Ar Tonelico

The Core Video Games Forum
1

Oh yes, I’m playing THIS game now. NOT for the innuendo, mind you. I actually find the setting and the whole concept of the Reyvateils fascinating. But as with Tales of Legendia, I’m having a problem: I’m using a Gamefaqs walkthrough to play the game. Problem is, this game has multiple paths (at least two) according to which girl you choose to keep in your party. Unfortunately, the one I chose first (Misha) is apparently NOT covered on the Gamefaqs FAQS! I tried going at it solo but soon found myself lost with no idea of where to go next. Finally I gave up and started playing the Aurica version instead (good thing I had made a separate save for it on a second slot.) I think I’m about to finish Phase 2 with her (just saved Platina city from Bishop Falss.) But my worry is what I’ll do once I get back to playing the Misha strand. So, anybody know? All I know is that I’m supposed to look for a way out of the Tower into Firefly Alley, which come to think was the same thing in the Aurica version, except there I found the place quickly, but in Misha’s I cannot seem to.

Also, in Aurica’s quest, I’m supposed to make her a stuffed Don Leon doll, but I don’t have the materials. Where can I find them?

Other than those problems, I’m liking the game a lot, despite the fact that it looks more like a PS One than a PS 2 game.

Any help is appreciated. :wink:

2

There’s only one land path into and from Firefly Alley: The exact same one you took when you escaped from it. It connects to the Terraced Fields, which were a little below Nemo.

The special items for the final Cosmosphere quests won’t be available for a long while, same for Misha’s ocarina.

By the way, once you hit Phase 3, check this out. It’s a pretty useful guide for how to get the more annoying Talk Topics.

3

Seraphym: Exactly what is the point of the Misha quest? I know by now that Aurica was meant to be used as Mir’s avatar. Does the same happen to Misha? And, do you also have to fix the “Musical Corridor” (the weather control satellites) in her quest too? Because that’s what I figured, but I get my party all the way to the Corridor and nothing happens. Or is there some other quest for them?

Oh, and I just found the Don Leon materials, turns out they (or rather, the recipes to make them) were on sale at the Platina Fancy Shop after the invasion. Thanks anyway. Now, if only I had enough money left for Diving, but I used it all up buying supplies. I’m always short of money in this game. (Why does Diving cost money but the Inns are FREE??)

And thanks for the Topics List, that’s going to be a big help. :wink:

4

The Musical Corridor is actually not even a mandatory area in Misha’s side, I was pretty confused in my first playthrough when I just randomly stumbled into that area that had nothing in it. The same for Tenba’s lab in Aurica’s side.

There’s no real big secret with Misha’s quest, you’ve already been told what you need to do: Find the Chronicle Key Hymmn that was stolen from her by Tenba so she can resume her singing at the Crescent Chronicle… wait, you did stop by in Em Pheyna to talk with Tastiella, did you?

Misha can’t be used as a terminal anyway. Aurica was precisely prepared for that by Falss, notice her Hymn Code is MULE_TEIWAZ_ARTONELICO (Mule = Mir in the original version, they forgot to romanize the codes) even though 3rd Gen Reyvateils aren’t even supposed to have Hymn Codes to begin with.

For money: Make Gravard Compasses. They sell for a whole lot more than the materials, and once you get enough money you can start making them in mass numbers.

Another trick: Make an A-Ranked Acordonite. When transformed to a Grathnode Crystal, this gives you the Genuine 100, an otherwise worthless crystal that just happens to be S Rank. It’s useless for anything else, but it’s a very cheap way of getting perfect crystals for recipies to make all your stuff S-Rank, which in turn allows you to get the most useful S-Ranked crystals from those items. This nets you some ludicrously powerful customization options.

5

Oh, so the Corridor is not necessary on Misha’s quest? Glad to see I wasn’t the only one confused by that. And yes, I spoke with Tasty, I know about the missing song, I just had no idea where to look for it. I guess I need to go to the Tenba Lab (that was crushed under the Hexagonal Plate) right?

I was very disappointed by Bishop Falss’s betrayal, I mean I saw it coming from a mile away (do these religious types in RPGs EVER turn out to be sincere?) but I kept praying they would avoid the cliche. That his plan to use Mir made no sense was even worse. Ah well, at least it gave us a pretty moving scene between Lyner and Aurica.

And thanks also for the tips on selling stuff, so far I haven’t exploited the recrystallization possibilities, but I really should.

