Dive into Badness ~ Let's Play Ar Tonelico Qoga

[Dead Princess Sakana]

_{Let's give this LP stuff a try, shall we?}

The idea for making this LP came to me on a whim yesterday upon ranting about an especially bad piece of translation I came across in this game, and here we are now. I apologize for the rather poor image-quality, but since I don't have the means to record off the PS3 directly I have to take pictures of the TV. But things are recognizable, so it should work out~

Let's get this out of the way first: Yes, this game is bad. Really bad.
The characters are not making much sense, the battle system is just plain weird, the story (as far as I have played, which isn't that much) doesn't seem too interesting so far, and the aspect of "strip the girls" is shoved into your face perpetually.
Is it absolutely horrid and unplayable? Depends, maybe for some it is, for me it isn't. It entertains me, but nontheless it's objectively bad.

I got the game because recently I finished Ar Tonelico 2, and I liked it a lot. So with the expectation that at least the Cosmospheres and the music should be pretty nice, I got the sequel, and now here I am making this LP. As such you will often compare this game to my still fresh impression of AT2.
Note that this LP will not focus on the battle aspects as much as I want to focus on showing off the badness that are the characters, their interaction, and especially the weird Cosmospheres, as well as some rather ridiculous translations in the game.
Note that I am in the early stages of the game only, so my perception of it may very well change later, but I have a certain point that I want to reach with this LP at least  :3

So let's dive right into the badness that is

Ar Tonelico Quoga - Knell of Ar Ciel

After the first intro-movie and choosing to start a New Game we see the proper Opening, which tells us a bit about the premise.
If you have played an Ar Tonelico game before, you will know the situation of the world:

Through "Lyrics", aka singing songs, the people of the world used to communicate with the Goddess, but at some point they stopped and the Goddess abandoned them.
The world was drowned in clouds known as the Sea of Death, and the remaining humans live on giant towers, sharing what little land they have.
In one of those towers lives a boy, whose fate it will be to protect the maiden that sings, whom he has yet to meet...

Thus starts

~PHASE ONE - GAMMA SUBLIMED~ (don't you ask me what *that* is supposed to mean)

We start off with our main character, Aoto, a young steeplejack apprentice, getting woken up by his adoptive father, Steeps.
Our first impression of Aoto is that of a lazy bum. Steeps scolds him for not taking care of the work he is supposed to do, and Aoto claims he is already done with it. After giving him a new task, to repair the "Paper Scissors" (really, what?) that were damaged in a mudslide, Steeps leaves.
So what does Aoto do?



He complains more and goes back to sleep. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen, don't you already love him.

Let's make a little comparison here, to explain why I can't stand Aoto: In Ar Tonelico 2 you took control of Croix, a twentysomething year old trained soldier. I liked him because, unlike most RPG-heroes, he was quite mature. He was a person that you could believe to become a hero. Aoto is, simply said, a kid, and nothing more.

Aoto falls asleep and we cut to a black screen and some voices talking. We hear someone telling someone else that "It's the end of the line for them" and a girl begging a "Mr. Kihara" to be alright.



Because he's an RPG-hero, Aoto wakes up and immediately decides he has to check it out. Clearly that is the most reasonable thing to do in a situation that sounds very much like a battle. Who would ever think of calling adults that might be capable of fighting?



Is that just me or do those two girls look like Yuna from Final Fantasy X?

So upon witnessing the armor-clad woman facing off against two other women and one.... whatever that is, Aoto immediately recognizes the attackers as the "Clustanian Army". Does the game ever tell us more about who that is? Nope, not at all.

The in-game encyclopedia does though, as does the manual, so here's the info you need:

Clustania is an organization comprised purely of Beta-Type Reyvateils, and it controls the world. They govern through terror, and their ultimate weapon is their policy of Cleansing, in which they exterminate rebels on a genocidal scale. They also have most cities under their control and regularly abduct innocent children to brainwash and use as Divers, which is called Purification.

