HomeVideo GamesAr Nosurge: Ode to an Unborn Star

Ar Nosurge: Ode to an Unborn Star

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It was disappointing to hear that Gust had plans to end the Ar Tonelico franchise with Ar Tonelico Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel back in early-2010. While its storyline was fairly well contained in the three games, the series’ distinct approach to having music as a carefully integrated component of each game’s storyline, visuals and gameplay itself had an allure of being unique from other niche JRPG’s on the market. Development soon sprung up again with the Japan-exclusive social / life simulation game Ciel Nosurge which will likely never be released internationally due to it being more visual novel than video game in nature. Despite the initial concerns that they were taking one of their more notable franchises down a completely different route, Gust have finally provided fans with a prequel to Ar Tonelico. Koei Tecmo have kindly localized and released this prequel internationally under the title Ar Nosurge: Ode to an Unborn Star.

Storyline

Unlike some other niche JRPG’s which have tried to be more approachable to a wider market in its terminology and lore, Ar Nosurge features a complex premise and series of events that should entice people who love experiencing a game for its plot more than its gameplay. To be completely honest, this is a game that you need to just go into for yourself and enjoy with your eyes and ears constantly glued to what is being said. This is because the story is deep and rich with detail, and is fairly hard to do justice by simply summarizing it in only a paragraph or two.

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One of the more unique approaches that Ar Nosurge has adopted is that it involves two sets of interchanging protagonist duos rather than relying on the typical one-party structure for the entire game. Throughout, you will take control of ‘Delta and Casty’ and later on ‘Ion and Earthes’, two groups with their own particular goals in the world and their own separate missions. Through the ‘Zapping’ system, it is possible to take control of either duo at almost any time and follow their storyline. It isn’t possible to get too far ahead with one group, but having the choice to switch is nice should you get bored with one set after awhile. Ion is actually the protagonist of Ciel Nosurge, however the game has been written assuming that you have no experience with its predecessor… or any game in the Ar Tonelico franchise as well for that matter. Feel free to start your experience here!

While Ar Nosurge provides a rich and interesting storyline with solid character development, secondary events felt to be quantity over quality, and in general were something that I found myself skipping over whenever they popped up.

Synthesizing an item equaled a cutscene…

Closing the store menu equalled another cutscene….

Opening that same store menu again several times resulted in… you guessed it, several more cutscenes…

Some were decent attempts at developing the characters in a more light-hearted manner, yet a lesser number of them better spaced out and with more substance/purpose would have encouraged me to sit through them rather than being tempted to mash the X button. The lack of English voice acting in these scenes also hurt their appeal, and a lesser number may have justified Koei Tecmo to fully dub them in English.

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The final storyline element of Ar Nosurge is a returning feature from earlier Ar Tonelico games: Genometrics. More commonly referred to as the “Dive” system, this allows you to dive into the mind of your chosen character and take part in distinct visual novel-esque adventures based on different facets of a characters personality and psyche. These uniquely decorated labyrinths offer some of the more outlandish and hysterical moments in Ar Nosurge, complemented by some rewarding perks should you progress through them – from purification crystals to new Song Magic. Ultimately this system can take a toll on your in-game funds and dedicated ‘dive point’ allowance, as you have to pay per dive and even the most obvious or innocent decision made in a character’s Soulspace can see them booting you out of it.

While providing an overall interesting experience that kept me hooked for hours on end, it was hard not to notice that the localization wasn’t always flawless. There were several noticeable issues regarding grammatical and spelling errors which highlighted the need of better proofreading prior to launch. Nothing was particularly game-breaking however and didn’t hinder the storyline’s advancement.

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Design / Music / Voice Acting

Like most Gust games, Ar Nosurge isn’t visually on the same level as say… Final Fantasy XIII for example. However the designs and animations all play their part in contributing to what was overall an aesthetically satisfying game world. It wasn’t the 3D designs that were the real highlight, as the environment designs ranged from average to mundane while the character designs were good but nothing special. It was instead the 2D visuals that shone, with well-detailed environment art, high-quality anime cutscenes whenever they were used and a fantastic compilation of CG Artwork to complement key scenes throughout the story. If Gust maintained that standard throughout the whole game, I wouldn’t have objected to them dropping the 3D visuals entirely and replicating the game in a system comparable to earlier PlayStation 2 Ar Tonelico games.

