The basic theme of the game is supposedly focused on the famous composer and pianist Chopin. He is in a coma, and all the game exists inside a dream he is having. Everything and everyone has music themed names, and some events seem to mirror events in Chopin’s own life.( His life is told to you in a series of cutscenes between chapters.) In all honesty, that idea isn’t realized. Chopin quickly becomes a backseat character and his dogged insistence this is all in his head seems really disjointed and out of place as you often forget he’s even there. The scenes about his life also quickly become more interruption than game enhancement as it becomes clear that while informative, they don’t add very much to the game except an excuse to play one of Chopin’s pieces. This fumbling of the Chopin portion of the story costs this game a lot of its potential. If the game had been played exclusively from Chopin’s point of view, rather than constantly jumping around to other characters, it would have tied things together a lot more smoothly by making Chopin into an audience surrogate and highlighting his separateness from the Eternal Sonata world which would’ve lent a more believable cast to the tale.
In this dream world of Chopin lives Polka, the leading eh… child? She is a young girl with magical powers, doomed by fate to sacrifice her life for those she loves and, to be frank, Yuna did it better in Final Fantasy X. Polka is annoying, frustratingly naïve, optimistic and none too bright. Before anyone says otherwise, examine the fact that she was told that if tensions between mankind ever threatened to boil over into war she should throw herself into the sea and things would be better. She accepts that without any questioning. She, of course, develops a love interest in the form of the street rat Allegretto, who steals bread for orphans and is raising his younger brother Beat. The world they live in is one of crushing taxes and unjust rule which they must set out to right. Along the way they meet a cast of companions who join them on their quest to right these wrongs. Only the addition of Chopin keeps this game from being completely formulaic, because otherwise it’s largely the plot of every RPG ever.
And, like many RPGs before it, the supporting cast is much more interesting than the leads. Of late this lamentable characteristic seems to be a trend that really needs to stop. These characters are often the only thing that save the plot, because by the end of the game the story had more holes in it than your favorite pair of underwear. The conclusion of the game was the grandest story cluster fuck I have ever seen. The cutscene was an hour long, and yet managed to give no explanation or closure to anything. It was as though the writers simply gave up.
This game needed editing more than anything else, because far too often things just didn’t add up. For example, on one level pirates rammed our ship, tied our boats together, then apparently went back below decks on their own ship to relax, allowing the main characters to board the pirate ship and chase the ‘scoundrels’ down at leisure.
The likewise editing needy gameplay mostly consists of traveling town to town, scene to scene, by way of dungeon. Encounters are thankfully not random, and the combat system did originate from a cool concept. Battles take place in a small area you are free to move your characters about. Entering a pocket of shadows will change your character’s special abilities from a light set to a dark set, and likewise an enemy may have different forms and abilities in light and darkness. Your actions are set to a four or five second timer which constitutes a turn, and within in that time you can attack or heal as quickly as you can mash a button. Which, basically, is all combat boils down to. For most of the game during an enemy’s turn you can fulfill a quicktime trigger to block an attack and significantly reduce the damage you take. Much later on you receive the ability to counter attack, which only occasionally pops up. But by then it’s too little too late. You’re already trained to the block button, and you don’t have enough time to think about switching buttons before getting hit, anyway.
A notable combat aspect is that in the case of Beat’s character you can also take pictures of enemies in place of a special attack, which may be sold for significant piles of gold. Another fun minigame takes the form of characters in the world who will challenge you to recite music with them. You can find score pieces in town and dungeons which you must match to the piece the character has. If you play well, you will be rewarded with very good items. But, if you’re like me and have no musical skill, once you start accumulating many pieces it becomes a huge pain in the ass to find the right one to play, assuming you even have it.
Most everything else is standard RPG fair. You use gold to purchase new equipment, then upgrade again in the next town. Saving is accomplished at save portals scattered about the world, which I am not opposed to when done correctly. It was not done correctly in Eternal Sonata. Target range for save portal spacing should be every twenty to forty minutes, preferably on the shorter end of that spectrum. It’s nice when you can sit down for several hours and grind away, but that’s not always an option. Sometimes you have to get off and take care of life. I clocked some gaps between save points at upwards of an hour. That’s not a good thing when the game is frustrating as this, the only thing worse than hating the game is not being able to get off of it and take a breather.
The visual style of the game is everything you’d expect from a childish anime RPG, full of bright colors and ridiculous flora and fauna. The visuals are well done, nothing too extraordinary (well, maybe the cringe worthy character design) but attractive all the same. The levels are pretty varied, but then again, the levels are also frequently too long and the game is prone to making you back track. The game’s audio was literally touted on the back cover but by and large I wasn’t too impressed. The Chopin pieces the game featured were, of course, signaturely complex, but barring those I didn’t find the music too outstanding. It was often pretty, and I do especially like the piece that played during the Lament Mirror Dungeon (which I believe is only in the PS3 version). Perhaps it was only because the music was made such a big deal of, but I was disappointed. Additionally, it’s worth noting voice acting was on the bad end of the anime spectrum. I especially found Polka’s sickly sweet schoolgirl voice hard to bear at times.
Eternal Sonata was unfortunately less than the sum of its parts. With some tweaking and editing, it could have been a truly original game, perhaps could have even achieved a larger following and classic status. As is, I won’t be revisiting this tale. The only thing I’m taking away is a broken narrative of Chopin’s life story and forty hours I consider wasted. This game doesn’t approach the complexity and charm of other available RPGs, and the unique concepts aren’t well enough realized to set Eternal Sonata apart. Unless you’re a diehard anime game or Chopin fan, I’d advise you to look elsewhere for your role playing fix.
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