Reyvateils are the most important beings in any Ar Tonelico game.
The manual tells us they are artificial female beings capable of wielding supernatural powers by singing Song Magic.

Genocides and child abductions, can they be any more blatantly evil? The goal of this setup was probably to set a counter-point to Ar Tonelico 2 where Reyvateils were oppressed by the humans. However in AT2 the situation was quite a bit more complex, neither of the opposing forces was completely right or outright evil.
Let's hope Clustania doesn't stay as one-dimensional as it is presented to us here, else we are in for a boring, predictable, stereotypical story.

So Aoto jumps in and tells the Clustanians to stop, then makes the big mistake of telling that crossdresser that "He's way too big and size isn't the only thing to decide a man's worth" (blatant innuendo anyone?)




The big pile of muscle claims to be a girl, which really is less disturbing to accept than the idea that a guy stuffed some big cups under his clothes to make it appear like he has breasts. Aoto defends himself by saying he "calls them as he sees them". I suppose tolerance to gender-problems is not something they teach a steeplejack.



The warrior-girl joins in to ask Aoto who he is, which leads to this hilarious claim. Do you hate Aoto yet? Because I sure do. So that lazy and intolerant guy here just claims to be a good and selfless person, good going. Nevermind that in the whole scene he hasn't bothered to ask if the *guy lying on the ground is alright*. Apparently if it doesn't have breasts it's not of interest to Aoto.



We get to our first battle, which is fairly easy. I will explain the battle system later, when we have access to all main features. So far it is nothing more than running around, landing hits and either running or standing still (to auto-defend) when muscle-girl strikes.
Why is a steeplejack apprentice that uses his tools as a weapon so strong he can beat a trained soldier? Because he's the hero, why else?



After beating her we learn that the muscle-mountain's name is "Mute", a name she doesn't live up to at all.
Aoto also taunts her about how she lost despite being a Reyvateil. Now here's a quesiton Aoto, if you acknowledge she's a Reyvateil, something that only females can be, why do you insist on calling her a man?

Mute is dragged away by her soldiers, and the warrior-girl tells Aoto to "take care of the rest", before promptly transforming into...



... a small girl with puffy clothes. Can I get the warrior-girl back?

Since the girl doesn't appear to be busty on the first glance she's of no interest to Aoto, so he finally decides to actually pay attention to the guy dying on the ground. Could he have been saved if Aoto had called for help immediately? Probably.

Of course by now it's too late, so the man tells Aoto not to waste his time trying to get help.
The man's name is Kihara and he tells Aoto that the girl, who we learn is named Saki, is on the run from the Clustanians.
Because no dying man is a proper dying man without leaving questions, he pulls out a necklace and hands it to Aoto, insisting that he brings it to Kihara's son. Aoto recognizes the necklace as being similar to one that he got from his father. Oh my, a mysterious item! Could it be a Deus Ex Machina for later in the plot?

Before Aoto can ask about the son's name or location, Kihara dies, leaving more questions than he gave answers.




Saki wakes up, having no idea what's going on, and then breaking down crying as she sees Kihara's corpse. The pair is joined by two men, who recognize Saki and Kihara. Why do *they* know the two who can only have arrived in the village recently, or possibly were only just arriving? No explanation is ever given. If everyone in the village knew about the two people staying there, then we have to wonder if Aoto ever leaves the house.

Furthermore, those two villagers know that the army is after Saki and are apparently willing to help her escape, endangering themselves in the process. They tell Aoto to take Saki to the Airbus station and catch a ride to escape. Of course no explanation is ever given for why those guys knew Saki and why they consider her important enough to risk the safety of the village. We shall call them plot-furthering-machine A and B henceforth, though we will never see them again anyway.



And we end this first part of the LP with Aoto telling Saki his name and dragging her off to the bus-station, claiming she was entrusted to him.
Saki, of course, immediately fully trusts the guy that she only just now met as he was standing over the corpse of her savior and protector Kihara.
Surely she will never run into any troubles with *that* kind of character.

