Long ago it was said that [songs] carried unusual powers
People believed that [songs] were the hands of Mother Nature that enveloped the world and they continued to sing without pause.
But now, things have changed. In this world everyone has forgotten how to sing…
As if the were ancient words that had been lost forever.

Ar Tonelico is about songs, that songs have magic in them, but the sad part about this is that only a few can sing, it has progressed so far that the only ones who can sing are a new race called reyvateils, and they are always female. They aren´t human and because of this they are sometimes treated like singing machines and are worked to the bone.

Our hero, Lyner Barsett treats reyvateils as if they are humans, he even treats them better than humans. He is kind, loyal and most of all has an unbeatable way of thinking that he will always succed.
It is kinda hard to write about Ar Tonelico and not spoil very delicate information but I´ll give it my best shoot.

The world, Ar Tonelico is divided into different parts, in the lower Wings of Horus the “ordinary” people live, above them the Tenbu Tribe live with the mission not to let anyone get above them and then we have Platina, where the Knights of Elmia, who defend the whole world against viruses live. The viruses take controll of machines and attack humans, why noone knows.

Sofar everything has gone well with the Knights of Elmia successfully destroying the viruses, but now a new type of virus has emerged and they are able to become invunerable to physical attacks, which Lyner, Ayatane and Shurelia gets to experience first hand.

With no other option they have to escape. Ayatane stays behind to give them time to flee and Shurelia entrusts Lyner with a mission, to find the [purger] hymn crystal so they can trap the new viruses in their physical form and destroy them.

Taking a airship Lyner starts to descend into the Wings of Horus, only to be blown out of the sky by a dragon. Crashlanding and hurt, almost uncounsious Lyner hopes for Shurelia and Ayatane to be alright. By a guardian Angel Lyner has luck, a reyvateil named Aurica finds him and heals him with her song magic…

Giving up any more detail would spoil to much of the start of the game so I´ll stop here, I could go on and write about the whole story and what happends troughout the game if I wanted, I love this game so much.

If you´ve played Atelier Iris then you know that the story is kinda easy to predict. This shows here as well. But what brings Ar Tonelico above Atelier Iris is the new “dive system”.

This new system is for a person who a reyvateil trusts to get into her cosmosphere, her inner mind as to say and help her with what is causing trouble for her.

For Aurica, a third generation reyvateil, born from a human father and a reyvateil mother has a inferiority complex, she thinks she only brings trouble to the people around her since she is so weak and a useless reyvateil so Lyner will help her with becoming more social, more caring and that she is indeed not useless and that she has a value of her own.

Misha, a Beta pure blooded reyvateil with almost unlimited power and knowledge(you can call her a genius) her problems start to show with what happened to her when she was a kid, or her important mission and fear of losing Lyner.

On to the battle system, we have the encounter system from Atelier Iris 2 which shows us a counter at the lower right of the screen, when it turns red we will have a encounter with enemies, after winning the battle the counter will drop, when the counter is empty well there are no more enemies to defeat in this section.

We have 3 fighters and 1 reyvateil in the fights, the reyvateil sing and the other attack, use skills and such. The magic the reyvateil can use depends on how deep you´ve been in her cosmosphere. Some enemies have the ability to directly attack the reyvateil and since they are fragile girls they have to be protected by someone.

The longer she sings, the more power will the magic get and the hymn will when gotten to a certain level change your ordinary attacks into more powerful ones and at the end of the battle you will receive better items.

With multiple endings, a path choice in which you choose what reyvateil you want to help(Aurica or Misha) and this choice evolving into 5 different endings(atleast for Aurica). The dialogue is true to NIS other games with lots and lots of laughter, espacially when diving. Since all their restrictions are left out the girls will do what they want with Lyner, like chain him to a bed and appear in front of him wearing only a towel asking him never to leave them.

And one small disfunction from Lyner would be that he is really dense and stupid when it comes to relationships, he can be really friendly, but if a girl starts to talk in the way of her wanting to be close to him he doesn´t know what to say or do.

Result: A wonderful game that will not last forever since you only have a certain amount of endings and such, but the journey is wonderful. The only regret that I have for this game is you really can´t go trough everything in one sitting since you´ll be bored to death with the fighting since basically all you do is attack with your three characters and then use the first skill “energy ball” with the reyvateils, unless you´re fighting a boss.
So the grade will be 9/10 since the battles get boring after a while.