YMMV / Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica

• Base-Breaking Character: Cloche and Luca are both this and which one you prefer generally depends on whose faults you can more easily overlook.
  • Cloche is unpopular with many fans due to her abrasive attitude, arrogance and apparent lack of caring towards her social inferiors. Other fans feel her behavior is, if not justified, then completely understandable given her rather nasty backstory, the worst of which she can't even consciously remember due to trauma. When the Hidden Heart of Gold comes out, it is easy to see and there is her relationship with Sasha as well.
  • Others find that Luca's secretly manipulative, self-centered and dishonest personality make her impossible to trust, which isn't helped by her seemingly petty reasons. However, others find that those aspects of her make her a more well rounded character than she initially appears given that her personality and relationships are generally more subtle than the more expressive Cloche, not to mention the great character growth she demonstrates and condenses in her Hartes ciel, melenas walasye song and the fact that Metafalica itself ended up being a success.
  • And compounding these problems, it bears mentioning that NISA's original localization miswrote and missed how to correctly write both girls in multiple scenes, making it harder to see their better sides for some people. This is also coupled with the fact that many poignant scenes had their voice acting removed, severely dampening their emotional impact.
• Breather Boss: Battles that require Reyvateils only are much easier than they look, especially if the Red Magic available in Luca's Level 5 has been unlocked.
• Complete Monster: Dr. Laude, part of the Grand Bell regime, is in charge of experimenting on and containing girls infected with the IPD virus, with many of these girls ended up dead or severely traumatized. Laude isn't doing this though because he believes in the Grand Bell's cause, but is instead using them so he could find the Heart of Gaia. He's actually from the Tower of Tyria/Tilia, and he plans to use the Heart of Gaia to gain fame, even if this means sacrificing everyone from Metafalls. To that end, he goes against the main party when he tries to steal the Heart of Gaia, even when it contains the soul of one of the Sacred Maidens who are needed to save the world. When his plans are stopped, Laude kidnaps Reisha, the mother of Luca, one of the Sacred Maidens, to forcibly turn Luca to become another Heart of Gaia. This act lead to a chain of events that cause his own death and Reisha dying in her daughter's arms. Laude would sacrifice another world for his precious artifact, just to return home and bask in fame and glory.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Seeing Cocona excited to watch Luca get publicly executed in one of Cloche's Cosmosphere levels should be disturbing, but ends up being hilarious because it's Cocona and her reasoning for being so is simply, "Because I don't like her."
• Cult Classic: While it's relatively under the radar when it comes to other JRPGs in the PS2, Ar Tonelico 2 is able to gather a very loyal cult following that continues to this day to the point it got a fanmade relocalization. The things that has fans express adoration for Ar Tonelico 2 are the well-developed characters, shockingly mature story that has many unexpected twist and dark moments, the Cosmospheres, and the music which many often praise as one of the best video game soundtracks of all time.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Cocona is a basically a sidekick for a supporting protagonist but she is one of the more popular vanguards in the series. Gust seems to have predicted this so they intentionally hinted her return in the next Ar Tonelico...wait does this makes Gust a Magnificent Bastard?
• Fan-Preferred Couple: If doujins, fanart, and the rest of the pulse of the Internet is anything to go by, Croix/Jacqli outstrips any other couple by miles. And, more often than not, Cloche and Luca get paired with each other (which the game even implies is a side effect of C/J if you go that route).
  • Of course, C/J is helped a decent bit by having a unique hymnos song at the end of its route, although the post-AT3 novels seem to indicate otherwise.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Replekia is supposed to be limited by only being usable once per battle, but if you need to cast Replekia more than once you're doing something wrong. It grows more powerful the more members of the fan club there are and there are up to a hundred possible fan club members. By endgame, Replekia can and will oneshot bosses about a hundred times over. That said, this is not the case in the Hard Mode introduced in the fan relocalization, in which Replekia's power was greatly nerfed as one of the steps taken to rebalance the difficulty.
  • Some of the more powerful IPD equips also count, particularly the one's that have the Guard+ skills. With Guard+++ or Guard++++ , getting Perfect guards, which nullifies damage taken by the vanguard and Reyvateil, becomes easy. Many of these more powerful IPD equip abilities comes fairly late in the game, however.
  • Even more broken than Replekia are the healing songs, especially Luca's since her's is stronger than Cloche's and, unlike Jacqli's, starts with the revive effect. She also gains access to abilities like critical heals earlier as well. Healing songs are capable of reviving and healing the entire party to full or almost full health every turn by the 2nd turn, essentially making you immortal. With this, you can even defeat level 9 I.P.D. as early as level 20 or below. Replika + Synchronicity Chain for overkill or simply let your Vanguards slowly end the battle.
