Eternal Sonata

"It came out of nowhere and left me surprised"

I hadn't heard of this game a single time before I played it. Actually, it sat on the floor collecting dust for months because I thought it looked like a sub-par generic kiddy-grade RPG. After me and my bro couldn't find his memory card for the gamecube (in order to play the new Tales of Symphonia game with imported data) I was really disappointed and figured what the hell? So in goes Eternal Sonata, and after a while I had this smile plastered on my face, followed by an absolutely childish giggling upon discovering this was a very good replacement for a Tales game. What a surprise.

It should immediately be noted that I am an addict for multiplayer cooperative gameplay, especially in anything that even comes close to resembling an RPG. Since that sort of game is few and far between (screw the MMORPGs), this game makes some extraordinarily high marks in my book. Anyhow, on with the review.

Overall Ratings:

Gameplay - 10/10
Superb. My hat is off to this game. It came out of nowhere and really delivered a unique experience, despite the many similarities it has with a bunch of other games. A couple games to loosely compare it to in terms of battle are Dragon Quarter, or Tales of Symphonia.

First and foremost, in your menu you'll be able to assign control of each of your three combatants to 1-3 different players. While one person controls navigation through dungeons and towns, the other two will just take part in battles. Rarely certain characters will be forced into a battle (only happens 3 or 4 times in the game) and they'll mess up your character order, but that's nothing to cry about. I played with my brother, and liked this system quite a bit. With Tales of Symphonia the second player would get screwed constantly by the camera, but in this game it centers the camera on whoever's turn it is, so second and third player won't get the shaft.

Basically, you get three party members in battle and it's a mix of real-time and turn-based. The turn order is derived from the combatants' speed stat, and on a person's turn they can move, attack, use items or execute special abilities (mostly just damage and healing). What sets this game apart from others is that instead of using the tired (but nice) action points system you are actually set on a timer. On each character's turn your tactical timer will start, which allows you to view the battlefield and assess the combatants' positions and threats. Once the tactical timer depletes or you begin moving your character, your action timer (4 or 5 seconds) begins and you carry out your actions.

When you are attacked you can manually guard any attack that hits the front of your character (with higher Party Level you can counter as an alternative). Guarding drastically cuts the damage you take, and can sometimes be the pivotal part of the battle. When coupled with having low levels it makes for an exciting moment (missing a block in the final battle at level 40 meant 75% or more of your HP were gone just from that one attack).

You'll have a combo meter and the higher you can get it (it carries over between each of your character's turns) the more powerful it will make your special abilities. Eventually (once your party level is high enough) you'll be able to use Harmony Chains after your combo meter reaches 24 or 32, which allows you to string multiple special abilities together. This means that not only will your specials be more powerful, but you'll be able to execute several of them in a row, each still reaping the benefits of your combo meter. What I thought was very cool about this is you could launch your last attack in the form of a special, and then chain it together with a healing move at the end of your turn, which made it less of a hassle to have healers in the party. It should also be noted that the now standard mana system has been cast off, and special abilities can be used infinite times in combat (though there are drawbacks to just executing special abilities constantly).

Now, your Party Level and character levels are two totally different things. Character levels are pretty standard, you get four stats (plus HP) that increase at set amounts, and special abilities are unlocked at preset levels for each character. A Party Level, however, is gained at certain points in the plot, and does a variety of things. Your tactical timer will get lower (until you eventually have no tactical timer and must act immediately), your action timer will get lower, the capacity of your in-battle item ring will increase, character movement speed will eventually increase, Harmony Chains will be unlocked, and several other things will happen as your Party Level goes from 1 to 6.

Another thing that sets this game apart from most is the light/dark system. You'll be able to execute light specials when in the light, and dark specials when in the shadows. This might sound basic, but it adds a lot of flavor. In open areas the clouds move across the sky, which changes shadow positions in battle, or you can stand on the shadow of an enemy creature, or an ally, etc. etc. Also to help with this system there are often lanterns on a battlefield when in buildings and such. Sometimes the lanterns can swing back and forth, and sometimes 'spirits' (don't know if that's what they actually were) will float around randomly to provide a mobile light radius. Furthermore, some equipment will give either the 'Light Body' or 'Dark Body' status, which means you'll always be surrounded by an aura of the appropriate light. Some weapons will even have damage bonuses versus light or dark enemies.

If you're the type of person who is sick of the hassle of status ailments then you'll be happy to know that while they still exist in Eternal Sonata, they are not a crutch for the strength of enemies later on in the game. Any long-term FF fan should know what I mean. So you won't need to worry about having half your item ring setup with status ailment curing items.

Character customization is pretty limited with set levels and a linear equipment setup. You can select which specials are equipped, and you'll have a weapon, armor and two accessories you can set. Most often you'll want the strongest weapon and armor (very few acceptions) so there's not really much customization there. Accessories, while nice, don't give you many options for customization until the end of the game, at which point you'll be able to pick from a few nice things (i.e. 10-20% HP regen each turn, +10% attack, +10% HP).