So we end this first part of the LP with our two main-idiots, pardon, -characters running off.

Part 2 will come later today~

[Earzchen]

I want this game !! is there no PC version?? x__x

[Kips McKipzerson]

I felt my IQ drop.
Also, The translation from what I know is funky in a bad way. It's not the worst thing in the world, But a lost of things got changed in translation from what I know of the game. The fact that the text is the most BLAND THING EVER doesnt really help the point that these translaters knew their shits.

oh and man look at that high quality screenshots :V

[Ghaleon]

I actually won this game from a little contest hosted on the NISA forums, I never tried 1 or 2...I almost beat this game, but lost interest when...When... Uhh...I forget. Maybe when I got my ecksbawks.
Anyway, I actually enjoyed the girl's dive story things. It really made you care about the characters more than most rpgs. The story of the whole world though was pretty meh. I hope to finish it again just so I can fully explore each girl's dive machine thing. I did saki first even though I like her least, mostly because I DID like that warrior chick in her, and wanted to redeem saki's mehness with her >=P.

[Fightest]

Right then. Since you're not showing the restraint required for a good LP, neither will I in my criticism.

Let's get this out of the way first: Yes, this game is bad. Really bad.

No. It is not. Even if it were:

The characters are not making much sense, the battle system is just plain weird, the story (as far as I have played, which isn't that much) doesn't seem too interesting so far, and the aspect of "strip the girls" is shoved into your face perpetually.
Is it absolutely horrid and unplayable? Depends, maybe for some it is, for me it isn't. It entertains me, but nontheless it's objectively bad.[...]

I want to focus on showing off the badness that are the characters, their interaction, and especially the weird Cosmospheres, as well as some rather ridiculous translations in the game.

You appear to be making this LP for the sole purpose of mocking the game. Now, perhaps that may be warranted, but then I came across this particular gem:

Note that I am in the early stages of the game only, so my perception of it may very well change later

You have not even finished playing the game you are so vehemently insistent on mocking. Well, here's a heads-up for you: not only should you not start an LP blind (or nearly so) for many extremely good reasons, you should also consider the oldest Aesop in the book and not judge a book by its etc. etc. etc.

Oh, and it's spelt QOGA. It's right there on the goddamned box.

As someone who has finished the game - and thus more qualified to offer an opinion on the story and characters than you are - I state that, indeed, the game has a bit of a bumpy start. That said, it quickly offers some good and, quite importantly, well-paced development. Character stories are not cliche, although bound by certain tropes, and certainly are sometimes a bit - or even highly - out of left field. That said, these stories are genuinely good, filled with meaningful symbolism and poignant observations, culminating in some shockingly heavy revelations.

That same description applies to the entire game - sure, it shamelessly embraces its own heritage of seeming to pander to the lowest common denominator audience, yet there is a very strong narrative underneath the shallow veneer of cute girls taking off their clothes to turn people into cakes. The writers know exactly when to take themselves seriously - and, indeed, the story can get very serious at times - and when to let loose and have fun. This juxtaposition is surprisingly rare in modern media, and Qoga's use of both sides of the coin allows it to explore a large variety of plotlines without ever seeming out of character.

It is probably not the best game in the series - I personally find AT2 more personally fulfilling, but it is strong enough to stand on its own, despite some concrete weaknesses, the chief being its reliance on written text to perform its worldbuilding. Its soundtrack is the most varied of all three games, and, by quality and density of excellent compositions, it just edges out AT2's soundtrack to take the place of best in the series.

So no, this game is not bad. It might be subjectively bad when seen for a whopping five minutes of gameplay, but you have absolutely no grounds to even think of using the word "objectively." The entire premise of this LP is poorly-informed, misleading and, to put it simply, wrong.

Oh, by the way, you can turn off the transformation sequences in the menu, genius.