6

Falss actually had a pretty good point. You don’t really realize it until you check out some of the side materials (Mostly untranslated sound dramas), but most of the Sol Ciel remnants (Shurelia’s Tower and surrounding land, what is left of the country of Sol Ciel) are mostly largely misguided suckers whose history and understanding of technology are vague hand-me-downs from old misinterpreted information. The “Trio of Elemia” in particular is a laughably misunderstood story. The tower as it stood at that time was basically a giant prison for Mir that existed only for that purpose, and nobody was going anywhere until they solved that problem. His method was pretty retarded and was more or less what caused the second collapse in the first place, but the idea behind it had some logic.

A big running joke on this is Lyner himself, who is somehow capable of creating, reverse-engineering and even improving 1st Era technology without actually understanding the first thing about any of it. One of the dramas even has a young Lyner very exitedly showing Shurelia how he managed to become stronger using his “force of spirit”.

In reality, he basically just put together a random string of Hymnos Spell characters (Simple preset commands for the tower that anyone with certain authority can issue, different from Hymnos Words/“Song Magic”) that redirected some of the tower’s energy into his sword. This was actually a 1st Era technique that allowed humans to directly employ the Tower’s power and was long since banned to prevent more misuse and warfare. It’s also why his Impulse tech does magic wind damage even though he has no special equipment to create those effects, why he can use it from the beginning of the battle without increasing the Reyvateil’s harmonic level (Nobody else can do that) and what he was actually going to do against those wolves at the beginning of the game before Jack dragged him off to learn Grathmelding.

7

Er, the guy is called Falss. What did you expect with such a name? It reads like false being pronounced by a ssssnake.

8

I forgot to mention: No, the lab on which the Music Corridor chunk fell on isn’t the correct one. You need to go back to the Tenba HQ in Firefly Alley, the place where Lyner was captured. Remember the door you couldn’t approach because Misha felt scared? That’s where you need to go.

Of course, if you think it’ll be anywhere near as direct and trouble-free as that, you haven’t played many RPGs.

9

Rig: Well, duh. Why do you think my first reaction to meeting the guy was OH GOD NOT ANOTHER VILLAIN PRIEST! But since there were NO clues to his being evil at all I kept hoping, maybe it’s a red herring? No such luck. x_x

Seraphim: Oh yeah, the fact that the first two disasters were not clearly explained from the start were clues to me that some “big” secret revelation is due (I’ve already discovered that the second one was actually a war with Reyvateils. Strange how this doesn’t seem to faze the characters more though.)

But you know what REALLY annoys me? The fact the makers of this game NEVER BOTHERED TO MAKE MORE THAN ONE PICTURE FOR EACH CHARACTER! (The exception being Aurica and Misha, and only because of their costume changes.) It gets downright ridiculous how the characters change their facial expressions but not their body postures regardless of what is happening. Poor Lyner got stuck with a “I’ll stand here with my fist on my hip” supermodel pose the entire game. Sheesh!
:no2:

10

The first collapse is never really expanded on. According to source material, Sol Ciel and Sol Cluster were at war and something or other caused the Grathnode Inferia (Too long to explain, but basically a magical nuclear meltdown without the nuclear part) that pretty much destroyed the surface and forced everyone to move into the three Towers.

Incidentally, Lyner can cause another such catastrophe with one of the items he manages to come up with, a pocket-sized version of the Symphonic Reactor that powers the Tower, with equal output as the Tower itself. This is played completely for jokes.

The reason the second collapse doesn’t bother anyone is simple: Nobody atcually remembers it. That’s how misinformed and ignorant the people of the 3rd Era are. Most of them don’t register how the world was before or how much of a ruin they inhabit. Even the Apostles know very little of anything, which is why they use names like “Altar of Apostles” for the Symphonic Reactor. The only real source of information on past events is Shurelia, and while she doesn’t mean to keep anything secret, she usually doesn’t run into any situation in which any of that infromation is needed, or anyone who’s particularily interested. Cue impossibly kind Reyvateil-lover Lyner Barsett to the scene.

11

Incidentally, Lyner can cause another such catastrophe with one of the items he manages to come up with, a pocket-sized version of the Symphonic Reactor that powers the Tower, with equal output as the Tower itself. This is played completely for jokes.