Dungeons are pretty straightforward without any real puzzle solving or extensive looting. This is a big plus for me (after scores of RPGs I really started to get sick of solving pointless puzzles and getting forced into more battles, which translates into higher levels and less challenge). While the loot is mostly good, it's not so great that you can't bear to miss a treasure chest. On top of that, you don't have to run against walls searching for invisible secret passages and whatnot. Enemies are displayed on screen and you can run into their backs to initiate a preemptive, or they can run into your back to initiate an ambush. If you don't want to fight them you can try to run past them. It's a little glitchy at times (registering flank/back attacks), but it works nicely most the time.

Towns are pretty rare and won't dazzle you with huge bazaars or a plethora of minigames. Shopping can be pretty disappointing, but I didn't mind since the battles were so fun. There aren't loads of civilians meandering around to fill your ears with pointless dialogue, so you won't have to do the standard shakedown procedures, which is a welcome change.

New Game+ is something that absolutely needs to be mentioned. I was a big fan of the GRADE system in Tales of Symphonia, simply because you could cut your EXP in half to get more of a challenge out of the game (much better than skipping over half the battles in the game). Eternal Sonata, while not as great of a system, at least increases the difficulty a vast amount during New Game +. Any RPG fanatic who wants to get muscled around should zip through the game the first time through (takes about 20-30 hours ending around level 40) and then get ready to actually play the game. Missing one guard can mean either death or bye-bye to over half your HP, assuming you don't level in excess. So smile, you can actually have some fun. :D

Oh yeah, one last thing to be noted (and definitely skip this paragraph if minor spoilers bother you)... is how many chapters are in the game. In the menu you can see that there are 8 chapters, but know that the end of this game is standard. The last chapter isn't really a chapter, it's the shortest I've ever seen, if I was even willing to call it a chapter. In addition one chapter is very fruitless, while you're forced to use what I consider the worst party I've ever used in any game. Sorry if that spoiled something for you, but it's probably better than the absolute disappointment I was met with. Still, gameplay gets the top rating in my opinion.

Story - 1/5
Yeesh. This game came out of the box with a lot of promise, and that built and built for the first couple chapters, and eventually faded very rapidly into sheer disappointment. It looked like it would be really unique (who else is sick of 'save the world from the evil tyrant'?), but as time went on it just bled together with many other games. Oddly enough, I found myself saying, "Wait, is this Final Fantasy 10?" quite often. While it's not a blatant rip-off, I think the similarities are easy to spot.

Everything is repeated over and over and over again, to boot. It's not a hard story to follow, so characters reiterating the same thought several times in one dialogue tended to get a bit old. Don't get too excited for the story, because it's just another re-hashed 'save the world' when it all boils down.

The best feature about the story, was that you can skip almost every cinema in the game. A huge plus, in my opinion. It's one feature, I must admit, that I'm surprised every game doesn't have.

Graphics/Sound - Nil
I liked the graphics, especially a lot of the character design. It was colorful without feeling like there were knives in my eyes, and things were smooth and pleasant to behold. Character's emotions were done really well with the anime style graphics, and some of their facial expressions surprised me with how adequately they sumarized a character's feelings.

With the option of Japanese dialogue (as opposed to English) you've got a sure bet with voice acting. I think it's apparent that Japanese voice actors must take their jobs much more seriously than the English voice actors. It should be stressed though, that the English voice acting felt like I was being punched in the ears. Way too many pre-pubescent characters for an easy listen.

I didn't listen to music in this game, but based on the story (it relates to Chopin) I would hope the music is good. Honestly, I can't tell you anything about it though.

Play Time/Replayability - 4.5/5
Don't mistake my rating, this game will not take you too long to beat. The rating is mainly for replayability. Increasing the difficulty means you'll be having a lot more fun the second time through than the first time through. My brother and I haven't completed the second play-through yet, but we're far enough in to know it's much more of a blast than the first play-through.

Since (in my opinion) there's a minimum of two play-throughs, you'll be spending 20-30 hours on the first and probably 30-40 hours on the second. So that's about equal to how long it took me to beat FFVII the first time, which is pretty good in my book. Granted, I'd love if the game was longer, but I'd rather have a game that's fun to the end rather than longer with a terribly joyless end.

Final Recommendation - 7/10
While a 7 for me is an average game, my standards are pretty high (comparing RPGs against my favorites: Chrono Trigger, Dragon Quarter, FFV, Suikoden III, Xenosaga 1 and many others). The rating would be unbelievable if the plot didn't bomb out so terribly (I seriously considered giving it a 0), so if plot isn't an interest to you then this game would sit at a rating of 9.5/10. It's a must-own if you're an RPG fanatic or cooperative multiplayer RPG addict.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/30/09

Game Release: Eternal Sonata (US, 10/21/08)