[Ghaleon]

While I agree with Fightest that it's wrong to judge a game in a LP before you've played at least a significant portion of it (half or more, unless it's an intentionally blind lp for lulz like for I wanna be the guy or something), I don't agree with his vehemance.

Fact is, the only real big nono that is worth getting upset about is judging the game so early IMO, is that worth personal attacks over? I wouldn't, but then again I'm forgiving. Because deep down, honestly? I think the game is one of the most sub-par rpgs I've played too IMO. As I said, I've almost finished it (I fixed Harvestasia forgive spelling haven't played for a couple months or whatever). The character-specific stories regarding the girls are good (except Cocana if you don't know her backstory from the previous games, like me), but the game's overall story (without knowing the series) does seem awfully mediocre. But the real problem IMO is hte battle system. It's terrible IMO. All it is is timing all your attacks on the red notes of the harmonizer, stripping 4 times, letting the multiplier grow past 30k or whatever it is, using each of your vanguard's super moves, then doing the 5th strip thing. Every battle is like that so far.  Except some of the trash you can get away with by doing 2 strips, some % gathering, then a song nuke. There is no real dodging of enemy attacks or whatever. I mean you can be evasive and run away. But once you start attacking, the delay and recovery time of your swings is so large that if the enemy chooses to attack back, there's nothing you can do. Not to say it's hard because it's not, but..

Well I could go on. The battle system is quite probably the worst in any console rpg I've played though. I don't mean that as a bash, it's just bad. I don't feel skillful despite the live action feel to it, there's no strategy. You just mash buttons as fast as you can during red notes (make sure you're close enough to actually swing during them), and strip when you can, there's no reason not to.

As for the music, I found it overrated. I think people adore it simply for the vocals in some of the tracks, generally people think non-off vocals makes everything better. I don't, so, meh. If you're one of those people who  thinks certain rpg songs are epic cuz it has chanting or singing in it (like with many final boss square songs for example), I can see why this game would attract you music-wise.

Still though, I loved the depth of character to the girls you could dive into. This game IMO should have been a visual novel.

[Fightest]

Because deep down, honestly? I think the game is one of the most sub-par rpgs I've played too IMO[...] but the game's overall story (without knowing the series) does seem awfully mediocre.

I will assume that the two comments are the most directly related and that the sub-parness that you feel comes from the overall story - without knowing the series. To be blunt, what did you expect? You're playing a game called Ar Tonelico 3. Three. Part three. That's like starting A Midsummer Night's Dream at the last third of the play and then calling it unimpressive.

But the real problem IMO is hte battle system.

I won't argue that. The combat is, indeed, quite lackluster. There is little more to be said on that, and I do feel they dropped the ball somewhat here, compared to what I saw going on in AT2.

As for the music, I found it overrated. I think people adore it simply for the vocals in some of the tracks, generally people think non-off vocals makes everything better.

First off, let's get into this little word right here:

overrated

Dangerous word to be using. It implies you've done the research and aren't just making assumptions, which

I think people adore it

and

generally people think

Shows that you are. No. People adore the music because it is really good. The composers have an extremely strong grasp of melody, harmony, instrumentation and the use of voice to enhance them. They understand pacing, and they have masterful control of mood and emotion as is appropriate to the segment of story being told. It is not about the lolepic, which the simple examples of AT3's EXEC_FLIP_FUSIONSPHERE or AT2's EXEC_VIENA demonstrate. They are genuinely beautiful songs with a strong emotional and contextual relevance to the scenes in which they appear.

A more likely case is that you don't like the Hymnos sountracks. That is fine, you're allowed to not like things. Assuming that your dislike is somehow correct, and that others are doing it somehow wrong, however, is poor form.

Still though, I loved the depth of character to the girls you could dive into. This game IMO should have been a visual novel.

