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I absolutely love this game--it's a fantastic story, and it's pretty fun to play too. Whoever was in charge really studied Ar Tonelico 2 and figured out why that one was the best in the series, and it really shows. Shame that, like AT2, it's also riddled with some pretty catastrophic bugs (had to replay four hours due to one; that was not fun), but it's in my top five JRPGs list and may crack top five games, period. It's great.
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Apr 7, 2015 04:49
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I dunno, I think "Delta tried to kill everyone in town half a year ago, and also why doesn't he remember how Dives work?" is already pretty interesting payoff; anything in the Dive itself is going to be kind of small potatoes compared to those two questions.
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Apr 9, 2015 05:09
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:That half was more tolerable than the first. It was almost decent, in fact. But the big problem I see with that one is that it revealed more about DELTA and BACKSTORY than about Cass! This was true when there were multiple partners, but Delta and Cass will only ever be paired up with each other. This isn't a Cosmosphere, and the focus has changed--the point of Genometrics levels isn't "insight into a single person," it's "insight into a relationship." That's why they've mentioned "chaining" into other people. It's a change I really like, personally.
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Apr 10, 2015 01:20
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Clarste posted:They're all focused on Cass though. This one was about the Cass-Delta relationship, but there's also a Cass-Nay one, a Cass-Sarly one, etc. Yeah, it would've been cool to have some with a different center character, but there's the old "it's to craft song magic" excuse. You learn new frontliner attacks as you go, so having Delta with his own Genometrics would've been a cool alternate way to acquire those.
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Apr 10, 2015 06:15
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Just based off of what it says, I suspect that Hymmnos phrase is when Aurica saves Lyner from falling fairly early on on AT1, but it's been forever and I can't be arsed to look it up.
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Apr 13, 2015 02:02
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Feinne posted:Also, without going into too much detail because the game will give us some information on this regard, Ra Ciela never was in a position of coming up with Reyvateils. They used to use song magic with the assistance of genom, who weren't even inherently humanoid things, but blowing up Ra Ciela seems to have sliiiightly eradicated them. Cass and Sarly are Genomis, which we'll be hearing about a bit next plot update actually. Bottom lining it, they in the past used to be normal people. No, they're artificial Incarnates, which is the term for anything human-shaped that can sing Song Magic. (This can include Genom.) Genomis is a defense organization they both belong to.
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Apr 14, 2015 06:43
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You should probably say what the name of the talk is, Feinne, the division feels a little unclear without. Did they ever fix the glitch on TxBios Harmonics? I know they fixed the town dialogue and supposedly they fixed a flag glitch around 2-8, but the TxBios glitch is really drat big, and it's kind of annoying to test... Plus I hear it was in the Japanese versions (including the Vita Plus version), so I'm not optimistic. (For those not aware of what I mean, they screwed up all of the levels on TxBios by one: level 2 slot items activate on level 1 Harmonics, level 3 on level 2, and level 4 on level 3, and the level 1 slot items never activate at all. This is the game's most massive glitch by far, especially since you'll likely stick the best TxBios on level 1 and the additional later-level slots become available later than the earlier ones.)
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Apr 15, 2015 01:57
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Hellioning posted:This was honestly a lot less painful than the first game's obvious 'first time' metaphor, but we haven't gotten into the actual ritual yet, so I'm waiting to be disappointed. You just equip crystals to one of five body slots (on either character) and the heroine says a line as said body part glows. ("That tickles" or "hold still" or the like, depending on who gets what slotted where.) Peak Japan on it is that the final slot unlocked is "chest."
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Apr 15, 2015 02:38
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Actually, Delta DOES question the Prim/Prime thing, it's just that it's a world entry conversation and the start-of-world conversation takes priority. If you enter a world any time after Prim appears, they stop and talk about it. It's fairly easy to notice if you take a break from Sarly to stop by Zill's Genometrics. The S/M/I/O thing is a cool concept, but in practice it's really annoying. See, the main problems are A) once you pick a choice, it no longer adds points, EVER, and a number of choices are flat-out required at some point if you want all the crystals, B) using a song that belongs to a heroine pushes them towards the center, and C) while using a non-heroine song aligns their personality towards another character, actually making use of this tends to require grinding. Really could've been pulled off better.
