing as this.

Oh yes, and the music <3 god the music. Especially the battle music <3

For anyone that missed this on the PS2, this is also coming to the PSP in January, I believe.

Damn, I was hoping this thread had been bumped because of Gust announcing Mana Khemia 2 being localized. I bought it on a whim at the beginning of the summer and couldn't put it down. The only thing I really disliked about MK was the strange lag it encountered in dungeons whenever there were more than 3 enemies roaming around on the screen. Shop synthesis was my favorite part of Atelier Iris, so having the whole game essentially based around that was fantastic.

Everyone had their own finishing strike, at least by the end. It was the only way to see Anna's mana.

Woah back up. They announced Mana Khemia 2 for release outside of Japan? If so awesome but the 2nd game is supposed to be vastly superior to the first in every way and the first game was pretty damned good.

No, I'm saying I was disappointed that's not the reason this thread was bumped. :(

Oh I get it now, sorry I totally misread that.

Unfortunately I haven't heard of anything about the second game coming over. If they starting recording the voice overs for it I'd probably learn about it right away.

Sorry i ment Variable Strike not the finishing bursts.

I was googling for some RPG Logos on a Lark, and I just happened to come across the flash website for the second game:

Mana Khemia 2

That should give you an idea of what to expect, if you can read moonlanguage that is :erm:

Don't put your PS2s away after AT2 this January!