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[GUST] Games. Atelier Ryza is now out, post your opinions here.
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I think it's cool how there's some conversation hints snuck in with the girls nighttime dialogues. Like how Misha mentions Lyner should make her a white kimono to go with his hakama, and then the kimono is her ceremony dress in level 9.
Lyner is dumber than a sack of hammers. You'll have to get used to that.
I love that they throw that one joke about that in Ar NoSurge.
Well it is a giant JRPG trope, and a running gag for the Exa Pico games with the exception of AT2.
Must be a Virus Code or something. It's exactly as it sounds, a high powered crystal that offers a lot of benefits, but will occasionally cause problems. Experiment with it and see if it's worth the effects, but I believe the risks depend on who it's on. Radolf I believe is the person it does the least to.
It is a virus code. Are the risks part of the stats, or do they happen randomly in battle? It in part has the same effects as an upgrade type crystal which makes it's stat changes even harder to lock down. I'm not really hurting for level 4 crystals right now, so it's probably gonna collect dust at least until I start getting more gear with level 4 slots.
Truthfully, it's been so long since I played the first game, I can't really remember what it does. Most Gust games are fairly easy, so you could either test it and see, or just leave it alone and never use it. I doubt it's a make or break decision, nor do I think the effects are enough to ruin the experience if you do try it. Wish I could help more.
Or in other words, the route that has been ruled out explicitly as non-canon by the latter games and supplementary material, and that does a poor role of explaining the overall Phase 2 events, as well as making two dungeons completely inaccessible.
The only risks are that it massively drops your stats... or better said, some of the Reyvateil-exclusive stats like GD-Resist and Harmonics, but increases most others. You can safely use it on your vanguards with no consequences.
...Have a bad day at work today? Wanna talk about it?
But he forgot how to grathmeld too? Also, given the flashbacks, he wasn't that young when Misha left. Personally, I remember lots of the kids from when I was young. Even as far back as kindergarten and early elementary school. I certainly would have remembered someone as important as Misha.
Not everyone has the same memory abilities when it comes to remembering people from their past, as there's some that can't remember even people they met recently if they don't contact them frequently, and there's still the key part of Misha having pretty much disappeared from Lyner's life due to never seeing her, nor hearing any mentions of her in eleven years. In fact, according to the official timeline, Misha left for Em Pheyna in year 3359 AD, when Misha and Lyner were both 7-years old, while AT1 begins in 3770 AD.
As for how Lyner made the ocarina, it was just through mere craftmanship. There's no way he could have learned Grathmelding before having taking the lessons in Karulu at the game's start because no one in Platina excepting Shurelia knows what Grathmelding is, and even so, her knowledge of it is purely theoretical.
Seems like a long-winded, nice way of saying 'Lyner kinda stupid'.
And yet... they were a crush, their first, and you don't forget that easily. I'll say Lyner is a product of his upbringing, but it doesn't excuse how stupid or douchey he is at times.
I'd argue though that the only thing about which he is genuinely stupid is about maintaining the relationship with the girls, and in fact, the events of the Flash Cosmospheres and the first light novel were all caused in a good part due to his denseness and general lack of sensitivity.
The third girl in every Ar Tonelico game is decidedly older and more powerful than the other two. Two of the games they're the goddess of the island, the administrator that is responsible for keeping the islands afloat.
It also means they don't have a cosmosphere, and what they do have is exponentially more powerful than the other girls, that tapping into it would turn a human brain into pudding. So they make a world in their own head for you to explore, and it heavily lampshades the Visual Novel style even MORE than the cosmosphere, enough that it has its own intro and credits.
And Lyner is neutronium dense
Nosurge is pretty much set in a different universe with one specific exception from Ar Tonelico 1. You can play it and not spoil yourself with any of the Ar Tonelico series. Just understand that it's very different from the first series, and isn't a good litmus test for what to expect in the previous trilogy.
It's also a sequel to a social/dating game that never came to the US, so there's a lot of lore you miss out on, or that you'll have to read up on.
