10 hours into the game and Eternal Sonata still hasn’t won me over yet. I’m hoping things will turn around, but it’s hard to stay excited for a game that moves so slowly. Here's what I think about Eternal Sonata.
Animation and artwork wise, this game is gorgeous. I really like the characters: they are all so cute in a fairy-tale style that it’s hard to resist. Even Mr. Chopin looks so dashing with his feminine features. I love the cell shaded animations, the background, the special effects, Beat and his camera, and Polka’s dress. Seriously, after many hours of watching dear husband playing Fallout 3, this game’s cheerful and colorful design feels like a badly needed rain after a long drought. Plus, the music is everything the developers promised: catchy, beautiful, yet grand when it needs to be. This JRPG has one of the best game music around hands down.
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The other commendable part of this JRPG is the multiplayer mode. For the first time, I finally get to team up with my husband to beat the crap out of oversized rats and evil bosses for world domination. The bit about taking pictures to earn money has been done before in other JRPGs, but Eternal Sonata’s gameplay mechanics make this part a challenging feature…especially if you are not used to the FPS camera style.
The gameplay mechanics works smoothly so far, no surprises there. I like the fact that it’s more of an action based combat system, meaning you run up to the monster and thwack them instead of a traditional turn based system. I thought the light and dark attacks are ingenious and liven up the basic formula. Enemies can also change shape and size depending on whether they are standing in the shadows. Plus, you can also block your enemies attack, thereby reducing your damage.
The developers also introduced the Party Class system, which adds more constraints and grants your characters more special skill slots each time your Party Class level goes up. For example, in Party Class level 1, your “Tactical time” is infinite, meaning as long as your character does not move, you can take as long as you want to plan out your battle. As soon as you start moving, your “Action time” decreases until it hits zero, which signals the end of your turn.
So everything was going peachy for me until my Party Class hit Level 3. For starters, the tactic time is down to 3 secs. I can live with that; I make quick decisions all the time. But my action time is down to 4 secs. That sucks big time especially when your character has to run from one end of the battle field to the other, only to end up with 0 secs left right in front of the monster. That means, you just volunteered yourself to be a punching bag. Also, with such a short action time, the game suddenly changed from one that requires more planning/strategy to an X-button mash-up galore. That is the real shame.
Another major annoyance is the lecture on Chopin’s life. Is it really relevant at the end? If I wanted to know more about Chopin, I would A) visit the library, B) skim through Wikipedia, or C) have attended a Music History Class in college. It is a major detraction from the plot, which is slow enough that it does not need any more unnecessary bits bogging it down. Speaking of the plot, I really don’t mind waiting a good six hours for the plot to get exciting (See Suikoden V), but it has been 10 hours already! Come on, throw me a bone here. For me, this is the biggest problem I have with Eternal Sonata. I can forgive many flaws, but not a blah story that moves slower than a snail! I can only hope that with Salsa joining my team, things will start heating up.
In short, this is an okay JRPG from the looks so far. I’ll keep plugging along, but this JRPG does not hit the right chord for me…yet. I’m hoping this game will get better soon. Is there someone out there who can assure me that there is something worthwhile about Eternal Sonata? Or should I just drop it in favor of another game? Do tell.