I can’t wait to see THAT happen!
:hahaha;

The reason the second collapse doesn’t bother anyone is simple: Nobody atcually remembers it.
No, that’s not what I mean. I mean that the PCs didn’t seem to react to being told that the long-ago war had been between humans and Reivateils as if it mattered. You’d think that at least Liner or the girls would have gone “We were enemies once? Gasp!!” Of course, maybe they just don’t believe it, or will react more to it at a later date in the game (I just crossed the Blastline, btw.)

But you know, in general, if the collapse of civilization after the second disaster was sufficiently big, I wouldn’t find it that hard to believe that today’s people would know nothing but false legends about it. And it iS possible to use a technology you don’t really understand… but also incredibly risky. Maybe Shurelia doesn’t want people to start making WMDs again…

12

That’s precisely what the Covenant of Elemia and the Teru Tribe’s draconian guarding of the Em Pheyna gate were for, things were way too unstable to risk an armed uprising while what’s left of the world is hanging by a thread.

And yes, the collapse was sufficiently big. The fact is, they are basically going “Oh, so there was trouble with the Reyvateill population once, huh, man they probably were treated as shit” which is more or less what really happened and don’t put blame on them, though they fail to grasp exactly how big that mess was.

The current Sol Ciel is made of the Tower, what’s left of the Wings of Horus, and Firefly Alley. After the Grathmeld Inferia, everyone moved up to the artificial continent they had created in the tower, Horus. It’s called the Wings because there were two, east and west wings, both held by a mechanism called the Plasma Bell. Nemo is precisely just beside the west bell (That ball of light). The west area at the time of the second collapse was mostly deserted, the majority of the population moved to the east wing.

You may notice, there’s practically nothing to the east of Nemo, and no glowing ball on the other side. Try and guess what happened.

13

Incidentally, Seraph, where are you finding all these story facts? Is everything revealed later in the game, or in the sequel (I know it’s already out in Japan) or in some behind-the-scenes book ala the one they did for Saga Frontier?

Oh, and I just completed Aurica’s Cosmosphere… heh, I must admit “diving” has been my favorite part of the game, both because it’s very touching (I feel like I know Aurica and Misha better as people as a result) and just because it’s unlike anything I’ve done before in an RPG (at least to this escale.) And using the last level of the Cosmosphere to make references to other games from the same company was a riot!! :hahaha;

Oh btw, do you know if there is a canonical ending for the game (for purposes of the sequel) and if so, which girl Lyner gets to keep? (Personally, I’d choose Misha. Aurica is too whiny and clingy. Besides he sort of already had a relationship with Misha, even if he doesn’t remember her for some reason.)

14

Wouldn’t bother bringing this up if it were in the game itself. Ar Tonelico has a huge amount of background details, from essentially the whole timeline, a pretty extensive theory of how Hymns work, the Hymnos language (Yes, the songs that aren’t in Japanese actually mean something, they aren’t random gibberish), how Reyvateils work, etc. Even the quirky way the songs are named in the soundtrack (i.e. “EXEC_PURGER/.#Misha Extracting” or “EXEC_HYMME_LUMINOUS_DEF” for example) is because of the difference between hymns, each part of the code actually having it’s own meaning.

All of this is just vaguely alluded to in the first game. The second might expand a bit, but the large bulk of it in side-materials. I’m not sure if any of them have been translated, I’m mostly going by some summaries I’ve gotten from some guys I know. I don’t think there’s a single source for this stuff in English.

Some of it is arguably a bit of a ret-con. Shurelia, Misha and Mir are supposed to be the last existing Reyvateils in the tower capable of singing Extract Hymns (those in Hymn Chrystals), Aurica can do it because she had Mir’s hymn code implanted in her, but even before realizing that, nobody seems to find that the least bit weird. The rest might be excused, but Lyner and Misha should know that much.

And no, as far as I’ve heard, the second game only has a cameo of the three girls in someone else’s Cosmosphere, it doesn’t make any mention of (almost) anyone in AT1, though what happened in the first game does influence that story. The only thing canonical is that the first story ended with the Phase 3 best ending.

15

Ok, I have now completed Phase Two of the game, and seen the “This is how it ends if you want to stop playing here” ending. (Odd idea, btw- allowing poor Shurelia to stay in her pseudo-dead state? Seriously, why would that be an ending at all? I just don’t see Lyner and Co. not at least wondering if she could be revived.) I assume this is NOT the canonical ending?

Of course, I did not save then, so I could just replay the last part and thus choose to go on to Phase 3.