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Apr 21, 2015 04:37
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So, do you have a save far enough back to show off that Delta-Prime conversation about Prim, Feinne? I THINK it might be time-limited before a certain Big Event, but I'm not sure.
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Apr 22, 2015 03:43
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Just think, if you were LPing Ar Nosurge Plus, there'd be three more characters with Purification chats! LP pacing? What's that? 
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Apr 23, 2015 04:10
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Clarste posted:Yeah, it's not much of a pun, his nickname was just Ta-bou. The translators may not have realized why he was called that and just assumed it was Turbo. Not unless his Encyclopedia entry is totally different in Japan. The first couple of lines are basically "he has amnesia, so he doesn't even remember he used to be called 'Ta-bou.'" It's available from the moment you can open the menu, which is basically immediately after his introduction. (I know, because the first thing I did when I got control was open the menu and go into the Encyclopedia.) Admittedly, not everyone actually looks at that sort of thing, but we're talking about people that are played through a game that takes real-time months to get through, thanks to the real-time scheduling. I think a fair number of said people looked. Plus, he looks basically the same and Casty's right there.
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Apr 24, 2015 06:29
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Hey, Feinne, can you do something like: Occupied / I'm hereso we can see the options you don't pick? (And yell at you when you pick the wrong one, like this time?) Earthes is kind of like DS2's protagonist, in that a majority of his personality is in the options that are available. He's got a sense of humor! Like here, when his first dialogue option is a choice between "Reply straightforwardly" and "Troll her," or the dials, where the options are "Honestly reply that you have no idea" or "Make poo poo up." He's pretty great. Ion is also great, but the why comes later; Delta and Casty are fun, but I really like the second set of protagonists. Also notable: there's an achievement in the first conversation for refusing the "But thou must" in "Will you help?" often enough. It's ridiculously easy to miss.
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Apr 28, 2015 01:35
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This part has a really easily missed talk topic: you need to head back to the area where you met Tattoria sometime before you get on the train. It's one of the few you can miss, and probably the one you're most likely to miss. Edit: Also, looks like both Ar Nosurge and Feinne's last LP, Hundred Knight, are on sale on PSN. If you don't have either and you have the system, now's not a bad time. Einander fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Apr 29, 2015 |
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Apr 29, 2015 03:09
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The whole Genom-Weaver thing is basically that the Genom has tons of energy but no vocal cords to sing it out into the world; this is why Prim can use Song Magic, since she's human-shaped. CIEL_NOSURGE is an extension of that, basically a way to get a giant gently caress-off artificial Genom to give you energy to sing with. Earthes is a direct conduit to the energy of another universe (that's how the robot moves), but as they point out more than once, he's telepathic. He doesn't have a voice or even a voice synthesizer, so he can't sing, but he can hand that power off to Ion. So basically what I'm saying is that if Ion had stuck Earthes inside Gato instead, he'd be kicking asses left-and-right while singing about silver points. It would be a much shorter game.
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Apr 29, 2015 06:53
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And this is a large part of why I like Ion. You pretty much have to filter everything in the game through Earthes being the Ciel Nosurge "you" (IIRC, there's only like 3-4 points where the y/n on that actually comes up, and the rest of the time they act like old friends). They've known each other for quite a while, and the nature of that time means that they know a lot about each other... And then her first Dive is an elaborate method to waste his time and ensure he never goes any further, because she doesn't actually want him there. It's very Luca. Which is a really interesting thing to do with your heroine in the sequel to a game entirely based around building up your relationship to her. They make very, very good use of the Dives here.
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Apr 30, 2015 01:01
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There's really no reason to grind for DP--without the DLC, you'll have enough DP to finish the final Dive with all crystals quite a while before the end of the game, and the DLCs just push the "DP is useless now" point back a bit. You probably won't be able to clear Dives the moment they unlock, but that's really no big deal.
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May 1, 2015 02:58
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Radium in hot springs isn't a big deal, guys--water is a shield against radioactivity in general. You wouldn't want to drink it, no, but if radioactive isotopes were in the soil in that area, you'd probably take fewer rads by being in the water than you would by being next to it.
