Ar nosurge: Ode to an Unborn Star

Spanning well over thirty hours with five different endings, there’s a great deal of fun to be had in the world of Ar nosurge. It’s just unfortunate that the lack of localization for the prequel ends up hurting the full enjoyment of this great sequel.

Ar nosurge: Ode to an Unborn Star is a fun Japanese RPG that goes outside the square in terms of its bizarre story and combat techniques.

The best JRPG this side of Atelier Rorona Plus.

The storyline is too goofy to take seriously, with a cast that you can get behind on a surface level, but aren’t fleshed out enough to really hook you for a significant length of time. Still, the battle system is really fun to use and is so exciting that it’s worth playing through the game just to keep using it.

Unique and extremely strange JRPG granted with multiple gameplay elements and mechanics.

To fully enjoy Ar nosurge you have to 1) read an exhaustive summary of its prequel's plot which never came to the West and 2) completely suspend your disbelief. Once you are done, you will find a deep and solid jRPG below multiple levels of fan service and oddities.

JRPG fans should definitely check it out at some point, if only as a filler between bigger things.

Forgive its flaws, though, and there’s a lengthy — albeit dialogue heavy — adventure worth its weight in nuts and bolts.

It is an RPG with a very strong personality, but its story is dense and it's really difficult to follow considering the fact that the previous games weren't available in our region. As a game, it doesn't disappoint, even though there are better options out there.

While technically lacking, Ar nosurge: Ode to an Unborn Star offers many hours of play, plenty of things to do and an interesting albeit very exotic storyline.

Part visual novel, part JRPG, it's a bit more interactive than usual for the genre, but it still lacks any significant innovation.

It's a smaller piece in a much, much larger puzzle, and if you don't go into it fully aware of that broader context, it's not going to make a whole lot of sense.

A gem only for Gust's franchise fans. It's technical characteristics are far away from what you would expect of PS3. However, the universe in which it's englobed will give the player quite some enjoyable moments.

It's a very vanilla title that doesn't do much to advance the series, but is definitely going to please the die-hard fans.

The campaign is quite lengthy, there is a ton of story to read through, and there’s even essentially choose-your-own-adventure stories inside other characters’ minds. However, the story is very quirky, and although developer Gust attempted to go deeper in characterization, a lot of the drama that unfolds feels at about the high school level.

An over-complicated story with pacing issues holds this RPG back from its full potential, especially since the prequel was not released in English first. Those who enjoy reading will no doubt have fun. A tedious magic leveling system can also scare away new fans embracing the series. Only RPG diehards and TK fans will immediately gravitate towards it.

Ar Nosurge is an interesting game that suffers from a lack of tender love and care on the localizer's part.

An atypical JRPG where songs and relationships are the core of activities.

Ar Nosurge seems like a game that somebody had a lot of ideas for, but failed to find a frame to give it the right form.

What do you obtain mixing a visual novel, a sim-date game and an action rpg? Quite a mess.

In short, this game is entirely underwhelming. The storyline tries to be interesting, but just appears a muddled mess of stereotypes; the characters themselves look alright, but set pieces are empty and boring and littered with invisible walls pointing in only a few directions for exploration; and the battle system isn’t much for “battling” at all, even against the “tough” boss characters.