I'm aware of those things. It's a gust game though, so chances are good I'll enjoy it. I wanted to finish the ar tonelico games before I dove into the nosurge stuff, so I'm doing that. I'm just wondering if I should get it now or hold off. I doubt it's going anywhere though, and it'll probably go on sale again, so I'll prolly hold off.
It only has references to AT1, and only very late in the game. Since you've played that already, you can go ahead without issue.
Except for the fact it's not in an entirely different universe, as the Surge Concerto games only take place in a different planet from the Ar tonelico games. Their shared physics rules should be enough to tip off anyone that both series exist on the same cosmological plane even without having to read the world settings wiki where the developers explicitly stated that. And that's without mentioning that Ra Ciela's civilization ended accidentally being what allowed the creation of the very power source (the Orgel of Origins) that allows Ar tonelico to work.
Feel free to pick it up while the sale is going on and hold onto it until you're done with the other games. Contrary to what other people say, playing AT2 and AT3 will let you understand more easily some things about Ar nosurge's plotline when the time comes (the Wills of the Planet, the Heart of the Land, and other similar concepts) that seem to come from left field to those who aren't familiar with the series and its world.
Additionally, you can also watch a playthrough for Ciel nosurge in YouTube that has all the important story-related content translated if you want to be aware of everything that goes on in Ar nosurge. It's currently up at chapter 9 of 12, but they should be done with it in a few more months at the speed they're uploading each episode.
Yeah there's a lot of overt aggression that can come from really hardcore fans when they disagree on a particular interpretation of something.
It was only because some people were criticizing (in a very destructive way) his work on the writeup and the translation videos. He ultimately decided to go back to it but left the summary only for archival purposes, as he admits it wasn't a good way to introduce people to Ciel's story and he also added that people miss out on a lot from not seeing the scenes set to the music and voice acting made for the game. That's why he also insists that if anyone wants to experience Ciel but can't read Japanese, they should watch the videos instead of reading the writeup.
I was going to wait until I finished Cold Steel before starting on Rorona but since I'm bottlenecked with Trails FC (and I hardly ever get time to sit in front of my PC to finish that game), I've gone ahead and fired this up. Anything I should know before I get too far?
青！
Fancy seeing you here.
My best advice is to have fun.
Some more useful tips:
This game is a crafting game. Make your own stuff and use it in battle. The attack items in this game are cheap, strong, and usually multiple use. Once you unlock the ability, forge your own equipment with good traits.
Keep multiple saves and save often. You can save on the field between areas.
Time management wise, the most important thing to do is make sure that you get all the stars at the bottom of each assignment. The stars in the middle don't matter for your final assessment, but make sure you have all 10 of the big gold ones.
Don't worry about missables. There's a lot of them, and the game has a NG+ feature for a reason.
Time is Money. Have a good idea of what you have more of, and take advantage of it (for instance, once you get far enough in the game, shopkeepers will sell things that you register with them. It makes sense to register some things you tend to use a lot of, and buy them when you have more money than time. If you find yourself having extra days, then spend more time gathering ingredients and making stuff yourself rather than buying them)
People you hire to come with you on adventures only charge when you leave town so don't worry about leaving them in your party.
Online info is probably wrong. Most of the info I've found is from the original version of the game without all the plus enhancements/rebalancing.
Oddly enough, I believe the Rorona Plus game has some stuff later that spoils the next two games. There's not terribly much to spoil, but I'd still recommend playing them in order, even though there's not a lot linking them together.
Other than that, play with the mantra that alchemy solves everything, including combat. The Arland trilogy is the set of Atelier games where time restraints are much stricter, so keep that in mind too.
If you're interested in fully clearing them or the bonus content, reading an FAQ is basically required, even on NG+ when the main game is facerollingly trivialized because despite how easy most of the game is even on NG, it's easy to miss required flags because it's just random bullshit like "Oh, you didn't bring this character on this one optional quest for no reason? Welp, guess you're locked out of their ending, the you're so awesome ending, and a bunch more scenes. No we're not even going to tell you this either." And the power jump between the main game and the extra bosses is retardedly insane, and requires max/min that is totally unneeded anywhere in the main game, compounded by the system being both poorly translated and literally hiding needed shit in the alchemy system behind multiple layers of nonsense.
