Oh yeah, I forgot about Gamefaqs (by which I mean I generally try to avoid it) but I'll look into it tomorrow and see if we can't compile some stuff to test and see what shakes out. Thanks!
Haha! Platinum get! Took forever but I finally got the 100 hours trophy. I actually got it at 98:30, because it's not actually counting the in-game clock. It's counting the hours logged to the system data, which means that it counted the time it took for me to go back and get all the normal endings. That was like 2 hours so I probably went a bit overboard.
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MetalbourneInside a cluster b personalityRegistered Userregular
edited May 2011
I finally finished this game the other day.
First off, it's been a loooong time since I enjoyed a JRPG this much.
Second, Cocona can go to hell. I hate her with such fervor simply because she's not Tatsumi.
Even in her ending Cocona is kind of a jerk. Like she doesn't know what she's doing. Aoto is all "I need you Cocona!" and she just goes "Yeah well, I want to go back to Metafallica and see my friends." And then he says something else and then I guess she admits she's falling for him? I don't even know, it's stupid as hell. They can't seem to decide if she wants to be with Croix or Aoto. She should probably go with Aoto because he wasn't attracted to her when she was something like 10 years old and he actually started liking a developed girl, which is more than Croix can say if the Cocona ending was canon.
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MetalbourneInside a cluster b personalityRegistered Userregular
Even in her ending Cocona is kind of a jerk. Like she doesn't know what she's doing. Aoto is all "I need you Cocona!" and she just goes "Yeah well, I want to go back to Metafallica and see my friends." And then he says something else and then I guess she admits she's falling for him? I don't even know, it's stupid as hell. They can't seem to decide if she wants to be with Croix or Aoto. She should probably go with Aoto because he wasn't attracted to her when she was something like 10 years old and he actually started liking a developed girl, which is more than Croix can say if the Cocona ending was canon.
Yeah, JRPG writing is kind of hit and miss sometimes. I don't know if it's the cultural divide or translation or both.
Haha, Katene, though. I don't know what happened after he found out, but I hope everything turned out okay with him. His relationship was the only one I cared about.
You can find out, you just have to go out of your way. Remember when you were doing the round-up at the end? You needed to head back into the main office of Archia to find out what happened with Katene. It's kind of weird because none of the other round-up stuff requires going into dungeons except for that one.
Amazon just cancelled my order for this, citing supply chain problems. So I ordered it again and it's being fulfilled by some third party. Better be worth the trouble
So all it took to rekindle my interest in actually playing this game was reading a ton of spoilers on the Ar Tonelico wiki, and finding out that I was actually right when I guessed what the overall point of the game would have to be to both tie all 3 games together, and give the series a final, happy ending.
Once I'm finished with ME2, I'll finally sit down and play through this.
Watching a friend play through AT1 and 2 also helped rekindle my interest, as god damn this is a cool setting.
Finally found a copy of this, for $75 from a merchant at Amazon. But I have yet to play the second game. I think I should probably do that before I play 3 given Kainy's comment above.
You should probably play 2 before 3 because there's quite a few callbacks to the second game in the third that are pretty major. A lot of the major plot relies on something introduced in 2.
If you do play 2 just make sure to wait until the third joins before accepting Luca or Cloche's feelings at level 5 and deciding to stick with them. There's two reasons for waiting. First, if you want to get the costumes at level 5 you need to reject the other girls before accepting the one you like the most. If you say "I'm sorry you're not the one." you get a costume. If you say "No I can't, I already chose blahblahblah." you get jack shit from them and now they have one less costume than they could have. The second reason is there's a pretty good chance that if you think you like Luca the game is going to punch you in the gut and make you absolutely despise her. So you don't want to be stuck with her before the game does that. You'll want to wait for that to happen and then decide if you still like her. I think the common opinion is that Luca and Cloche are both insane and you should choose the third.
