Ar Tonelico 2 is of course the sequel to Ar Tonelico. The game itself is rather simplistic, the graphics are slightly better than some old SNES games I've played; however, the anime is amazingly well drawn. The story goes like so... You are a soldier in a holy army working directly under the holy maiden who happens to be a Reyvitale. Reyvitale's are women who can use magic, only women in this game can use magic. Your job is to protect the Reyvitale maiden of the army while maintaining your social life with your childhood Reyvitale friend Luca. In this game there are many ways to progress the story. Talking to the female characters and depending on the choices you make the game will progress differently.

This game is an RPG leveling style game. To level up your characters you can fight battles and gain exp. Another way to power up your characters is to dive into their minds and increase their powers directly. Another way (which I find very strange) is to take a bath with your characters. By adding certain power crystals into the bath you can get stronger.

The flaws this game has are its graphics, its execution, and its lack of substance. Yes the game is very involved in the characters personal lives, but thats all its got. The battle style is amazing though, the difficulty of some of the guarding in these battles is next to impossible, especially if the screen shakes when the enemy attacks. Some of these attacks are so intense you simply cant block them, and this makes the battles quite difficult.  In order for your Reyvitale's to perform powerful magic you must harmonize with them, in other words your characters must like each other.  If you get a good harmonization with your female counterparts you can perform massive damage with them.  Example: your main character will deal around 100 damage a hit, your female characters can get over 200,000 easily.  Intense aint it?!

Final Rating: 3/5 - too much talking involved