Also, if you're not into girls faffing around, you're going to have a bad time. Rorona Plus was probably the best about not being too painful with that thanks to the much smaller cast. Meruru is the worst thanks to the huge cast. You go out and do some gameplay shit for an hour, then come back and have 40 straight minutes of cutscenes queued up. Totori has its own issues since it tries to be more organic than the monthly assignment system, but it gives you like, a year's worth of stuff to do, and three years to do it in the relatively small first area, and you're expected to either suck at the game, or spend it puttering around, making bread.
Forewarned is forearmed. The Dusk series is a huge improvement over all of them, as were the PS2 ones, especially the Khemias, although Dusk is still huge on the insipid faffing and queued up cutscenes that go nowhere and never end getting in the way of actually playing the game. And I'm still bitter about them throwing out everything they did with Khemia's battle system to come up with... this crap.
IIRC the rorona plus spoilers are all in the post-game stuff. I think you could play rorona but not do the post-game/ng+ stuff until you've played the other two.
As long as the game is fun I can get past a little bit of faffing about. My real pet peeve is over-the-top cheesecake. I don't mind mature content but if it's the kind of thing I wouldn't want on my screen with the girlfriend in the room, I'll probably dislike it.
Mass Effect/Dragon Age romance scenes: fine
Persona overly-sexualized battle costumes: ehhhhh
Actual eroge: not into it
青！
Most Atelier games would pass the Bechdel Test. There's pretty much zero romance in the games, especially with the protagonists. When you see it, it tends to be lampshaded, like with an NPC hitting her 30's and looking for a man comically/violently. The ladies very rarely talk about men, and mostly talk about their own issues.
The lack of bullshit annoying tropes is what Atelier tends to do really well. Aside from the swimsuit DLC shit, which is entirely optional and can be avoided.
Now, the game does have some pretty creepo fanservice by way of extra content(i.e. really disturbingly low cut bikini costumes on characters that are like 16 when the game starts), but aside from playing around in the dressing room, you'll never otherwise see that kind of content in the normal course of the game. GUST has been good about keeping it out of the everyday gameplay.
You really really really want to focus on getting the "quality of life" upgrades for your characters as soon as they become available. Each game has certain items like travel boots and harvest gloves you can either equip or carry with you that do things like shave off time taken to travel and time taken to harvest, which are basically essential. Some of the games also grant additional bonuses to those items based on how well you craft them, such as further reduced time, additional bag space, storage access from the field and passively increasing loot drop rates.
Don't be afraid to experiment either. You can get some ridiculously, unfairly degenerate items through properly planned crafting. Each game has a bonus dungeon as well that's fully aware of this fact and you'll need to break the game to beat those bosses.
Also make sure you properly swag up your Rorona. (spoiler'd for size)
Also, unlike the oddly angry ArcTangent, I really liked the cutscenes/story scenes in the Arland series and Escha and Logy . They felt like a reward as opposed to a hindrance. To me anyways. I think it just depends on how much you like the characters and their interactions.
But yeah, I feel that the Arland games in particular are sort of designed to play through more than once. So don't stress about your first time through too much. You'll get even more stuff to do and things/scenes to see the second time through! (if you want.)
The endless flood of unskippable vapid cutscenes interrupting attempts to actually play the games in the most frustrating of all possible ways is only the greatest of all their terrible design sins. And even that could've been salvaged if they weren't "I like being friends, doing my best, and pies. Me too! I too also enjoy having friends, doing my best, and pies. Let's all be friends, do our best, and have pies"x37. Maybe if pies was a euphemism (an issue in the PS2 era too, but not thrust into the spotlight), but alas. Or the characters not all Martians with a comically literal understanding of human interaction, but again, alas. Dusk tried to fix things by upping the scale and iteratively getting closer and closer to Khemia's battle system, but was still dragging far too much of the baggage Arland dumped on the franchise. And its hippie environmentalist message was... not well delivered either, to put it lightly.