Eternal Sonata

"Trusty bells, limited whistles"

I've stopped trusting my gut on video games. Whenever I go to a store with an electronics department, I always look out for any RPG's that have slipped past my notice, and man, oh man are they easy to spot. Just look for for box art with someone wearing old fashion clothes, sporting funny hair, and holding a sword and you're on. Look for a collection of characters, or even just their floating disembodied heads, usually posing around some fantastical landscape and usually you've found one. One that really caught my eye was a bright and vibrant case with a blond-haired girl wearing a bonnet. I speak of none other than Eternal Sonata. As you'd guess by the name, the game has a musical theme set to it, or tries to, anyway. It used to be that when I saw a case like this, it meant the game inside was going to be pure RPG goodness with a moving story and likable characters. Well, we've got about half that right. While the game starts off very solidly and made me ask why this game wasn't considered the huge RPG for this generation, its flaws became more apparent as I got closer to the end. By the last chapter I was ready to shut the game off and not play it again, mainly because I was bored to tears. But while the game lacks staying power, it really excels in visual and auditory development, plus the presence of one of the greatest musicians to walk the face of the Earth.

Eternal Sonata is a J-RPG in which you follow a group of anime-inspired characters through an adventure that seems like most every other. Among the main three characters are Polka, a terminally ill teenage girl who's going on a soul searching journey; Allegretto, a homeless guy who excels in swordsmanship and has the hots for Polka; and Fredrick, the incarnation of renowned pianist Fredrick Chopin who is convinced that the fantastical world that Polka and Allegretto live in is his dream as he lays dying of tuberculosis in the real world. The three of them assemble a cast of ten characters to try to stop a war from breaking out between two kingdoms, one of which has hatched an evil plan to use minerals to turn its citizens into mindless, magic-using creatures so as to have an unbeatable army with which to conquer the world.

And this is where the game takes its nosedive. Thankfully, there are other, stronger elements that keep the game from being a complete wash. The thing with RPG's is you really need three things to keep them afloat: a good battle system, a good story, and well made dungeons. Everything else, replay value included, is just icing on the cake which can make an average game above average, and sometimes even make a bad game mediocre.

This game showcases a very mixed bag with the story, and part of it comes from the characters. The characters are very likable and interesting, and maybe that's the problem with them. They're so likable you want more, but there's very little elaboration on them. Most games, when they want to develop characters, have events, scenes, and in-game objectives which reveal the character's nature without having the character outright say how they feel. Without a narrator to tell us like in novels, or without complex facial expressions and body language like in film, character interaction and sparsely used monologue are there to add further detail to a character's motives, and are often the best devices for developing a character. Unfortunately, there are loads of areas where the game could develop the characters through interaction, or take an idea they started on a character and expand on it, but they don't. For example, at one point in the game one of the characters monologues about her infatuation for another character who already feels something for two other women. She then says she'll always be “in third place,” confessing self-doubt and low personal esteem. You'd think that this is an invitation to give this woman her own quest in which she proves to herself her own worth, but it's really one of the last things you hear from her in the game. Maybe you don't need to write a whole dungeon around it, but at very least give this character enough screen time to be more interesting than just calling herself worthless.

The game is also rampant with monologues that get old fast. The first ones seemed valuable and well written, if a little over-laden with prose. Later ones become ridiculous and even feel like a waste of time. There is one in which a character is stabbed, and instead of dying outright she begins to monologue for two or three minutes on the man she loved and how she felt horrible for betraying his trust. Yes, a character monologues about her love while she is dying, and for some reason I couldn't help but laugh. The scene felt more ridiculous and awkward than the drunken “no one understands me” scene from Koudelka.

Probably the biggest drawback to the storyline is that there isn't a big enough sense of conflict. Where most games have scenes in which the protagonists and the antagonists have a huge confrontation which leaves the main party with a bad taste in their mouths, this game seems to have very few interactions with the antagonists that do so. You never get a sense of major conflict playing this game, almost as though the developers were pulling their punches and were just too afraid to have the characters do something dangerous. Instead, they contrived a whole bunch of pointless side avenues that became main objectives, like going to rescue the inn keeper's son who fell off a cliff. It has no bearing on the story, it doesn't move the characters forward, and it feels like an obligatory excuse to have a dungeon where there didn't need to be one.

All things aside, the dialogue is well done, and it seemed like the writer had a theme in mind and just couldn't reach it.

I've mentioned the dungeons a couple times, and they are also a weak link in the game. Every one of them is overdrawn and tedious. There is little to nothing that makes each dungeon special, with the exception of a few. Even then, the “special features” of the dungeon are tiresome and unimaginative. Pushing switches to move pieces of the dungeon around is the theme behind one of them, and it really becomes irksome fast. It makes the dungeon feel more like a chore than part of a game. The worst part about the dungeons is that they have very little bearing on the story. In one scene the characters decide they have “nothing to do,” and decide to go explore a temple because they're bored. They somehow stumble upon one of the game's villains there, don't ask me how, and have one of the few confrontations in the game that's actually worthwhile. Come on now, who just gets bored and decides to explore a temple? It felt like the developers didn't know how to write the dungeons into the story, and decided to contrive the dungeons with meaningless events that force the characters to move rather than letting them move of their own volition. After all, it's the characters' story, not the writers'.