• Les Yay:
  • "I joined the Fan Club after having naughty fantasies of Cloche." And that's a mild one.
  • There's also Skycat's tendency to flirt with Luca whenever she has the chance.
  • Two words: Softly Sexy. Or, in another translation, Syrupy Arousal, and there are two specific events tied to it.
  • Luca and Cloche in general have lesbian vibes coming off at numerous points, with even the boxart depicting them embracing.
    • They have by far the closest and most developed relationship, to the point where you can say the entire game is about them getting to understand each other. This is largely due to their roles, positions, and history but no matter how much logic you can try to use to explain their relationship, many fans will automatically take it as Les Yay. Oh, and despite the fact that part of the development of their relationship is fighting over Croix.
  • Infel is waiting for a princess on a white horse. It turns out to be Nenesha, whose death hit her so incredibly hard that she tried to bring her back, then sing Sublimation together.
    • To add on, the official setting materials state that when they were alive, only Nenesha could understand Infel, and that they even lived together. However... it just calls them friends... Although the light novel that told their story also made pretty clear their feelings go beyond mere friendship and into actual romantic territory...
• Magnificent Bastard: See here.
• Memetic Badass: After seeing Cloche actually use her sword, several people like to joke that she never becomes a vanguard character because she would make the game too easy!
• Never Live It Down: Many people who have played the game can never forgive Luca for her Manipulative Bitch behavior towards those around her despite her not realizing most of it is done at a subconscious level (except for manipulating Croix in Phase 1) and, when she gets called out on and realizes what she's done, takes steps to make amends and better herself. Even if her Cosmosphere isn't completed, she still gets much better throughout the game.
• Player Punch: While it can only happen inside of a Cosmosphere and not really affect the game's reality, it's still possible to make a choice that will cause Cocona to die.
• Stoic Woobie:
  • Shun. Shun was once a human named Enja and was childhood friends with Frelia. He intially joined the other kids in bullying her due to Frelia being from El Elemia and Enja being scared of standing up for her. He eventually does and becomes her protector, but he carries the guilt of not helping her sooner for years up until the mission to rescue Frelia from Sol Marta. During the mission, he's mortally wounded by Raki just as he finds Frelia in her cold sleep pod. He only survives because Raki senses how much he wants to protect Frelia and turns him into a wolf life form.
  • Frelia was bullied as a child which caused her to develop a shy personality. She also falls in love with Enja, which she isn't able to confess until she leaves for Sol Marta. She doesn't get to see him again until several hundred years later, when he's no longer human.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The original Ar Tonelico was considered a passable JRPG with an interesting world and good music but with clunky and slow mechanics with fairly by the numbers plot and characters. The sequel not only improved on all the aspects that were not up to snuff with better writing, characters and game mechanics, but also kept the memorable aspects from the original making Ar Tonelico 2 being considered to be among the best games in the series by fans.
• That One Boss: Robo Jacqli in Phase 1 of Luca's route when the team attempts to obtain the Hibernation crystal: Luca is the only Reyvateil in the party at the time, Jacqli gets four attacks per turn, and all of them hit hard if not guarded properly. "Trip and Fall" is especially bad as it can easily one-shot Luca.
• That One Side Quest: Recruiting all 100 IPDs can take a very, very long time. Along with fighting and treating them, many of them will not join the fan club until after killing a certain number of one particular enemy type. Particularly notably are the IPD that requires to kill 50 Pom enemies, and the ones requesting the Lizard and Stuffed Animal types, which by the end of the game only appear in the two final dungeons and will appear around 5% of the time. Partially remedied in the relocalization though, which restores access to an area where Stuffed Animal enemies are plentiful and easy to find upon the completion of an optional event.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: A common complaint regarding Luca's character arc and route is that while she has a much more natural relationship with Croix, she tends to be quite manipulative and her reasons for her behavior appear quite petty. Namely, her mother was supposedly very distant and uncaring towards her while growing up, but much of this takes place in the backstory, not where we can actually see it. In the present, her mother does show concern, but it tends to be when Luca isn't around to witness it directly, making her behavior even more difficult to sympathize with. Cloche, who can easily be just as difficult to get along with at least has the excuse that her issues are completely beyond her ability to actually control and cause reasonable effects on her behavior.
• The Woobie: Most, if not all, of the cast have tragic backstories or terrible things happen in the present that can provoke player sympathy. However, some of them get less than others due also being a Jerkass Woobie.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The Big Bad: Infel and Nenesha. The pair were genuinely close but when the time came to sing Metafalica, the IPDs betrayed them due to not liking what they saw from Infel's feelings, causing them to not send her any of the energy the song needed. This caused Raki to strike down Nenesha because she began taking power from Frelia...