If you do play 2 just make sure to wait until the third joins before accepting Luca or Cloche's feelings at level 5 and deciding to stick with them. There's two reasons for waiting. First, if you want to get the costumes at level 5 you need to reject the other girls before accepting the one you like the most. If you say "I'm sorry you're not the one." you get a costume. If you say "No I can't, I already chose blahblahblah." you get jack shit from them and now they have one less costume than they could have. The second reason is there's a pretty good chance that if you think you like Luca the game is going to punch you in the gut and make you absolutely despise her. So you don't want to be stuck with her before the game does that. You'll want to wait for that to happen and then decide if you still like her.
I personally think the thing that happens with Luca really isn't as bad as many people make it out to be, but it definitely resets the Cloche-vs.-Lucometer, combined with Cloche slowly pulling the roto-rooter out of her ass.
I still much prefer Luca, but I'm apparently in the minority there. Honestly all 3 reyvateils in 2 are pretty acceptable, if you're willing to forgive a few faults for the main two.
I think that if you really liked Luca at first it hits a lot harder than if you just thought she was okay, because it's a complete reversal that throws you over to the Cloche side and then it's kind of hard to come back. I was kind of indifferent to both of them though and was waiting for the third anyway, and then it turned out she's the funniest one because she's sarcastic all the time and her synth items are really strange.
At any rate you should definitely choose one of them, because the ending for not choosing anybody is just super creepy and weird.
I think that if you really liked Luca at first it hits a lot harder than if you just thought she was okay, because it's a complete reversal that throws you over to the Cloche side and then it's kind of hard to come back. I was kind of indifferent to both of them though and was waiting for the third anyway, and then it turned out she's the funniest one because she's sarcastic all the time and her synth items are really strange.
At any rate you should definitely choose one of them, because the ending for not choosing anybody is just super creepy and weird.
Naw, I was extremely pro-Luca in the beginning, and I think that's what led me to be willing to forgive her for what is a pretty big thing.
I still need to finish my 3rd reyvateil playthrough of AT2. I really want to see her deep cosmosphere levels.
So I dug out my PS2 and it doesn't boot anymore. Nuts. The good news is that AT2 runs basically perfectly under PCSX2 after spending a couple hours configuring and troubleshooting...
The REALLY good part is there's a patch that fixes that freeze on the boss near the end of the game. Huzzah!
If only there was a way to remove the slow down caused by certain enemy attacks. Sure game, I would love to block all those attacks from when that wolf spins on me. Let me just ooooooohhhhhhh ffffffuuuuuucccccckkkkk mmmmmmyyyyyy fffffrrrrraaames whoa what just happened shit I missed half the blocks!
IIRC you're choosing which girl you'll spend a lot of your time with from that point, so choose based on which one you're going for, if it's either of the main RTs.
I would choose Cloche since you like her. You'll spend more time with her/ doing stuff for her than with her people. I think. I chose Luca. Kind of regret it now. It sounds like you'll choose between Cloche and the third anyway.
I ended up choosing Luca because she's less despicable.
At the following dungeon area I ran into an IPD fight that I can't win. Will I be able to go back to these places at some point or must I soldier on in my crapulence?
Also, don't even try to go back and collect everything all at once so you don't miss things, you'll go nuts. Beat the game then if you feel like it go back and collect IPDs, etc.
There's a couple times you'll come across IPD fights you can't win and have to save them for later. They aren't necessary, but they're kind of fun to do. If you want to do the optional boss like 10 times for all the bonus pictures you might need to fight and cure them all so Replakia will be as strong as possible.
Before I start playing AT3, I'm going through AT1 and 2 at the LP archive, just for the heck of it. About to the end of phase 2 on AT1, and wow, I had forgotten that AT1 actually really has a good storyline and world behind it, hidden behind everything else. Props to the dude doing the LP for explaining some of the things.
Ok, I've got a question for anyone who's played through and beaten AT3.
I finally got the game back out of storage and started playing through it again. I'm at the point where you need to start making a decision between Saki and Finnel. Without spoilers, if possible, what are the pros and cons of either character? Who has a better cosmosphere, better side storyline, etc. I'm hoping I have the time to go back and play through the other revy as well, but we'll see.
