[:plant:] The Game Review Thread - No Posts By Skills Because He Never Finishes His 10000 Games

This will kind of mirror my backloggery, but I suppose I could express more here without the character limit.

I guess my most recent achievement would be Ar Tonelico: Melodies of Elemia (PS2):

Ar Tonelico: Melodies of Elemia (PS2) - August 30, 2010:

Fun game, to be sure. I may be biased because I absolutely love JRPGs. I've only recently begun playing niche JRPGs (usually released by Atlus or NIS) and this game reminded me heavily of Atelier Iris, which I had beaten a while ago. I'm pretty sure some of those graphics were recycled from AI, but nonetheless, the story and mechanics were enough to suck me in for the ~40 hours it took for me to beat it.

What is there to say about it? Well, I suppose this is the first game that has had bits of a visual novel style gameplay in the form of Reyvateil Cosmospheres. I went into the game thinking that this would be the lull and dull parts of the game, but as it turns out, these became my favorite parts of the game. It's really just reading a bunch of text, but games like Phoenix Wright prove that when done well, text is just as gripping as a flashy cinematic.

As for the game mechanics, I found the battle system to be very fluid and intuitive once I got to learn the basics. I'll admit, it took me at least a few hours to completely grasp it, but once I had it, each battle was fun for me. I will say that it's probably one of the more confusing looking games to the occasional passerby, but in actuality, it's not too complex.

I didn't come anywhere close to 100% completion, namely because I already have a huge backlog of other 40 hour RPGs to go through and secondly that it'd probably take about another 20+ hours to really flesh out for 100% completion without the help of a FAQ. Finding conversation crystals will take a lot of exploration, and a lot of topics only come up under certain conditions (e.g. buying a certain item at a certain shop, singing a certain song in battle, talking to a certain person in a town, etc.) By the end of the game for my run, I had explored roughly half of both Aurica and Misha's cosmosphere and barely started on Shurelia's. Finding every kind of Grathnode crystal and getting all of the items to rank S will take quite a bit of time. I didn't even craft the best weapon (assuming Lv. 4 weapons are the highest) for each character because I hadn't found recipe cards for some of the materials.

On the flip side, levels are easy to grind out. I was level 80 by the end of the game and I was STILL leveling up at least 1 of 8 characters every other battle. So, assuming 99 or 100 is the max level, I could have hit the cap fairly easily. The game is also not very hard, so even though I was still leveling at a brisk pace, I would consider Lv. 80 overleveled for the endgame.

Fun game though. I paid $60 for it on eBay to get the game and the accompanying art book. At the time I thought it was a bit much, but after playing through it, I thought it was worth it. Of course, at the time, there was no Ar Tonelico 2 or 3, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Nonetheless. Fun game.

That turned out a bit long...sorry if it is too long.

Note to self: Need to change my avatar finally.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I remember that point in PoPoLoCrois when you split up. That was the only time I saw the game over screen because Narcia was in my party. Narcia's great for support, but horrible by herself.

I don't remember my level, but I don't recall ever having to grind either.

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