A good point. Making it a visual novel would accentuate a lot of the game's stengths and remove the weakness of the battle system. On the other hand, there is a lot of small - but highly entertaining - stuff in the video-game-ness part that would not be able to make it across.

[trancehime]

I will assume that the two comments are the most directly related and that the sub-parness that you feel comes from the overall story - without knowing the series. To be blunt, what did you expect? You're playing a game called Ar Tonelico 3. Three. Part three. That's like starting A Midsummer Night's Dream at the last third of the play and then calling it unimpressive.

Except you don't have to have played AT1 and AT2 to really know a whole lot about AT3, the only thing you would be missing out on are, admittedly, the only parts of Ar Toneliko that make it good - the worldbuilding and the setting. Everything else IS bad, I'm not sure where people are getting the idea that the game itself was any good. I've played all 3 games - in Japanese, mind, so I know that the translation business is an extremely valid complaint, and knowing both languages to a good extent, I'd say that this comment of yours is a bit unfounded.

Shows that you are. No. People adore the music because it is really good. The composers have an extremely strong grasp of melody, harmony, instrumentation and the use of voice to enhance them. They understand pacing, and they have masterful control of mood and emotion as is appropriate to the segment of story being told. It is not about the lolepic, which the simple examples of AT3's EXEC_FLIP_FUSIONSPHERE or AT2's EXEC_VIENA demonstrate. They are genuinely beautiful songs with a strong emotional and contextual relevance to the scenes in which they appear.

Can't argue with this.

A good point. Making it a visual novel would accentuate a lot of the game's stengths and remove the weakness of the battle system. On the other hand, there is a lot of small - but highly entertaining - stuff in the video-game-ness part that would not be able to make it across.

I will stand by my opinion that Ar Toneliko would be the best thing ever if you took out the game itself but left everything that wasn't actually gameplay in-tact. On a conceptual level, AT is excellent. Worldbuilding, music setting, general setting, everything is just amazing. But the execution of the concept was done in poor taste on so many levels. It is especially evident in Ar Toneliko 3's combat system, the interaction between the protagonist and the Reyvateils... It's worse than the offensive material in Ar Toneliko 1 (Aurica's entire character) and Ar Toneliko 2 (bits and pieces scattered throughout, though some people may accuse Luca of being the culprit here).

As someone who has finished the game - and thus more qualified to offer an opinion on the story and characters than you are - I state that, indeed, the game has a bit of a bumpy start. That said, it quickly offers some good and, quite importantly, well-paced development. Character stories are not cliche, although bound by certain tropes, and certainly are sometimes a bit - or even highly - out of left field. That said, these stories are genuinely good, filled with meaningful symbolism and poignant observations, culminating in some shockingly heavy revelations.

Story being good I can agree with, the story being executed as sub-standard as I'd have expected it to be is a bit pushing it though, especially considering the more raunchy parts of the game completely spoil it.

That same description applies to the entire game - sure, it shamelessly embraces its own heritage of seeming to pander to the lowest common denominator audience, yet there is a very strong narrative underneath the shallow veneer of cute girls taking off their clothes to turn people into cakes. The writers know exactly when to take themselves seriously - and, indeed, the story can get very serious at times - and when to let loose and have fun. This juxtaposition is surprisingly rare in modern media, and Qoga's use of both sides of the coin allows it to explore a large variety of plotlines without ever seeming out of character.

And shamelessly pandering to that lowest common denominator audience is not what I'd call "letting loose and having fun." I'm not sure where you got that impression from.

So no, this game is not bad. It might be subjectively bad when seen for a whopping five minutes of gameplay, but you have absolutely no grounds to even think of using the word "objectively." The entire premise of this LP is poorly-informed, misleading and, to put it simply, wrong.

Not all blind LPs are bad. I'm not sure where you got that impression from, either. I've read numerous blind LPs on SomethingAwful that were generally fun reads and I've watched similar ones as well. Also, there's no need to be so vitriolic about something like this. I know that's how you are given how hellbent you are on proving things right/wrong based on what I've seen of your posts, but this is just overkill. And don't ANYONE give me the "there's no kill like overkill" shit, because that's just being a douche.

