Eternal Sonata

"Great battles salvage this potential wreck."

Eternal Sonata is an action RPG from Tri-Crescendo who also made the Baiten Kaitos games. The story revolves around Frederic Chopin's dying days and the dreams he had during that time.

I'm going to start this off by saying that on the artistic side, Eternal Sonata delivers. Both the graphics and music are excellent. The game uses an art style that mimics anime and it works wonderfully. The characters are very detailed and the environments generally look great. Everything in the game is very colourful and easy on the eyes. The graphics are at their best during cut-scenes but the battles still look great. Animations are smooth and varied. The game also includes some of Chopin's best compositions even though the original music steals the show. The battle theme in particular is fantastic, it really adds a lot to the experience.

The story is where the game lost a lot of steam for me. Basically, you are playing Chopin's dream. He enters the world of Eternal Sonata as a playable character and meets Polka, a young girl with magical powers. They team up to stop the evil nation of Forte from exploiting a resource called mineral powder that kills its users. It's all downhill from there. Many characters join your party without a real reason as you fight your way towards the last boss. There are some semi-interesting twists in the story but it wasn't enough to keep my interest. As if that wasn't enough, the ending is an incomprehensible mess. I didn't keep playing this game for the story, that's for sure.

The reason I did keep playing was the turn-based battle system. Basically, you control your party members directly on the battle screen. You then get close to an enemy and attack it by mashing the A button until your time is up. Some characters use different mechanics such as a third person bow and arrow or a camera. Every fighter gets a certain amount of time to move and attack in one turn and gains a little bit more time when they land a hit on the opponent. You also have the ability to use items and special moves in battle. Items are plentiful and can be useful early on.

The way special moves work is pretty cool. Essentially, you have to build up a combo meter between all characters during a fight to deal the maximum amount of damage. It works really well and favours characters that attack quickly and can increase your combo faster than slower, more powerful characters. As you progress through the game, small changes are gradually introduced to the battle system that keeps things fresh.

Where this game shines in its battle system, it fails in its dungeon design. Puzzles are easy enough but some require lots of backtracking, which means fighting monsters you've already beaten. Whenever the party leaves an area, all the monsters respawn. They can be avoided most of the time but it's still a nuisance. Additionally, some environments are difficult to navigate due to bad visual cues. For example, I've spent about 15 minutes searching for a rope to go down a cliff. I knew ropes were usable as I had gone down some before. I knew I had to go down that cliff. I knew I had explored everywhere. I simply didn't see the very small piece of rope that stuck out of some bushes.

Overall, I had fun with this game due to the battle system and I thoroughly enjoyed the great graphics and music. I didn't care at all for any character or their stories though and the dungeons were less than stellar. If you are looking for a deep story and engaging characters, look elsewhere. If you are looking for a fun and relatively deep battle system, this game is for you!

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/20/08

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