Surprisingly it's been almost 3 years since the age of the next generation console began with Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 but yet the genre of role playing games, specifically Japanese style made rpgs haven't been touch much. Sure there's been a few JP rpgs release but they were more smaller ones catered exclusively to one console only. JP multi-console rpgs seem very rare these days to pretty much none existent. In fact Eternal Sonata is probably the only JP rpg that is now available on a multi-console basis on both Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. And yet still when Eternal Sonata first came out 2 years ago, it was exclusive only to the Xbox 360. Thankfully one year later, NamcoBandia decided to re-release Eternal Sonata for the Playstation 3. This time with updated content and some exclusive bonus content for the Playstation 3. Despite the new bonuses for the Playstation 3, the core of Eternal Sonata remains the same. Xbox 360 players shouldn't have to worry too much as despite some exclusive content for the Playstation 3, the game for the most part is virtually the same as when it was release on the Xbox 360. So while this review is base on the Playstation 3, Eternal Sonata, the points made in this review and the score of this review will pretty much reflect the same for the Xbox 360, Eternal Sonata.
STORY
This world is your dream, Frederic?
Look at all these glowing Agogo.
In mid 1840s, Frederic Francois Chopin, known as the Poet of the Piano, lies in his sickbed as his last hours of life in the world start to slip away. As the hours start to slip away, Frederic dreams of a world of fantasy and magic. In this magical dream world, Frederic is a visitor wandering the world searching for his purpose. Knowing that this magical world is a dream world all in his mind, Frederic encounters a young girl name Polka. Polka much like Frederic is a magic user. And in this magical world, all magic users share a terrifying fate that they will all die from this illness known as magic. Realizing her fate, Polka decides that she want to help the people of her village before her time passes by traveling to the city of Forte to ask Count Waltz to raise the price of Mineral Powder, a healing medicine that the people of the world have been using, so that medicinal herbs can sell more since the people of Polka's village rely on medicinal herb sales for a living. Frederic decides to accompany Polka on this long journey to Forte to see Count Waltz. Along the way both Polka and Frederic meet up with other individuals who have common goals in reaching Forte to see Count Waltz about Mineral Powder. Salsa, a guardian of Agogo Forest who wishes Count Waltz to stop the mining in the Agogo Forest for the ingredients to Mineral Powder as the mining is destroying the forest. Allegretto and Beat who come from the town of Ritardando, wishes Count Waltz to lower taxes on its people. And Viola, a goat herder, reveals to the group that Mineral Powder has a harmful side effect that turns people into monsters. With this news of how harmful Mineral Powder is, the group of travelers decided to join up and head to Forte as one group in hoping to stop the distribution of Mineral Powder. Along the way Polka and her friends encounter a rebel group called Andantino, led by a man name Jazz. Jazz and his comrades quickly explain to Polka and her friends how a war is coming between Forte and Baroque and that he believes Count Waltz is using Mineral Powder to make an army of monsters for this war. Sadden and fearful of this coming war, Polka and her friends are drawn into the struggle to fight against Count Waltz with the rebel group, Andantino, hoping to stop a war. During these trouble times, Polka must confront her destiny and what she must do to save the world. And yet at the same time, Frederic must find what role he has to play in this dream world of his. This story is about a magical dream world from composer and pianist, Frederic Francois Chopin.
