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Ar Tonelico III: Knell of Ar Ciel [PS3] - they still be crazy.
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Mass Effect too, yes? As long as you aren't male and gay I mean.
I do hope the game is better than AT2 though. While AT2 had some cool cosmospheres, and crazy bitches, and the battle system was good, the exploration/landmass/everything else was -terrible- compared to AT1. (And Aurica still >> anyone else).
That being said, the premise of the game is intriguing. Role reversal of AT1. Looking at the official website it looks like most of the (main? side?) characters in the game are Revys. Battle system is "whatever" as long as it's functional. Just give me more crazy insanity from the girls.
He was also clueless as fuck.
Cloche: "...Well, maybe you can sleep in here for tonight (smile)"
Croix: "What are you, crazy?! We can't do something like that!"
Cloche: "...Dammit."
Welcome to the world on this side.
Yeah, but...
One of the reasons Xenogears surprised me so much when I was a wee lad.
I had forgotten just how much wave theory was involved in properly understanding these games, and how VERY MUCH history was in them, probably because a lot of that was barely touched on in AT2.
I've been studying for two days and my brain just hurts.
Seriously, there's like a bachelor's course and a master's in this shit.
Also, I just started brain trusting a friend through AT1, and I had forgotten just how much better the crafting was in the first game.
Here's hoping that AT3 has people and plot more like 1 than 2.
But I'm enough of a liker of these games that I pre ordered it. Next week!
I think a lot of AT2's problems were translation related. Honestly, with how much plot there is in these games, it's pretty disappointing that they seem to have gotten such rush job translations, but oh well. You can usually tell what they mean... eventually.
The plot in 2 definitely seemed worse. I was actually kind of losing interest by the end there, and the events don't all string together as nicely as they did in 1. AT1 has one of my favorite total plots of any RPG, because so much shit happens, and it all actually makes logical, sequential sense. There was a lot of random shit in AT2 that happened at weird times or they didn't explain properly.
After I beat Ar Tonelico 1 once I knew where every Hymmnos in the game was sung, and what it did. When I got finished with AT2 and started listening to the soundtrack, I realized I didn't remember where half of the damn Hymmnos were from, in the game, even some of my favorites. The game's plot was just so damn much less memorable.
I think part of it was the names of everything. Having the Sacred Army and Divine Army be two things in a given setting that are completely goddamn different (among the other like ten unmemorable organization names) is just a bad choice.
I think one of the parts that helped AT1, was you were constantly walking up/up/up/up the tower. The entire world felt cohesive. And then when you could finally access the secret back tunnels in the tower (which were FAR cooler than the final stage in AT2). You had even more of a feeling of cohesiveness. I dunno.
I think at this point I'm just rehashing what I already said so I'll stop talking for now.
AND SHE WOULDN'T GIVE IT TO ME
I'm just waiting for this to install and I can give some impressions.
I can't really give many impressions yet, but combat is kind of slow although I have no specials, the voice acting is pretty good, I want to see more Aoto and Mute dialogue, and the character models are nice enough to look at. The non-human enemies aren't too great, but the humans (Even the males!) look nice enough. Oh and if you can't get multiple reyvatails in one go like in 2 then this is a long platinum. There's trophies for all the endings.
(It also caused some serious forum drama, but that's another story.)
Welcome to the world on this side.
But...the other ones had those two.
Except for the sluggish combat...AT and AT2 were pretty fast, too fast at times.
Like...Alfina from Grandia 3...
The flashbacks...noooooo!
Welcome to the world on this side.
Honestly I like the combat okay in this, because it's not super easy. It's still not really that hard, but listen to this. I actually had a teammate get knocked out. Oh that's right. They actually beat someone. Oh and hard mode is NG+ material. Don't try it your first run. I mean you could, but I went from doing 30 damage to wolves to 3 and they just wiped the team out. So it's a pretty big jump at the start.
Oh and that line about Saki at the end of that quote, at the end of the day this game where you ask girls to strip for you and the more skin they show equals more power is still less offensive to women than Other M was.
Glad to hear, Glider, your thoughts on it though. Makes me feel better.
Edit: Hah, I saw your note about forum drama and (I didn't even realize RPGFan had forums) slipped over there just to peruse, and from the reviewer: "...I'd just like to say that the sexual content was not the reason for my score. Gust made a lot of changes to this entry and I disliked a lot of them..." Sooo my guess was spot on.
JRPGs are such a weird acquired taste though
nightmares...
Ok more amusement: I just looked at gamerankings. RPGfan and RPGamer are the -lowest- scores of all of them. Dunno if that means anything but it's funny
That doesn't actually seem that harsh, it just seems honest. That's about what I expect.
Also, yes, that crafting system sounds like the one from AT1, which was infinitely fucking better than the system in 2. I'm a-fucking-ok with not having 800 useless food items that restore completely meaningless amounts of HP, if it means I don't have to trek to 4 different shops around the world to craft a single item.
It's good to hear that the combat is decently difficult, Gilder. That's something that these games have woefully lacked. The battle systems in 1 and 2 were really interesting, but it was really sad to never actually have to use their potential. Hell, the difficulty in 1 was not killing enemies.
Speaking of which I need to finish beating AT2 and getting the morally correct (3rd reyvateil) ending.
I have them but haven't played them yet.
Nintendo ID: Beltaine
3DS: 2423-2361-7857
Steam: beltane77 PSN: Beltaine-77
Dood, you make me cry. I loved SO4 although I couldn't really tell you why. Never beat it tho; I just got to where the big robot guy joins you.
Beltaine: I've heard there are some references to AT1 and 2 but it's not a continuation of an ongoing story or anything.
I'd play at least AT1 first just because it's an awesome game, but it's like 50 hours for one playthrough, so it depends a lot on how raring to play AT3 you are.
Anyway, in case anyone else is playing this and they've been making some progress let me just go ahead and tell you something: Yes, Finnel's purge level 3 is broken. Basically she goes from 1 to 3 purges per battle. Level 3 is supposed to let you do 2, but I was never able to do it. When it said she could do 3 it all of a sudden worked.
Oh and the english voicing is good enough, but like AT2 only about half of the dialogue is voiced in english. I imagine in japanese it's fine since Blu-Ray has the space for it. If you check the log there's a lot of dialogue with a speaker next to it for voices, but there's nothing there in english. So that's pretty lame. Not everything is supposed to be voiced, but a lot of story cutscenes are supposed to be.
- Battles are just FINE in my opinion, thus far I consider them faster than AT2's. (of course that could change)
- I'm not completely put off by Saki. I don't like how Saki talks about Saki in the third person, but other than that, she's quite bearable.
- The Introduction opening movie + music is great.
- So is ambiance music.
Just got to where you see Finnel for the first time but thus far, enjoying the game.
I agree with Gilder. English VA is just fine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KEvS-t-MDg
Yeah I guess they just wanted a Baseketball reference.