Ciela (boss)
The manifestation of the Planet's Consensus of Wills, having at its core the three Wills of Origin: Horus, Clyuue and Juklizda, this will be the player's "opponent" during the final battle in Ar tonelico Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel. However and unlike other bosses, the player's role in this battle is convincing Her that humans still deserve a chance and persuade Her into accepting the Heart of the Land the party brought for the sake of restoring Ar Ciel. This battle is subdivided into four phases, each of which has a different pair of background music and battlefield, as it can be seen listed below:
- Phase 1: Battlefield: Ruins; Music: QoGa
- Phase 2: Battlefield: Dead Land; Music: Au GuMu
- Phase 3: Battlefield: Sea; Music: Ec Tisia ~Tarifa~ (corrupted version)
- Phase 4: Battlefield: Green Lands; Music: Ec Tisia ~Tarifa~
As it can be seen from this see, each phase also represents one of the Planet's emotional states: respectively, they are hatred, grief, confusion and forgiveness. Now, for the battle itself, Ciela will be surrounded by three shields and will have a trio of souped-up Doll Model HBL-S Antibodies accompanying her, but unlike other opponents, the Vanguards can't attack her: if they try even approaching her, she will blast them with a shockwave that will push them back to the other extreme of the battlefield, and if they attack her, they will get hit with a reflect wave that will reduce their HP in an 80% while she screams with an horrible static-filled voice phrases like "It hurts..." or "Die already"; which also cuts off the background music. Likewise, the Ultra Supermoves are disabled in this battle.
Therefore, the only way to actually make progress in this battle is using Song Magic, which will be the same one the Reyvateils used for the final battle with Ar Ru. Each time the player uses the Song Magic on Ciela, they will get an special animation played, and keeping in theme with the reason for the battle, no damage markers will pop up. However, while logic would dictate that using the Flipsphere would be much faster, it also breaks the theme of the battle for two reasons: first, it doesn't play the animation that appears when Song Magic is used normally, and second, the damage markers do pop up when using it, so it's better to just use the Lv. 4 Purge Songs. And while it's indeed possible to damage Her using attack items, that doesn't only go against the battle's theme but it's also a terrible idea given Ciela's resistances and defense, so players shouldn't bother doing it.
So the entire length of the battle will consist of protecting the Reyvateil from the Antibodies and using them to rack up Beat Ups to Purge her, all while keeping the party alive; as Ciela will also occasionally attack by sending waves and blasts that reach directly their targets, which can also inflict all status ailments and lower defenses. The player shouldn't really worry about killing the Antibodies, as Ciela will revive them whenever they fall or the next phase of the battle begins anyway. And while it's an extremely rare occurrence for Her to use it, Ciela also has an Stored Attack called Star Tears, which launches torrents of energy to the party to then finish them off with a gigantic energy sword, so if the player is unfortunate (or lucky) enough to see it, it'll cause extreme damage to their party and might outright kill them all, so they should be very careful. Similarly, the Stored Attack can't be interrupted once she starts charging it, so the player should heal their party to the max when this happens in preparation for the attack.
It should be also noted that Ciela's stats will raise and Her resistances will change with every phase, although the shields surrounding Her will vanish one by one whenever that happens, showing the party is indeed convincing Her. It'll be a very long and tiring fight, but if the player can stay alive for all the four phases and launch Songs with enough Burst, they will certainly convey the feelings of all mankind to Ciela and lead the whole Ar tonelico trilogy to a happy end. The approximate Burst values they will need for each phase are 100000~200000% in Easy, 250000~400000% in Normal, and 500000~650000% in Hard.