Without a doubt this is probably the biggest disappointment from the game. This is a game that look like it would have a killer rpg story that will get you involve into the storyline but unfortunately your high hopes will be crush here. The story starts off interestingly enough with some unusual plot lines but as it gets to the half way point, the story start to lose focus and becomes confusing. As it get to the end of the story, things get too cluster up to the point where things just don't make any sense at all and you have too many sub plots that over lap each other that you don't really know where this story is going to the point where you actually lose interest in the story and don't really care for it. The story would have been better off just being one fantasy rpg story focusing on the heroes and their fight with Count Waltz in stopping him from distributing Mineral Powder that was causing harm to the people. Instead you have pianist Frederic Chopin modern day storyline lump into the fantasy rpg dream world storyline of our heroes, and Polka weird subplot about her destiny and powers all cluster together that you have a hard time tracking the overall story and which is the real story in this rpg story. The first problem is Frederic modern day storyline is just plain boring and almost pointless in the game. Each time the story shift to the modern day setting where the narration tells about Frederic Chopin flight in modern day, the revolution and the war during the 1800s, you just want to press the skip button and skip through all the boring narration. I guess the game want to give us a history lesson on Frederic Chopin but it feels like you are sitting in a boring history class waiting for the class bell to go off so you can get out of the history class quickly. If someone were to erase out all of Frederic modern day storyline in the game, it would have no impact at all on the rpg dream world storyline. That's just how pointless Frederic storyline was in this game. The fantasy dream world rpg storyline within Frederic dream isn't too bad of a story but it's hampered by over acting on some scenes and the Polka side story about her destiny that doesn't seem to fit within the story of trying to stop Count Waltz and a possible war between two nations. Polka side story about her magic powers and her destiny seem very out of place within the story and doesn't seem to make much sense. Without going into any spoilers the story didn't really tell us why Polka is so special and why she needed to be the one to save the world. Her scene near the end of the story was so totally over acted that it was a turn off. Another fault with the dream world story is that there are a lot of scenes that the story tries too hard to dramatize it to get some sort of an emotional response from gamers that it comes off as over acting and not believable. I think that's the problem with some of the serious story scene in that it tries too hard to be serious that it doesn't work too well. On the bright side of things, the story scenes that are light hearted and funny do work well and they do put a smile to your face. Most of these scenes involve the two characters of Salsa and Beat. But in the end you just lose all interest in the story because the story tries too hard in putting too many sub plots into a story when they should just stick with one sub plot. The whole sub plot that everything in Eternal Sonata is a dream world that Frederic Chopin is having doesn't work at all. It would have been better off to just focus on the fantasy rpg story from the beginning to the end. A major disappointment here on a game that looks so good.
Score 7/10
CHARACTERS
"We're not imaginary characters."
Eternal Sonata has a very large cast of characters. 10 original main characters so that makes 10 playable characters with 3 supporting characters playing a small role in the story. However two of the supporting characters were made playable in the Playstation 3 version but their role in the story hasn't change at all and they are still considered supporting characters. There are only four villains in this story. The ten original story characters are Allegretto, Beat, Viola, Salsa, March, Jazz, Falsetto, Claves, Polka, and Frederic. With so many characters in a story, story developments on them are going to be tough since you need to find the space to fit all of their background development into the story. So instead of trying to do that, the story mainly focuses character development on Polka and Frederic, leaving the other characters with a small mention about their history during some story scenes and dialogue. The voice acting for all the story characters in this game is excellent. There's no complaint here on the voice acting at all. And overall this look like an interesting cast of characters but there are many problems with this cast of characters. The first problem is there's really no main lead character in this story. The reason why I say this is because you really can't tell who the main character is. It could be Frederic or it could be Allegretto. The main female lead character is Polka. In essence there really isn't a lead character in this story because the story itself doesn't rely on just one or two individuals like most stories to carry the story and the cast of characters. Without any strong lead characters, the strength of the story falls on the entire cast of characters to make the story interesting because your interest in the story is solely connected to your interest in the characters. Unfortunately despite the excellent voice acting, these cast of characters come off very boring and dull in personality. Everyone is just a bit too serious and you really don't see any chemistry within this group at all. Out of the entire group of 10 to 12 story characters, only Beat and Salsa are the ones that shine the most and make you smile. Beat and Salsa are the only two that actually have chemistry with each other. You can sense the friendliness the two have for each other and the way they take jabs at each other. Salsa is the one that stand out the most amongst this group as she's the most outspoken one and have the most unique funny personality that is very likable. Likeability is very important in character presentation and it's sad to say that Beat and Salsa are the only two likeable characters in this game. The other characters just seem too dull and serious that you just can't get into liking them or caring for them. You don't hate them or dislike them, you just don't take a shine to them. The villains aren't too good too. There's not much spotlight on the villain. For the most part they show up during certain part of the story just to provide a boss fight. Once you defeat them in battle, they sort of just disappear from the story. The story sort of treats them as those nameless unimportant boss fights instead of meaningful story bosses. Having a good strong cast of characters means there has to be chemistry in the group in a way that even if they are a bunch of misfits thrown together for a common cause, you have to be able to sense and feel the emotions and love they have for one another. You just don't feel it here. It's a nice looking cast of characters but there's no heart and soul within the group. Beat and Salsa are very likeable but they aren't lead characters that can carry the entire cast. And the story itself doesn't have any strong stand out lead character.
Score: 7/10
GRAPHICS
A beautiful dream world.