EDIT: Oh and since you've apparently played AT2 enough to "give a valid opinion on it" I am surprised you managed to stomach the horrendous localization and certain inconvenient bugs and still managed to call beating that more fulfilling even though the only probable way you could have done that is to A) Play a patched version of the game and/or B) play the undub. I mean seriously. I know so many people who were disappointed after the AT2 hype because NISA did a really sloppy and lazy job on its localization. That said, I do agree that [AT1 and] AT2 are much better than AT3. That doesn't mean I don't think the games as games are bad, though. Because they aren't so great in the grand scheme of things. I'd have enjoyed reading about it, I'd have enjoyed listening to the Hymmnos songs, but I definitely don't enjoy playing the game as much as doing the former >_> The games themselves are EZMOODO difficulty anyway (discounting AT3's Artificially Hard mode)

[Fightest]

Everything else IS bad, I'm not sure where people are getting the idea that the game itself was any good.

I'm looking in your post for justification of this claim, but I can't find it. Perhaps you misplaced it somewhere?

especially considering the more raunchy parts of the game completely spoil it.

How? Do elucidate.

And shamelessly pandering to that lowest common denominator audience is not what I'd call "letting loose and having fun." I'm not sure where you got that impression from.

Well done, you can take comments out of context and put them together to create unintended meaning. Good effort, but sloppy and transparent execution. 4/10

Not all blind LPs are bad. I'm not sure where you got that impression from, either. I've read numerous blind LPs on SomethingAwful that were generally fun reads and I've watched similar ones as well. Also, there's no need to be so vitriolic about something like this. I know that's how you are given how hellbent you are on proving things right/wrong based on what I've seen of your posts, but this is just overkill. And don't ANYONE give me the "there's no kill like overkill" shit, because that's just being a douche.

Let me put it in another way. A blind LP that makes fun of the game being played without being aware of how the game develops is just about guaranteed to be bad. Normally I would not be quite so vitriolic about it, but this particular LP managed to simultaneously be poorly-informed, insulting and devoid of wit. It is indeed a very naive person who thinks that writing inflammatory comments about a piece of media would not spark a strong contrary reaction.

EDIT: Oh and since you've apparently played AT2 enough to "give a valid opinion on it" I am surprised you managed to [...]

AT2 is not part of this discussion. Put the goalposts back where you found them, thank you very much.

[Seventh Holy Scripture]

Don't want to go back and forth too much about it, but I'll just note that AT2 is quite possibly my favorite RPG ever, and I stopped playing AT3 at the end of Phase 1 because the plot was making me facepalm and the battle system bored me to tears. Moreover, I played AT2 in English and AT3 in Japanese. >_> I should go back and play AT2 again now that my Japanese reading ability is approaching decent.

Also, I'm not sure how one can like the AT3 soundtrack better than AT2's. I'll give you that the Hymmnos are just as good, if not better, but the rest of the BGM is a total letdown by Ar Tonelico's standards. AT2's OST is full of fantastic songs like 第二の塔, 幻聴の森, ざわめく動悸～クローシェ～ and 華模様～現～ to name just my favorites, but the only track I remember from AT3's is the freaking Buri Hamachi song, which wasn't even real BGM.

I fault Akira Tsuchiya presumably being too busy to compose for it himself, and the new guys they brought on board being mediocre. Case in point that one of them also composed METHOD_HYMMELI/., which was one of the weaker hymns; lacked a musical climax and somewhat of a waste of Rekka Katakiri.

So yeah, I think Sakana's judgement is pretty reasonable, even if he would speak with more authority if he'd actually finished the game. (As would I, but seriously, I think a game that failed to entertain me- a diehard fan of the series- for the first several hours clearly fails on some level, even if everyone vouches for the plot getting better later on.)