You know, something bothered me about this ending: the lack of use of deadly force, from both sides. First, Shurelia/Mir captures the one man who knows how she can be separated from her stolen body (Lyner’s father) but LEAVES HIM ALIVE WHERE THE HEROES EASILY FOUND HIM! And she was all shocked when they showed up with the FFT device!! Who’s she, Dr. Evil!? Then, we later find out that Mir’s body is still alive within the tower. This is a big deal- how come no one simply suggested, “Let’s kill it??” This may sound odd coming from me, but I’m just trying to see what THEIR rationally for not killing such a dangerous being (who probably doesn’t even need her living body anymore) is. Using the whole blasted tower as a prison just for her seems incredibly impractical.

I have also now completed reading Falss’s notes in the library. Isn’t it nice of him to leave a detailed diary of all his eeeevil plans so we can find out about them? Yes, I know this is as much of a villain cliche as not killing the hero while he’s helpless is; but at least I now understand the reasons for many of the earlier events in the game, as well as the connection between past events such as Misha’s and Aurica’s tragic lives.

I’m also getting a little tired of Lyner’s “We’ll think of something later!” approach to being a hero. It’s OK to have faith, but winning without a plan is just as bad a cliche as the ones above.

Oh, and I DID find a walkthrough for Misha’s side of the story on Gamefaqs after all. I didn’t expect to find it on its own separate section, but whatever. I’ll play it after I’m done with Aurica’s.

16

Obviously not.

In fact, the fake ending in Phase 2 gets worse. The Tower in Meta Falss (Where AT2 takes place, no relation to Bishop Bullshit here) sort of depends on the other two for some of its energy supplies. Before the start of AT2, the temporary shut down of the Sol Ciel tower (Shurelia’s) caused the Meta Falss tower to cut down some of its systems, among them those that supported some of its areas. Crash. A lot of people were killed. This is canonical, but if the story had ended at Phase 2, none of Meta Falss would have been there by AT2 at all.

As for point 1: Yeah, it was retarded, but then again getting the FFT Divider was suicidal, so… whatever.

Point 2: Actual plot point, decides the ending. Won’t say more. Also related to Lyner thinking ahead for once. Seriously, fucker is pretty much Shurelia’s favorite bodyguard which essentially makes him the Big Cheese among Platina’s armed forces. Then again, he precisely has this ungodly beyond-possiblity plot-bullshit-to-the-max talent for coming up with shit on the spot.

EDIT: Holy fuck can you believe this shit.

17

I liked this game as well. I finished it with Aurica and never bothered to make that stuffed animal. Misha should play very similiar to Aurica’s playthrough. The game is fun. You wouldn’t think it was by just looking at it.

18

Gather 'round, boys and girls, because Uncle Wil has a story to tell:

Tonight, at 74:15 gameplay hours, I finished Ar Tonelico (well, one of its multiple endings anyway) and I got one of those I-can’t-believe-I-beat-THAT-final-Boss moments!!

Spoilers on, of course:

[SPOILER]The last Boss had two forms to fight, with no break between them- no big surprise there, happens in lots of games. Unfortunately, no sooner the fight begins, it used an attack that hit ALL of my characters -INCLUDING MY REYVATEIL, SOMETHING NO OTHER FOE IN THE GAME, NOT EVEN ITS FIRST FORM, HAD DONE- and of course, she was killed right off. WTF?? There went my spells, INCLUDING the resurrection spell. And yes, by that point I HAD used up all my reviving items as well! The attack also killed off two of my other characters, leaving me with only one- Radolf, the Knight (he had a lot of HP.) So, I had ONE character left, with no way to bring back the others, and oh yeah, I couldn’t even use his special attacks since in this game you have to wait until the Reyvateil’s Harmony level rises enough first, and with her K.O. apparently that doesn’t happen. Duhh! (In any case, those attacks use up his HP, so they would only help him die faster. I KNEW I was going to resent the combat specialization in this game at some point.)

I almost turned the game off right then, but after ALL the work it took me to take down Mir’s first form I did NOT feel like giving up. So I just said, “El Martinez is no quitter! Just kill him off already, b*tch!!”

And then, to my amazement, I realized that he was actually SURVIVING her attacks!!

You see, I had equipped him with a regeneration crystal. And since (due to his higher speed) he got two turns to Mir’s one, he actually was recovering ALMOST all of his HP (when she used her less powerful attack) and while the big one lowered his HP down dangerously, I could bring it back up using the healing items I had left (I had about 14 “Dokkoi Sets” left.)