There's no doubt the best feature of Eternal Sonata is its graphical look. This is by far one of the best looking rpg game out there to date. There's no way you can't be stunned at how beautiful this game is. To fully appreciate the graphics of this game, try playing it on a wide screen HDTV and see what we mean here when we say one of the best looking rpg game around. The environments in this game are just drop dead gorgeous with attention to detail that makes this world come to life in a very realistic way. The sceneries from forests, skies, swamps, towns, trees, and flowers are so realistic that at times you can't believe that these environments are fake. The brightness and coloring of the environment really help bring this dream world to life. The anime character designs seem a bit out of place in the more realistic background environments but they are drawn nicely with some added lighting effect on the character models that help make them 3D. Even with the anime cutesy look of baby eyes and cutesy round face where everyone looks young, the character models are drawn with a lot of details from facial features to the clothes they wear. The colorings of the character models are also done in a way that make them stand out with the usage of a nice rich texture of colors that make them look bright and smooth. One of the best looking rpg games around.
Score: 9/10
MUSIC
In the end, music is what defines
me..
Eternal Sonata has a soundtrack that carries up to 60 musical tracks. The musical tracks are broken into 3 categories that are Event Sequence, Field, and Battle. Events and Fields tracks carry the bulk of the soundtrack with about 30 different tracks between the 2 categories. There are only 10 Battle tracks but in this game, the Battle tracks are the one that really stand out the most and carry the music in this game. Some of the Field musical tracks are good but for the most part you don't really notice the Field track too much other than traveling music as you explore the world in this game. Event Sequence scores are very disappointing in this game. You would think that important story scenes would have the best musical tracks to help set the tone for each story scene but that's not the case here. Most of the Event musical tracks are just too quiet and soft that they have little impact on the story scenes themselves because you can barely hear them. They are like soft elevator music playing in the background as you ride the elevator in a shopping mall. That's not how story musical scene should be done. It's really disappointing how forgettable all the Event Sequence musical scores are. The game also provides 8 large scale piano musical scores. If you are a huge piano music fan, you would love that. But I'm guessing most people that play this game including yours truly aren't a big fan of piano music so we probably don't really care to listen to piano music at all. For a game that is supposedly build on a musical rpg story theme, this is probably one of the most disappointing musical soundtrack to date. Sorry to say it but the entire soundtrack is just close to average.
Score: 7/10
GAMEPLAY
It's three against one, time
to die.
Galactic Nebula will take you
down!
Game Information
Genre: Action RPG
Publisher: Namco Bandia
Disc: 1 Blu-ray Disc
Memory: 3245 KB
Players: 1-3 Player Mode
Rating: Teen
Release: October 2008
HD Output: 720p
If you are a fan of NamcoBandia rpgs than you will probably be familiar with the gameplay since it plays very similar to their famous rpg Tales Series. The battle system pretty much consists of a free roaming action turn base system in a semi 3D setting that is similar to the Tales Series. The rest of the gameplay is pretty much the stable of all rpg games. You have your basic fields, dungeons, and towns for you to move around and explore. Instead of a random encounter system when you are outside in fields or dungeons, you have roaming monsters that once you come into contact with, a battle will occur. Nothing new here and have been done in many rpgs before. In towns you can sleep at Inns to heal up, buy and sell equipments and items at shops, and of course save your game. The gameplay itself is very linear base on the storyline so you pretty much know where you have to go next in terms of exploring a field or a dungeon. Like with most regular rpgs, at the end of a dungeon you will have the usual boss fights. Sometime it's an important boss fight while other time it's just a random boss fight for the sake of having a boss fight. Some of the new features and key features are introduce in the battle system. As stated before, you get into battles by coming into contact with a monster. In this free roaming action turn base system, you can have only 3 party members in battle out of the 12 possible party members. Your reserve party members will still gain the same amount of experience points as the ones that are in battles so this balance out the entire team level in a good way. Battles themselves aren't hard and if you are experiencing a bit of a difficulty than it's due to the fact that your party members are too low in level so spending time leveling up your party member will offset any difficulties in fights. The gameplay is pretty simple and nothing really special out of it that isn't different from other fast pace action party rpgs. Even if its still simple traditional rpg gameplay, it is still very fun to play. And having fun in a gameplay is very important.
