?s about Eternal Sonata

[evil_ash_xero]

I was thinking about picking this game up, after playing the demo(yeah, I know how old it is). However, I am not sure.

My biggest problem with RPGs today is the overabundance of cinemas. That killed Tales Of Vesperia for me. The demo seemed to have far less, but it was just a demo. Can anyone elaborate on that.

Also, how much better is the PS3 version.

And last, does this have a good story at all, and would you consider it a strong game and worth getting?

For some reason, no one is answering me at GameFAQs, so I thought i'd ask here.

[E. Randy Dupre]

I'd steer clear, personally. It's one of the poorest JRPGs of this generation. Battle system aside, you get the impression that the only things tri-Crescendo learned from tri-Ace were the bad things - restricted single-track overworld with no exploration, nauseating characters, a world with no interactivity, all the effort of design put into the battling and everything else feeling thrown together at the last minute.

And I *like* tri-Ace.

Lots of positive reviews, but I think you can put that down to it being one of the first of the genre to appear on the 360, more than anything else. Everybody seemed to be wowed by the visuals, and while I agree that they are intricate, they don't prevent the world from feeling cold and lifeless.

The story's a mess. I can't remember how many cutscenes there are, but I do remember them being extremely boring and irritating.

[evil_ash_xero]

OK, thanks for the input. I'll probably skip this one then.

[drunkninja24]

I liked the game overall, the story was fairly interesting, until a certain point close to the end where it's incredibly obvious they either ran out of development time or just didn't care anymore.

[brokenhalo]

The voice acting will make you want to kill yourself. I played it for about 2 hours and sold it immediately.

[CStarFlare]

The story's a mess. I can't remember how many cutscenes there are, but I do remember them being extremely boring and irritating.

I didn't love the story, but I'm told it's meant to mirror Chopin's life so if that's the kind of thing you're interested in and/or might pick up on it might be more fun for you.

It's pretty short for an RPG (I think my first run took ~12 hours?), but the aesthetics and the battle system were enough for me to see it through to the end. (I also really like the music, but I like Sakuraba a lot).

My biggest complaint is that the new game+ makes the game so much better - the difficulty is higher (it's really easy the first time through), and the battle system is freed from the limitations that the game forces the first time around. (I'm not sure if the PS3 version does anything to address this)

I'm pretty sure you can get it for $15 used; it's not a bad buy.

[Daigohji]

Copy-pasting my rant about Eternal Sonata from when I finished the game a couple of years ago:

The visuals are gorgeous. The music is excellent. The battle system is right up there with Grandia II in my opinion. Sadly, this is a game that proves my old motto of a good story being 10% concept and 90% execution. The concept is one of the most unique in any RPG, but the script is one of the sloppiest. I've played plenty of RPGs with uninspired plots before, but rarely have I seen one so inept.

The central premise of the game world being Chopin's dream seems irrelevant for all but the opening and ending as we trawl through a stock RPG quest. Chopin is relegated to a supporting role in favour of Plucky Thief Protagonist #724 and a huge and diluted cast of characters who crowd the main quest's 20 hour duration. Major plot points fizzle away unresolved. The characters are rudderless for significant portions of the game, wandering around for no reason until they stumble on the next plot point. Mundane tasks that you would expect to be sidequests are instead mandatory quests drawn out to a ridiculous extent to pad the brief experience. Patience is strained by spending an hour climbing down a mountain to rescue a boy who has no bearing on the story, or trawling through a monster and puzzle infested graveyard to find the "special" water for an irrelevant little girl's irrelevant little plant. Hey, let's visit this temple, says one of the characters. Why? No reason. Do they decide it's too much hassle when they find it's locked and the person with the key sends them off on a tedious fetchquest? Of course not. It's like the writer spent six months coming up with the concept and a weekend writing the script.

[junkeR]

The voice acting will make you want to kill yourself. I played it for about 2 hours and sold it immediately.

I thought this game offers Japanese and English voice overs?

[Elixir]

The voice acting is pretty bad (even in Japanese, minus Beat and Chopin). Game's pretty and for 2007 it was one of the best looking games available.

Combat consists of mashing the same button up until the last second before releasing a special attack, but it can be fun.

Soundtrack is pretty forgettable.

Story makes sense up until the very last chapter. I still don't understand the ending or post-ending parts.

New Game+ starts you off at a huge disadvantage and a massive difficulty which is a gigantic kick in the balls. If it were more like Vesperia's NG+, it would have been much better.

No idea if the PS3 version is better, trusting Namco (lol) I'd say so.

But hey, I 100%'d this game. It isn't the best but before Vesperia this would have been my RPG of choice for the 360 (since I really didn't like Blue Dragon much). If you like the characters and combat system that's all you'll need to continue throughout the game. NG+ is optional.

Bonus: This guy has played through the game over 70 times. I like how he didn't even buy the 360 version at release and only recently bought a 360 (and even then he doesn't like the 360 controller).

If you can get it cheap, you might as well. Or if you just want an RPG with good combat and no story, get Resonance of Fate.