Music was a particular highlight of earlier Ar Tonelico games, and Gust have not dropped the ball with their latest release. Ar Nosurge delivers gamers a bountiful and diverse range of songs to complement all moments of their journey – including multiple hymn-style tracks which are just as captivating and charming as previous games. On that note, one of the greatest musical moments provided is the opening cinematic: an amalgamation of artsy animation and the hymn song 謳無き丘へ-Harmonics Pre=Ciel- performed by Ar Tonelico veteran Akiko Shikata. Rather than have me ramble on about it, watch it for yourself HERE.

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As with other English localizations of Gust JRPG’s commissioned by Koei Tecmo, Ar Nosurge has received an English dub. The dub is overall of a solid quality and I have no complaints about the English voice actors or actresses. However I highly recommend taking advantage of the dual-audio feature and sticking with the original Japanese dub. Ultimately the Japanese dub is much more complete whereas the English one skips considerable chunks of dialogue – leaving you to just read lines rather than listening to the characters vocalize them. As dubs are not cheap, this is understandable as Ar Nosurge would be considered a niche game in comparison to others in Koei Tecmo’s library. At the very least they have provided an English dub option rather than not having one at all.

Gameplay

Ar Nosurge retains some elements from the combat system featured in Ar Tonelico, namely that you take control of a hero who must attack foes while at the same time protecting the vulnerable heroine who is busy performing song magic that will quite possibly win the battle for you. Battles use a turn-based system where your hero is given a limited number of attack moves per turn, which they can use to take down foes that stand in front of them. You do that until you have exhausted your attack allocation, which is then followed by the enemies attacking you.

What is different about this system is that instead of having just a single wave of enemies standing in your way, every group of enemies in the surrounding area is patiently standing in a line to have their turn at defeating you. The battle is concluded when either all waves are defeated (Kudos of you either obliterating them all with a powerful enough Song Magic or stealing enough turns from enemies to defeat them all manually) or your turn allocation depletes. That is pretty much it for the entire game, with only Delta and Casty or Ion and Earthes entering battle. Many other characters contribute to battle by giving Delta / Earthes a special skill that can be used once per battle for a particular effect. Characters listed as being part of your party are simply traveling companions who pop up in the story and little else.

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If you assume that this battle system could become repetitive very fast, then your assumption would be correct. The major hindrance to my own progression was that there was little depth to the system and minimal incentive to experiment with attack combinations as no matter what I did, waves of enemies could still be downed very quickly. The difficulty does increase as you get closer to the end, but even then the difficulty was only a fraction of what it could and should have been. Because of this, it also rendered other systems such as the “Purification System”; which allows you to imbue Delta, Casty, Ion and Earthes with special abilities through conversations and unlocked crystals; almost pointless.

This may appeal to some who don’t want challenging gameplay to impact the progression of a good storyline, and at times I have considered myself as being in that group. However this time I was left wanting something more challenging during dungeon crawls. It seems like Gust were trying to replicate and reprise the side-view battles systems they featured in PS2-era Tonelico and Atelier games. If this was the case, then the charm of earlier games just wasn’t there.

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To their credit, some of the traditional Ar Tonelico mechanics such as Synthesis and Genometrics are well incorporated into the Ar Nosurge experience, with the latter offering plenty of post-game opportunities and character development which builds upon an already fantastic main story.

Final Words on Ar Nosurge: Ode to an Unborn Star

Ar Nosurge: Ode to an Unborn Star is ultimately let down by some scattered localization issues and a lackluster battle system that some might be unable to look past. However these negative aspects are offset by an incredibly elaborate and lengthly storyline, solid character development and a fantastic soundtrack featuring a sizable array of music to suit any situation the game throws at a player. If you can get past the repetitive battle system then you are faced with a solid JRPG that may be worth a few dozen hours of your time.

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Sam
Sam
Founder of The Otaku's Study. I have been exploring this labyrinth of fandom these last fifteen years, and still nowhere close to the exit yet. Probably searching for a long time to come.
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