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Item Points: In this game, every useable items has a set number of Item Points attach to them. The point of having Item Points on items is so that you can determine how many items and how many slots you will have available to be place on your Item Set to be used during battles. Item Set: The Item Set is more like your Item Bag you carry during battles. What items you have in your bag, you can use in battles. To determine how many items you can put in your Item Set, the game place an Item Point system on your Item Set. The maximum number of Item Points for your Item Set depends on your Party Level. As your Party Level increases, so does the maximum number of Item Points available for your Item Set. Party Level: In addition to individual character levels, the game uses
a Party Level system for your entire party. The Party Level system acts more as
a learning curve progression for players as they play the game. At Party Level
1, the battle system is more in a turn base system to allow players to adapt to
the gameplay to be familiar with the control and pace of the game. As your Party
Level goes up, the battle system becomes more fluid and faster pace becoming more
like real time. Of course you also have more access to certain features in battle
at a higher Party Level such as Harmony Chains and Counter Attacks. Your Party
Level goes up in level base on the story progression of the game. Score Pieces: This is more of an extra feature than anything else, still it is a feature that is a key part of the gameplay throughout the game. You will find score pieces hidden in the world of Eternal Sonata in fields, towns, and dungeons. Once you have some score pieces, you can play piano sessions with some NPC characters to receive some nice items as a reward. Photos: This little feature is only available to the character, Beat. Beat
is able to take photos of any monsters or bosses and resell the photos to shops
for money. This is a good way to make extra money outside of just getting money
from battles. The amount of money you get for the photos depends on their rank.
Ranks of photos are base on the clarity, position, and angle of the subjects in
the photos. So randomly just taking photos at any subjects and at any spot isn't
going to get you a good rank for the photos. Echoes: Echoes are basically your hit combos. Instead of calling them hits they just call them echoes in this game. So each time your fighters land consecutives hits you are building up echoes or echo chains. So how does echo effect battles? Simple, the power of your Special Attack or the potent of your Special Attack is determine by the build up of echo chains. The higher your echo chains are, the more powerful your Special Attacks will be. So building up long chains of echoes is the key to unleashing powerful Special Attacks. Special Attacks: In this game all characters have special attacks that are divided into Light and Dark. Using a Light or Dark Special Attack in battles is determined by the area you are standing in, in other words if you are standing in a dark area than only Dark Special Attacks are available to be used. The same is true if you are standing on a light area where only Light Special Attacks are available. Once your Party Level increases, you'll be able to equip 2 Special Attacks of Light and Dark at once. You gain new Special Attacks as each character level increases. Light/Darkness: This is probably the most unique new feature in the game, the usage of light and dark areas on the battlefield to have an effect on monsters and special attacks. In this game both Special Attacks and monsters are divided into categories of Light and Dark. This is base on the area you are standing on in the battlefield. For Special Attacks, the light and dark areas only effect which Special Attacks are available to be used as previously explained in the Special Attack feature. For monsters or for some monsters it work the same way. Monsters will change to different version of themselves base on the light and dark areas. This is important as each monster type has a harder version of themselves beside their more normal version. Their harder version can be base on either Light or Dark so when fighting in battles, you want to make sure you are fighting in areas that will activate the more easier normal version of the monsters than having to fight the harder version. Of course this is easier said than done since the battle system is base on free roaming monsters with the entire battlefield covered with light and dark areas. So it's not like the monsters will be standing still for you to fight them in a desire area. Expect to see monsters change back and forth between different versions throughout battles. This Light and Dark version is very unique and can make battles very challenging at times. Harmony Chains: Once your Party Level reaches level 3, you can start doing Harmony Chains. Harmony Chains are basically linking Special Attacks back to back together for massive damage. They just call them Harmony Chains instead of Special Attack chains. Note that you need to build up your Echo chains to at least 18 or more to be able to do Harmony Chains. By the time your Party Level reaches level 6, you can do the maximum of 6 Harmony Chains making this game really fun linking all those Special Attacks together and doing massive damage. Depending on which Special Attacks you use, you can continuously use Harmony Chains at each turn of battle if the Special Attacks you use are constantly building up echoes for you to use for Harmony Chains.
