Ar Tonelico: Melody of Elemia

Let me just say that, this game is WONDERFUL. Incredibly beautiful soundtrack, character design, environments, everything. The presentation is stunning in a way that I feel definitely makes up for its shortcomings in other areas. The amount of effort put into making this game really shows.

The exploration is quite dull but the sprites running around on the beautiful backgrounds are so stunning that the exploration doesn't even matter. It's a treat for the eyes. It makes sense the areas are small and repetitive with how much was put into making them look beautiful. And even then, the exploration too bad, just a bit lackluster.

The battle system is incredibly well polished. You have a back row with a singer (reyvateil) whose songs cast effects on the party or damage the enemy. The attacking characters take turns according to their speed gauge, similar to Grandia's unusual turn based battle system. This allows the player to view when the characters' turns will be, and allows for the player to optimize their actions to be able to protect the back row from enemy attacks that target them and deal as much damage as possible.

The reyvateils' songs cast passive effects such as stat boosts or active effects such as healing or attacking. Once you cast a song they start building up burst power, which allows for stronger effects at higher levels. Utilizing the reyvateils is necessary to optimize damage dealt during battles and raise the harmonics level, which allows for more skills to be used in battle and creates passive effects. Managing both the attackers and the reyvateils is incredibly fun and stimulates the brain as you opt to finish fights as fast as possible while filling your harmonics gauge to get more rewards after battle.

The enemy design is visually a bit bland and a lot of encounters have the same strategy, but in my opinion they don't really get old quickly. Optimizing combat to kill enemies as fast as possible while minimizing damage received is always fun. Most encounters are on the easy side, but the bosses are really fun because your harmonics level reaches max allowing you to deal even more damage, and big numbers make people happy :) The final boss was really fun too...

The customization of equipment is very fun but I wish there was a bigger difference between elemental bonuses, since the game is easy enough to ignore them.

As for the crafting aspect, I feel it's very inconsequential. Besides crafting new weapons and armor every time you unlock the recipe, there's barely any incentive to craft healing items or others. The game is easy enough that you don't need to use healing items or status items.

The meat of the game is definitely the cosmospheres though, you get to explore the inner feelings of the reyvateils which leads to a lot of sexual and psychological representations of their deep and unwanted feelings. You get to see them at their weakest points and their most undesirable mindsets. It's incredible how much of their negative feelings are conveyed to you, how much of it is sexual in nature, and how much they hide in the real world. It made me feel better about having these same negative feelings and emotions. It feels good to have these acknowledged, and not treated like a mistake on the individual's part.

The exploration of sexuality and possessiveness is incredibly good compared to other JRPGs I've played. Its something I wouldn't expect from a game rated T. It presents how external trauma affects not only the emotional but sexual state of a person, even if the trauma isn't inherently sexual in nature. The reyvateils really shine as characters in these, and make them the best in the game.

On the other hand, the main story is boring. The first arc is a great introduction to the world the characters live in, but as the second and third arcs come along, you're met with many repetitive objectives and many narrative JRPG tropes without the emotional buildup necessary to make them work. Bourd and Bishop Falss are uninteresting villains, and don't shine at being terrible people like other hateable villains do. Mir is interesting however, and I really liked her. But I think the game did not have enough focus on her in the first two arcs to make her story really hit. Perhaps dividing the story into arcs was the problem, as many of the main plotlines try to resolve by the end of the arc. This is a problem in the grander scheme of the game because gameplay sections are constantly interrupted by plot events when the plot is a little boring and feels like it has very few stakes.

Finally, the music is fantastic. Every track is good and I never got tired of hearing any of them. I just wish the music didn't change when you enter a shop! The integration of different instruments and leitmotifs is actually phenomenal. The hymns were my favorite tracks with how otherworldly they are, but all the town themes were peaceful and pleasant. This definitely has one of my favorite soundtracks in a JRPG thus far!

I've heard that the second game fixes up most of my problems with this one, so I'm very excited to play it in the future!