But underneath it all, there is beauty at work. Where the game fails in story elements, it succeeds in sheer beauty and gameplay. The game is inspired by the life of composer and pianist Frederick Chopin. Though loose and seemingly contrived, there are connections between the events in the game and events in Chopin's life. This is revealed through interludes that happen at each chapter in which a part of Chopin's life is discussed along with a piece of his work.

The soundtrack is largely inspired by Chopin, and much of it emphasizes the strife the characters face, as well as the liveliness of the game itself. It is, without a doubt, the strongest aspect of the game.

They tried to infuse this beauty into the battle system, trying to create something that was both action-packed and original. Falling away from the menu selecting, the developers opted for a battle system reminiscent of Star Ocean or the Tales games. At the beginning of a character's turn, you are given a little time, called Tactical Time, to decide where you want to send your character. Upon deciding, you can move him/her around the screen at will, and hopefully to an enemy. By mashing the attack button you can unleash a series of combos that will build up Echoes. Characters get a limited amount of time to attack, during which they can also unleash special attacks that can become more powerful as you build up more Echoes. As you get further along in the game, you can also gain what are called Party Levels, which can add battle advantages in exchange for making the battle slightly more difficult. As you gain more Party Levels, you can become able to counter attacks, do combo special attacks, and even move faster, but you also may see your Tactical Time drop. During the opponent's turn, you can also hit the B button during certain times to help reduce damage greatly, a la Super Mario RPG.

The battle system certainly sounds neat, but boy does it get tiresome after a while. Before long you find out how best to destroy a certain enemy force, and it sort of makes the battles too easy and a bit of a chore. Even though the game allows you to have “Tactical” Time, there's scarcely anything tactical about this game. Honestly, the same strategy seems to work for every enemy and boss.

One neat thing they did add to the battles, though, is the presence of light and darkness. Each character's special attacks change whether they are in the light or in the shade. The light and shade could also cause certain enemies to transform, either making them tougher or more lucrative, thereby adding a slight amount more to the strategy in the battle system that's otherwise missing.

The graphics during battle are decent, mainly made so by the great lighting effects and awesome spells that just look brutal.

The beauty behind the game also shows in the graphics, with breathtaking environments that definitely push the fairy tale aspect of the game. The character designs also befit the lively atmosphere of the game, each of them showing off a kind of innocence and kind-heartedness. The real power behind the graphics is in the animation. There are times in which the game looks like a Miyazaki film. You don't feel your playing a game, but watching a feature length anime at the cinema. It's mainly the character motions and expressions used that emphasize that aspect.

One element that usually draws a mixed bag out of crowds is voice acting. Many people would prefer they keep the voice acting exclusively Japanese, but the English translation seems to have gone well. Most of the actors bring out the anime feel of the game, especially Allegretto and Beat, but there are a few that just sound annoying. Claves and Jazz, for instance…

If I were reviewing visual and auditory art, Eternal Sonata probably would have gotten a 9 or a 10, but I'm not reviewing that kind of art. I'm reviewing a game; an RPG, no less. The developers may have forgotten what's key to an RPG. The theme should be a secondary thing, something that you add to the game after you've pieced the most important components together. However, it has been shown in this game that making something tasteful in the artistic realm can also make it palatable. While the story suffers a blow worse than the one that left a certain character to monologue for five minutes, the mechanics of the game, and the all around beauty, help keep it from being a total wash. All in all, Eternal Sonata is something that's only recommended for RPG completists and diehard Chopin fans. You know, the few and far between crowd. Even after porting this to PS3, it seems to have met limited success, and it's not hard to see why. Take a look, dear developers, as to why Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Tales, and Star Ocean have ruled the J-RPG roost all these years. It's not because of their artistic endeavors, but because they sold good stories, solid dungeons, and great battle systems.

FINAL JUDGMENT
Graphics: Create a lively and beautiful atmosphere 9/10
Sounds: Great soundtrack, mixed bag voices 8/10
Controls: Simple to use, and perfectly responsive 10/10
Plot/Storyline: Tries to be as deep as its bigger brothers, but fails 5/10
Gameplay: Can make the game feel tiresome at times, but the battle system saves it 6/10
All Together: 7/10

Perks
*Beautiful!
*Chopin kicks ass, and you know it!
*Outstanding soundtrack
*Perfect controls
*Unique battle system

Downers
*…that gets tiresome
*Ho-hum plot with too much monologue
*Tedious dungeons

Recommendations
Again: RPG completists and Chopin diehards only need apply. Other than that, don't spend more than maybe $10-20 on this game.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/30/09

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