Eternal Sonata

"Rise and shine, Mr. Chopin"

The Xbox 360 lacks RPG games in its library but coming from the other side of the world and into American hands, Eternal Sonata makes it's way into the tiny list of RPGs for the Xbox 360.

I cannot argue that the story isn't original however, it's not very exciting either. The deeper you get into the game, the more cliche it becomes. The game is set in the dream world inside the famous piano composer, Frederic Chopin, who lies on his deathbed in reality. Chopin is aware that what he is experiencing is his own dream complete with people, monsters, cities, and towns. Chopin wanders the dream world and meets a young girl, Polka, who is doomed to die soon and plans to make the best of her life trying to help people by confronting a corrupted Count. Eventually along the way, you'll invite more party members such as two sewer rats who are just as important as Chopin and Polka.

Eternal Sonata deserves many points for its wonderful graphics. The world looks luscious, the scenery are beautiful, and the designs are amazing. The voice acting is great. It includes a very good cast of American and Japanese VAs. Luckily you can choose between English and Japanese voices. Cutscenes occurs often and they're lengthy too. It's a good thing you have options to pause or skip them. Eternal Sonata will also present slideshows of random but beautiful real life pictures of building and scenery, which I suspect they were taken in France. Unvoiced narration subtitles accompanied in the slideshow tell you the brief life of the real artist, Frederic Chopin, while one of his musical pieces are played. Since Eternal Sonata is a music themed game, the music feels very soothing and exciting during battles but they're not really the best I've ever listened to. Although the game looks visually great, the gameplay suffers.

Eternal Sonata plays much like a standard JRPG game but the battle is much more fluid. During battles, each of your character have 5 seconds to either attack, use items, or execute special abilities and the same goes for the enemies. The battleground have light and shadow spots which determine what kind of special ability you can access or it become an advantage for the enemy. When the enemy attacks, you have the chance to guard against their attacks to reduce damage which is a good way to keep players active and excited. Item holding is a tedious task as when you use items, they will be taken off a list which forces players to open the menu and re-equip the items. It's sad to see that how amazing this game visually looks, it lacks character customization and switch your special abilities. There are only 4 stats that level up and you can equip new weapons, clothes, 2 different accessories. Items equipped also make no change to their avatar but despite the lack or customization, their designs are nice.

The path from start to finish is linear and the puzzles are straight-froward. Along your way, you can collect musical pieces that you can play to strangers to get new and rare items and trade items with different people. This is pretty much the side quests, or rather, something else to do than grinding. On the field map, monster are visible so you can have a chance to strike from behind for preemptive strikes or go around them if you want to avoid battles.

Story - 7. Quite original but not great.
Graphics - 9. Very impressive graphics, beautiful.
Gameplay - 7. Gameplay needs more depth than graphics.

Overall, Eternal Sonata is all good looks but not enough gameplay. It's a good RPG and I'd rank it as the second best RPG available for the Xbox 360.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/21/07

Game Release: Eternal Sonata (US, 09/17/07)