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May 6, 2015 02:01
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Sindai posted:Just how much of the "magic code" is meaningful and how much is gibberish? Because as a programmer I have to stop and try to interpret it every time I see it and it's driving me crazy. http://artonelico.wikia.com/wiki/REON-4213_Language Go nuts.
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May 7, 2015 02:52
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I like to think that the "player controls Delta and Cass, fights Earthes and Ion" version is canon, because it makes a funny response to Ion's Genometrics. "Sabotaging our plans? TWO CAN PLAY THIS GAME, ION!" They're not very good at teamwork  I definitely didn't sympathize with Ion very much during this part; it's hard to feel equal sympathy for the beleaguered and the aggressors. Kanon's motivation is equally hard to sympathize with because there's very little that can't be excused when the alternative is complete extinction of all life. Sure, killing ALL the Sharl seems a bit extreme, but their opposition is either a) fanatical (Kanon), b) evil (Zill, Nelo) or c) unable to understand what they're doing is wrong (Prim, the Sharl)--you're not going to get them to the table without a Sword of Damocles over their heads. Admittedly, Nay doesn't seem too interested in diplomacy after two years of things getting worse and worse and 5000 years of Empressing, but presumably that's what Ion, Delta and Cass are there for.
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May 13, 2015 02:40
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megamariox posted:I find it kinda hard to sympathize with Delta and Cass and the rest of humanity. I mean even though they have been pushed to the brink, pretty much everything that has happened to push them to the brink has been entirely humanities fault. Most of those people just inherited someone else's lovely decisions, though... Particularly the Ancients like Delta and Cass, who inherited Nelo, got frozen for 5000 years, and then woke up right as she moved onto Plan B. Nay in particular has spent her entire life getting kicked from one lovely situation to the next with no real power to actually improve any of it.
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May 13, 2015 04:50
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I enjoy Ar Nosurge a lot more as a story where you're just kind of dropped into things and expected to deal--you generally know everything by the time it's relevant, and if you don't then it's almost immediately explained. You really don't miss anything by skipping Ciel--it feels like something between a fandisc and a background materials encylopedia, serving mainly to make you connect to the characters while it explains the setting, and I think Ar Nosurge does enough in that category. (Plus, you get to emphasize with Delta, who's finding out everything at basically the same pace as a fresh player.) I hate the Nay fight, because it's basically a straight-up "are your numbers big enough" test--as Feinne showed so dramatically, the margin of error is ridiculously small even with Nelico's Friend Skill. (Also getting Tattoria's helps--you can actually acquire it almost immediately, though I'm not sure what the exact trigger is other than "enter and leave his shop a whole bunch.") Once you get through to her, it's pretty trivial to break her,and her post-Break damage is pitiful.
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May 15, 2015 04:25
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I'm reminded of an ending song to one particular game, called CANOE. The song is a metaphorical story where children cut down trees to build a tower, and as they climb it, they see a larger place on the distant horizon... So they cut down more trees, constructing a great raft to sail there. In the end, to make the mast, they have to cut down the nurturing Mother Tree. They look back at the island as they sail away and see a ruined wasteland of stumps, an island entirely barren of trees, eroding away because there's nothing to hold the island together against the waves. This is the point where most stories would say, "Look at that, isn't it sad? Humans are the real monsters!" CANOE says, "It's fine. All of this was so we could find hope and live on." It's a pretty refreshing perspective on the idea of a living planet and incoming apocalypse.
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May 25, 2015 01:26
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I don't think that the point of Ion is to criticize the concept of 2D waifus so much as that part happens along the way. Ion mirrors Luca in the same way that a lot of other parts of Ar Nosurge mirror AT2. Part of the problem with how they worked Luca into AT2 is that they just didn't have time to establish Luca and Croix as a preexisting relationship before they had to burn everything down to open up the route choice. Ciel Nosurge fixes this by giving you that time, letting you get to know this character while only giving you shallow glimpses into her head, so that Ar Nosurge can show up and establish that things weren't quite as they seemed. She also contrasts with Cass, who bases a lot more of her life around Delta and his problems. Ion has her priorities, and everything else comes second.