They're both decent enough, but I think there's a glitch with getting 100% of Saki's cosmosphere if you do it on a second run or something. It may have just been people skipping events though. So if that matters you should probably do hers first. I think the story works better with Finnel though near the end of Act 3 or whatever, before the jump to the rest of the game. Oh also Finnel is supposed to be older, so the romance is a little less creepy with her. Saki is actually 15 after all, which makes no sense. They changed it to 16 for us, but that's really not much better.
Ok, that kinda coincides with what I was feeling. I was leaning towards Finnel, not because what either of them is doing in the real world, but because her cosmosphere seems to be more interesting with the interactions between a couple of her other persona.
I just don't have strong feelings towards either Saki or Finnel (yet?), unlike the other two games. In AT1, I really felt "I like Aurica a lot more" and AT2 I felt "I dislike Cloche the least". Just...very neutral so far. Anyways Finnel it is, thanks for the input!
AT3 beaten. Finally. I had shelved the game at the end of Phase 3 and picked up at Phase 4 a couple of weeks back.
Phase 4 in general made the game completely worth it, as the plot was surprisingly good. The ending sequence/ending itself was fantastic too. Also some of the best Hymns in the series. Ah fun.
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First off, it's been a loooong time since I enjoyed a JRPG this much.
Second, Cocona can go to hell. I hate her with such fervor simply because she's not Tatsumi.
Yeah, JRPG writing is kind of hit and miss sometimes. I don't know if it's the cultural divide or translation or both.
Haha, Katene, though. I don't know what happened after he found out, but I hope everything turned out okay with him. His relationship was the only one I cared about.
So getting this.
Once I'm finished with ME2, I'll finally sit down and play through this.
Watching a friend play through AT1 and 2 also helped rekindle my interest, as god damn this is a cool setting.
I personally think the thing that happens with Luca really isn't as bad as many people make it out to be, but it definitely resets the Cloche-vs.-Lucometer, combined with Cloche slowly pulling the roto-rooter out of her ass.
I still much prefer Luca, but I'm apparently in the minority there. Honestly all 3 reyvateils in 2 are pretty acceptable, if you're willing to forgive a few faults for the main two.
At any rate you should definitely choose one of them, because the ending for not choosing anybody is just super creepy and weird.
Naw, I was extremely pro-Luca in the beginning, and I think that's what led me to be willing to forgive her for what is a pretty big thing.
I still need to finish my 3rd reyvateil playthrough of AT2. I really want to see her deep cosmosphere levels.
The REALLY good part is there's a patch that fixes that freeze on the boss near the end of the game. Huzzah!
And there is SO much slowdown. Hell, nearly all red magic causes it to some degree, which makes a lot of the magic less cool.
It's really too bad they didn't polish these games up a little better, and get them a decent localization
At the following dungeon area I ran into an IPD fight that I can't win. Will I be able to go back to these places at some point or must I soldier on in my crapulence?
After playing AT1, it was like "Oh, cool, this game DOES have fights that will challenge me!"
I finally got the game back out of storage and started playing through it again. I'm at the point where you need to start making a decision between Saki and Finnel. Without spoilers, if possible, what are the pros and cons of either character? Who has a better cosmosphere, better side storyline, etc. I'm hoping I have the time to go back and play through the other revy as well, but we'll see.
I just don't have strong feelings towards either Saki or Finnel (yet?), unlike the other two games. In AT1, I really felt "I like Aurica a lot more" and AT2 I felt "I dislike Cloche the least". Just...very neutral so far. Anyways Finnel it is, thanks for the input!
Phase 4 in general made the game completely worth it, as the plot was surprisingly good. The ending sequence/ending itself was fantastic too. Also some of the best Hymns in the series. Ah fun.
I really don't like the battle system though.
2 had such a good one I don't understand why they felt the need to completely overhaul it,