Where many games will drip-feed basics to you - a new feature here, a new control there - Ar tonelico will stuff your face with gauges, meters and menu options without explaining any of them. Then, just as you think you've got the hang of it, the game begins its own drip-feed with ever more complex systems and menus. That's not to say that it doesn't all click - it does - but there's a lot of effort required to get to that point, and quite possibly some research on the internet beyond what the tutorials and manual divulge. With everything in place, however, the previously daunting options available to you become excellent tools in customising every stat of your party to your own exact specification.

The initial confusion doesn't stop at the mechanics of it all either, and infects the plot. You are Lyner, and you're charged with protecting the tower Ar tonelico from rampaging viruses. Naturally everything goes awry and you soon find yourself lost and alone in a strange place wondering if the people you've left fighting the viruses can survive for as long as it takes you to collect the one item they need to fend them off even though you've since been captured and thrown in a cell and they're still up there fighting while you're lazing around learning how to craft new items and they must STILL be up there and how could they still be alive after all this ti- . . . The plot ties up much better and makes much more sense given time, as do the aforementioned menus, and along with the difficulty in working out how to fight.

Graphically - and to a degree musically – if you’ve played a Gust game in the last few years you’ll very much know what to expect. Beautifully drawn (yet less well animated) 2D sprites travel around on mostly static backgrounds while a usually cheery melody plays away. Problems arise occasionally in towns with some odd perspective, and in a few instances where the game will take these static backgrounds and zoom around them as you move around. It’s one of the few areas where the graphics ‘fail’ as it were, as the effect is often strange and out of keeping with the overall beauty of the unmoving screens. A world map portrayed in 3D also misses the mark, much like it did in Gust's earlier Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana. An awful lot of effort seems to have gone into drawing the lead female (and predictably cute) characters in a variety of costumes. These are very well done, with the costumes ranging from school uniforms to giant bears, and with one of them being nothing more than a towel (and some moisture).

Which brings us nicely onto the filth. There’s nothing in the game that would make Jack Thompson lose any sleep (assuming he has any sleep left to lose), but if innuendo and double entendre are your thing then you’ll have a lot to make you smile. “Dive into me, but be gentle, it’s my first time,” one character exclaims early on. Diving refers to the way in which new skills are learnt by your friends. Conversations had at inns with your female companions (known as Reyvateil) will earn you stamps towards their cosmosphere, essentially her subconscious. After collecting enough, ‘diving’ into her cosmosphere will trigger an extended story event, where you will learn about the girl – assuming you’ve gained enough dive points, which are earned by completing certain objectives in battles. We’ve once again entered the realms of the complicated.

There are three cosmospheres you can venture into, with nine levels in each, and this provides a massive amount of back-story and development into Lyner and the Reyvateil and the relationships between them – unfortunately the same can’t be said of the rest of the cast, who fade into the periphery as far as storytelling is concerned. Many lines are voiced, and for the purists, yes, the Japanese voices are available for your selection. While every character has their own unique voice and personality, it still does not allay the feeling that they’re only bit-part players.

Another feature Gust have carried over from the recent Atelier Iris games is the ability to finish the random battles in an area. A gauge will deplete as battles are fought and, once empty, there will be no more battles until you leave and re-enter the area, leaving you free to relax and explore without interruption. The system soon becomes a frailty due to the layout of the dungeons. The static backgrounds often are very small (some only a few steps) and are occasionally re-used. This makes it hard to keep track of where you’re going, and you’ll often leave an area by mistake, only to go back and find your fighting has thus far been for nothing.

Further hampering the dungeons is sheer repetitiveness. Most contain only a few combinations of enemies to fight and the battles are such that you can use exactly the same strategy, for exactly the same result, every time. Coupled with the small areas, it can quickly become tiresome. The ability to ‘finish’ battling in an area really helps to make this more bearable.

Despite all the negatives, Ar tonelico is not a bad game when given the time it needs to learn its intricacies and take advantage of them. It fleshes out some characters more than many other RPGs could hope to, and as a result spins a good yarn. The game also caters for different people's schedules as you could finish in around 25 hours if you so wish - but with seven different endings and a story that branches two very different ways in the middle, you could easily play for upwards of 80.