I will assume that the two comments are the most directly related and that the sub-parness that you feel comes from the overall story - without knowing the series. To be blunt, what did you expect? You're playing a game called Ar Tonelico 3. Three. Part three. That's like starting A Midsummer Night's Dream at the last third of the play and then calling it unimpressive.

Well, the purported reason it was retitled "Qoga" was so that people wouldn't think they needed to have played the first two games to enjoy it. Of course, this doesn't attest to much other than the already well-established fact that NISA is a pack of morons, but I thought I'd mention it.

[Dead Princess Sakana]

Whoooah, calm it. I see LPs are more serious business than I expected. Guess I should have put a "For the love of god, don't take this too serious" note at the top.
On a few points I have to admit doing badly though.

First of all, sorry for having the reflex of putting an "u" after a "q", that happens automatically and I really didn't stare at the game name long enough to notice there was no "u" there.

Second, I did state that I was only a bit into the game (about six hours, to be exact) to show that, yes, my opinion is founded on that part of the game, and nothing more yet.
Okay, I could have put that *before* saying it was bad, that was clearly a mistake. Should have used some less weighted word, and made the subjective component clearer. At that point I have cleared two levels of the two cosmospheres available so far, and comparing it to the same point in AT2, I'm kinda disappointed.
Are the spheres intriguing and do I want to know more? Yes, I do. But they don't stand up to AT2's spheres in my opinion. They are short, the Hyumas don't have nearly the same kind of importance and character that the Song Magics did, and especially Finnel is acting in ways that do not even start to make sense at that point in the game. Suddenly being ready to die for Aoto when before and after that she is obviously more interested in Tatsumi?  Excuse me for not liking giant inconsistencies like that.

As a *game* though, I don't see it shaping up, because the gamesystem itself (and that is unfortunately largely the battle system) it doesn't offer that much, especially in comparison to its predecessor (which is really my main point of reference). Maybe that is actually the mistake though, because that's where I judge the characters and the way the story goes so far as bad, because AT2's character and story-development worked out much better in the same amount of game-time.

Btw, I'm not sure how much of the weird stuff is due to the translation alone. I will let "Feel these nipples!" speak for itself there >__>

On a final note, I am aware that I can turn off the stripping sequences in battle. That was never my complaint, and it doesn't change that the game shoves it in your face at many other points. How many games have you played in which you give a girl gifts so she strips for you? Was that really necessary? AT2 had its amount of innuendo, but it dealt with it well. The main parts were in the cosmospheres, and that's where it belonged, imo.

Am I mocking the game? Yes. Does that mean I hate it or the people who like it? No. As I said, I enjoy playing it, and I do like it for what it is. That doesn't stop me from seeing stuff to make fun of though. Does that stuff appear in other games as well? Yes, if I wanted to I could probably pick at almost every game I know like this, especially my own favourites. Liking a game doesn't stop me from being capable of mocking it when I see something that I find silly.
And unfortunately Ar Tonelico Qoga has provided me with more stuff that I found worthy of being picked at in only six hours of playing it than most other games I have played.

EDIT: Yeah, I definitely should not have used the word "objectively". This is an LP, not a review, so it's gonna be biased. Using that word there was a bad choice, though there certainly seem to be many who would agree.

[MatsuriSakuragi]

Whoooah, calm it. I see LPs are more serious business than I expected. Guess I should have put a "For the love of god, don't take this too serious" note at the top.

Allow me to add a 'turn down the goddamn animosity' warning to that right now. Seriously. Knock it off.

[Dead Princess Sakana]

Ya know, I'm gonna lock this for the moment and give the game a bit more time to convince me of its strength, especially in regards to the characters.
And I don't need other people to fight each other because of my opinion while I do that.

After that I will decide how to continue. But by god, I *will* get this at least to the point of "Feel these nipples!", because that one deserves every bit of mockery it can get (the American translators are to blame for *that* one, btw )