40%Emulated

Ar Tonelico 2: Melody of Metafalica didn't fare much better than the first. A confused, incoherent mess of both mechanic and dialogue bloat that faithfully indulges in stereotypes. A couple of ideas are inspired, namely its reimagined combat system mixing chain attacks with cues from Super Mario RPG, and the Dualstall mechanic is a unique approach to levelling up. Each of those could've been the highlight had they been fleshed out properly.

70%PlayStation 2

Time on PS2 console was inaccurate. Used fancy math to find time.

90%PlayStation 2

História - 9/10
Gráficos - 7/10
Jogabilidade - 10/10
Som - 9/10
Nota Final - 9/10

60%PlayStation 2

The game's huge selling point is the relationships between the Revyateils and the songs that they craft and sing but the overreliance on the player character gets kinda hackneyed to the point where the vulnerability sacrifices that character's personality, especially on the ending I got

Overall, the experience alone is worthwhile, great game that's nowhere near perfect but I do reccommend if only for the interpersonal relations between the RTs, the MC/RTs (until a certain point in said cosmospheres), and amazing soundtrack

80%PlayStation 2

Overall pretty outstanding, with a few flaws. Combat was a good idea, however a bit frustrating (without giving spoilers) to be locked into one particular group of powerful songs. The music of the game was outstanding, only a very very little behind the first game's quality of music in my opinion. To summarize however, downsides were the long dungeons (walk speed extremely slow), combat system could've been made better with a little more work, and a less confusing tutorial system for leveling up on the Reyvateils. I spent half the game with them nearly 40 levels below the vanguard units. I was dumb.

80%PlayStation 2

Could use more cutscene skipping.

60%PlayStation 2

After the original mechanics and story of the first, this game was a complete disappointment. The battle system was made more complicated, and used even more gibberish terms to keep you from understanding exactly what was going on and what you had to do to survive. I was happy with the inclusion of timed button presses (that get pretty hard to execute late game) in the defense phase, but that's about it. The story was almost as bad as the gameplay, with phrases and ideas thrown out so quickly it's mind boggling to understand. It certainly succeeds in giving the culture a different feel from the first game, but sometimes that 'different feel' comes solely from the sheer confusion of what is even going on. Finally, the game unfortunately received a shoddy translation, with errors and even untranslated lines sprouting up throughout the game.

It's needed to be played in order to understand what's really going on in the third game, so don't skip it, but be prepared for an experience that's not as good as the first.

70%PlayStation 2

An average between the 9 or so for the JP version and the 5 or so for the US version. US version is plagued with glitches, poor translation, and dropped voice acting. However, overall the game itself is very good, and has a very interesting set of characters and battle system.