So I wondered: could I actually beat her like this? I realized I could keep him fighting for a while, at least until I ran out of healing items- but with ONLY my spear attack, which did VERY little damage, this could take a VERY long time! Did I have the patience to do it??

Well, yep, I did. :smiley: It took about an HOUR (total) to beat Mir, but I did have enough patience! Either that or I’m too stubborn to give up. U Decide! :wink:

Of course, I was INCREDIBLY lucky to find myself in that circumstance -and the next time I fight her, I’ll be better prepared. Still, this is definitely one of my most memorable game wins ever!
:biggrin:[/SPOILER]

One thing, though: after all that crap about saving Mir, after her defeat she disappears without saying anything?? You’d think there would be a big, sentimental scene there (like all the others the game had.) Maybe the game originally did not have her survive, and they just rewrote it at the last minute?

Oh, I also found out that there WAS an extra level to Shurelia’s Cosmosphere. They try to trick you with a false (and tragic) ending to the story, complete with ending credits! But when I checked again, I found that there WAS a part left to the story, in fact one that actually connected to the main story!! It also happens to be Mir’s only personal appearance -as a character, I mean- in the entire game!) Now THAT surprised me, and I’m again glad I’m so stubborn when it comes to checking everything out before I finish a game, because that led me to find the true ending. Just wanted to give you folks the heads up about that.

19

I don’t mean to sound like an ass Wil, but you can see how many levels are in the Cosmosphere from the moment you get the Reyvateil just by looking at the talk topic slots, it was a given that there’d be a 5th :stuck_out_tongue:

And yeah, real Mir was a bad surprise the first time around, though that was when I had to first get my ass through Tastiella because I wanted to see the bad ending, so I was even worse off. Decided to use the “Ar Tonelico?” in a fit of desperation. That was a surprise.

By the way, there’s absolutely NO FUCKING REASON WHATSOEVER for the goddamn girl to be that strong in that fight (She’s a REYVATEIL, they die if you so much as BREATHE on them!), or that monstrous armor-thingie she uses at first (Seriously, where the fuck did THAT come from?). Couldn’t they have added some robot guardians or something to not make her so overpowered?

If you’re planning on doing a second playthrough to see Misha’s equally dissapointing ending where she also drags Lyner off to god knows where without regards to his position (Aurica’s was so… “Oh hey yeah, nevermind the whole Platina army pretty much under my command and the fact that we can now start to rebuild the fucking planet, I’ll go off with you to make some goddamn music boxes!”. I chose Shurelia for that matter) try to mess around with the grathnode crystals more. It’s actually fairly easy to max out nearly every stat but for Hp which makes Lyner nigh unkillable, and do some crazy shit like sticking a Magic Copy X4 on Ar Tonelico/Tower Connection for ridiculous amounts of firepower.

20

I know that, but Shurelia’s Cosmophere did NOT have numbered levels like the other girls, so unless you were keeping count (I wasn’t) it’s easy to think you were done after the fake credits. I admit I fell for it, thought I did wonder, “Gee, that ending sucked for a Magic Girl Anime rip off.” Having it turn out to be Mir’s fault was a clever way of linking the real and fake universes. :smiley:

And yes, I’m doing Misha’s part next, mostly to see the half of the adventure I didn’t get (where Misha recovers her adult form.) Oh, and I DID beat Tastiella once already; I just didn’t fight Mir afterwards as I assumed I couldn’t beat her at that point (probably true.)

And in case anybody cares, here’s who I think Lyner should stay with, in order of most to least likely:
-Misha: They were childhood friends (how come he doesn’t remember her? That was never explained.) She needed him more than Aurica did (She lost her real body AND she was struggling with her destiny to be Mir’s guardian) and quite frankly, even at her worst she was stronger as a person than either of the other two girls (just the way she tricked and struck down Bourd impressed me.)
-Shurelia: He knew her, respected her, and her Cosmosphere adventure (which is optional, true) had her more romantically involved with him than the two other girl’s. I rate Misha higher only because he actually had a relationship with her (if only as a kid) while Shurelia’s was just a simulation (though she obviously really fell for him.)
-Finally, Aurica has the least connections to him -they just ran into each other- and she was distant (out of sheer shyness) for much of the story. Even in battle she whined a lot (“Can I do this?” YES YOU CAN, YOU HAVE DONE IT A DOZEN TIMES ALREADY, SHUT UP!!) I never understood what Lyner saw on her, other than pity.