The one thing you can say about this game is that it's definitely fun to play. The game is very fast pace and very balance. Even though you can only have 3 party members in battle, it's nice to know that even the reserve members gain the same amount of experience points as those that are in battles. This allows you to rotate different party members in and out and enjoy each of your 12 party members in battles. The learning curve is very good too. I like how the game slowly evolves the pace of the battle system into the learning curve for gamers with the use of different party levels. At Party Level 1 the game system treat you as a beginner who's just learning how to play but as you reach near the end of the game and you reach Party Level 6, you become so accustom to the gameplay that limited restriction that was place on previous Party Levels are lifted allowing the game to be more fast pace and in a semi real time flow. And it becomes really fun when you can chain together 6 different special attacks in a Harmony Chain. Dungeons and fields are large but yet aren't so complicated to explore. And the monsters roaming around, you can avoid them or choose to fight them, allowing you total control of how many battles you want to get yourself involved in. This is one of those gameplay where time flies by so fast when you are playing it that you hardly notice how many hours you spend on it. And of course time always fly by fast when you are having fun. There are only 2 drawbacks when it comes to the gameplay. The first drawback is that while you can carry lots of items in your inventory, you can only have a certain number of items in your Item Set to be used in battles. And of course the number of items in your Item Set is base on the item points you have available for your Item Set and the number of points an item takes up. This can really hurt when you are in a tough boss fight and you aren't able to have enough of those healing and reviving items for you to use in battle. Of course this does make those boss fights more challenging so some gamers can see this as a plus. The other drawback is that the battlefield is only semi 3D instead of a full 3D battlefield with a rotating camera. Not having a rotating camera option in this gameplay really hurt sometimes when you are at an awkward position and need to be able to rotate the camera around to get a better view of your player positions in the battlefield. But again these 2 drawbacks are really minor and they don't hurt the gameplay enjoyment at all. Overall the gameplay is one of the better bright spot in this game.
Score: 9/10
EXTRAS/REPLAY
They call him, Annilhilator
Eternal Sonata definitely has some in-game extras in term of an extra dungeon and extra boss fights as well as incentives to replay the game again in a New Game+ mode. On your first play through of the game, you can do some very minor quests in finding piano scores in hidden spot around the world. Once you have some piano scores you can than play a piano sessions with some characters that you mean in towns. If you are able to perform a piano session that earns you a rank A, B, or S, you will be rewarded with different prizes. But the main in-game extra is the hidden dungeon known as Mysterious Unison. You can only access this extra dungeon once you make it all the way to the end of the game. The Mysterious Unison dungeon consists of 12 floors where you can climb all the way to the top of the dungeon to fight the hardest boss in the game. The extra dungeon itself is riddled with some of the game tougher monsters as well of the best weapons and equipments in the game.
But that's not all as once you beat the game, the game offer you a New Game+ mode. In the New Game+ mode, your party level gets carried over, all piano score pieces that you had found in the first game get carried over, and any costumes you have unlocked get carried over. Now the New Game+ will offer you a couple of new costumes to unlock, some newer special monsters as well as tougher monsters, more Piano Scores to be found, and a new extra hard dungeon called the Church of EZI. Plus the ending of the New Game+ is also a bit different from the ending of the regular mode too. So there's definitely a reason for you to try and replay the game again in a New Game+ to see what's new.
The drawback that one can say is that even though you do get extra dungeons, you hope there be a bit more serious side quests to do but the game doesn't really offer any of that. Still what the New Game+ offers is worth a replay a second time for sure.
Score: 8/10
Eternal Sonata has what one would call the look of a great JP rpg game. It looks like an rpg game that can't do any wrong. But sadly at the end of it all, you feel kind of disappointed from the game. The key components of all good to great rpg games are their characters and stories. Rpg stories are the backbone of what makes an rpg game great combine with the characters in the story. And with Eternal Sonata, you feel that the game doesn't live up to the hype of what the game looks like, hence the disappointment. The graphics and gameplay are top notch but when you finish playing the game, you're interest in Eternal Sonata seem gone because somewhere along the way, you lost interest in the story and the characters. And once that happens, you lose the emotion and excitement for the game. Eternal Sonata is like a hot looking model, female or male, depending on your taste. It looks great on the outside and at a distance, but once you get to know the personality of the hot looking model, you realize despite looking good, it's not your cup of tea. No matter how much I wanted to like Eternal Sonata, I just couldn't care much for it by the time I finish the game. The game started off strong for me but the lack of an interesting story to a confusing story simply killed off any excitement I had for the game when I started to play it. And I'm sure I'm not alone when I say this game just didn't live up to the hype of what the game looks like. I had fun playing the game but there just wasn't any heart and soul behind the fun.