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May 27, 2015 22:06
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:Great! ...if you've played Ciel Nosurge. Which didn't get a western release - probably because they (rightly) figured no one would buy it. It's probably not a great idea to put so much of Ion's character development gated behind a different game. Dude, I really don't think you can criticize the original writers for business decisions by an entirely different company in an entirely different country. If we're talking about the quality of the writing, Koei Tecmo's English branch doesn't have much to do with it. So if we ignore the selective localization, you're effectively arguing against the existence of sequels, which is stupid. I think Ar Nosurge works well enough on its own, but it's obvious there was a particular arc of introduction to the character that the writers intended. If you're talking about Ion as a character, it's a relevant thing to address. Stabbey_the_Clown posted:Fixed for you. See Synthetic Polygon's response. Plus, both of them were ripped out of their everyday lives on a dying planet and thrown into an even worse hellhole, which is basically about as conducive an environment to insular codependence as anything... And then Delta also lost all of his memories. If they had an entirely healthy social life after all the things they've had heaped on their heads, we'd all be calling bullshit. It's not a normal relationship, and that's what makes it interesting!
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May 27, 2015 23:05
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EXSPHERE NOSURGE is... probably my third favorite song in this game? Which says a lot, because it's really drat good. That said, if you haven't played the game, you should probably wait a bit before looking at the lyrics, the first hit for them has Really Big Spoilers on the page. (Obviously, since the song is part of the bad guys' evil plan.)
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Jun 9, 2015 03:09
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Glazius posted:But if you're an 8th-dimensional intelligence, how can you go home? Or is it just that in a higher dimension you're already there? That would be the flaw in Nelo's plan that Feinne alluded to previously: even if absorbing Nelo wasn't strictly necessary to make a proper Overseer (and makes Nelo getting home impossible), it's loving Zill, of course she would. The scorpion and the frog and all that. Einander fucked around with this message at 02:24 on Jun 11, 2015 |
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Jun 11, 2015 02:22
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Something happens if you select LOGOUT in that choice, right? I think I remember that.ACES CURE PLANES posted:No sane person ever put Luca in their party. Not willingly at least. Not after the scene. I've really, really never gotten this. Did they not telegraph "she's attempting to push everyone away because failure just activated all her self-loathing issues" hard enough or something? They're not exactly subtle about it.
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Jul 3, 2015 03:38
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Good, I think that's for the best. The end of the phase really is all one big thing, and it'd kind of suffer if separated out.
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Jul 5, 2015 18:34
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XIO_PROCEED is roughly tied for my favorite song in the game, both for the way it sounds and the way the lyrics and style shift throughout the song. The best example is how "seja-eq fuai-jen-a euz" is used at the beginning and end--it starts out as part of her determined proclamation of why she's singing ("For the sake of returning things to the way they should be") and ends up as a desperate, pleading refrain that things shouldn't be like this ("This is to return things to the way they should be, so / This is to return things to the way they should be, so / This is to return things to the way they should be, so / This is to return things to the way they should be, so / Please don't leave me alone"). And that shift from confidence to despair is everywhere. Executing the actual song gets intensifiers of "Quickly, quickly, with all my power" or "Strongly, strongly, strongly, more than anyone." Pleading for this to all stop gets an intensifier of "Strongly, more than anyone, crazily, with all my power." It's just a really effective contrast to her Genometrics. Icedude posted:That scene with Delta at the end there really annoyed me the first time I got to it. Still does, really. I spent all this time helping him and stuff and they don't give us an option to not be a total dick to him when we finally get to talk directly to him? Or an option to at least be worried about Ion if you've finished her side first, and ask for Delta for help? It just feels totally out of place that you have no option other than to be an rear end in a top hat or an even bigger rear end in a top hat. Omobono posted:I've just played this part and the options in the Vita version are actually far more reasonable (e.g. I just want to save your world) until Delta loses it because it's the only sane reaction to the situation. Then it's back to Darth Player using force lightning, and I feel it's really out of place. I don't want to go Sith on a poor dude that is completely right in freaking off; for all Delta knows we're the reason he opened the barrier before the game, hell he could even be right. So basically what you're saying is that Earthes is acting directly against your preferences at the exact same time that Delta is rebelling against his own controller? It's really a rather clever use of parallelism to establish him as a character, and it's totally intentional--he's a lot more attached to Ion than the player is likely to be, and the thought of her being in danger makes him flip the gently caress out in a way that drives home that distance.
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Jul 6, 2015 23:18
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