Chopin is totally emo.
Coming down off a game like Call of Duty 4 is hard, but I managed to do it by blowing all of my christmas money on Eternal Sonata, Crackdown, and Dead Rising. Of those, surprisingly, I find myself playing Eternal Sonata the most.
It's a decent game, as RPGs go. You have a pool of main characters that fluctuates at certain points in the game. You run through a plot, arbitrarily deciding that the kingdom can wait around on the brink while you get a sidequest or two done here and there. There's a main bad guy, a real bad guy, and a "surprise twist" bad guy. Pretty standard fare.
On the negative side are the cutscenes. And let me tell you, when I say 'cutscene', I in fact mean a full-length scene that was never cut. Eternal Sonata is like the director's cut RPG. I have not watched a video game cutscene that was this long since Final Fantasy came out in theaters. Seriously, I timed the end-game scene, which consists of an ending, half the credits, another ending, then the rest of the credits, and then a short length film that corrolates to the main themes of the game. There was a period of just under 54 minutes I had to wait before I got control of my XBox back so I could start a second playthrough for achievements. Ridiculous.
But, three things make this game entirely repeatable for me.
A: The end scene is the only cutscene I have found so far that isn't skippable. Which means I don't need to listen to the main characters prattle on about the existential quandaries of living inside Frederic Chopin's dreams as he lies dying in Paris. I hated Neon Genesis Evangelion for a reason, and I won't have that filth invade my house now! At any rate, I can safely skip them this time around, content in already knowing any necessary information that might creep through them.
B: The battles are fairly fun to play. The monsters themselves aren't particularly noteworthy or creative; it's easy to find the patterns that make each battle a breeze, and the travel screen is such that it's no difficult task to engineer yourself into always sneaking up on the monster groups, so you always get a sneak attack. For the most part, you can only really tell the bosses because they do a little more damage and take a little more time to kill.
But the combo system is what makes it fun for me. As you do regular hits, you build up 'echoes' which are basically multipliers for your specials. When you do use a special, your 'echoes' are spent and the count resets. At 24x and 32x (the highest you can go), your specials become 'super-special' (my own term), and at higher party levels (another really interesting aspect where the amount of items you can carry into battle, the amount of specials you can queue up on a character, the amount of tactical time you have at the start of a turn, etc. are upgraded and modified at certain points in the game), you can chain together multiple characters' specials.
I could keep going beyond the need of the post, but basically, fighting a battle is almost like playing a Mario Party minigame, except with a discernable pattern you can figure out. It's monstrous fun, even though it's repetitive.
C: The music is incredible. It's easy to screw up a tribute if you half-ass it, and a tribute to Frederic Chopin's music is even easier. But they got it right, in my opinion.
In addition to including seven of Chopin's actual pieces in the game (along with some educational info about Chopin's life that tie into the themes for each chapter in the game), the music for travel scenes and battle scenes alike really mesh well with Chopin's style, and really brings out the detail in an already visually beautiful game. I would easily download the soundtrack to this game off BitTorrent (Who buys CDs nowadays? Raise your hand so we can laugh at you!).
So, anyone reading that has an XBox 360, go out and pick up Eternal Sonata. You won't be disappointed. And you fools that bought a PS3 are even better off (never thought you'd hear that about a PS3 buyer, did you?!), because the version of the game coming to PS3 will include a couple extra scenes, and two extra playable characters. You'll have a game that's actually worth buying for your horrendous brick made of thrown-away money.
It's a decent game, as RPGs go. You have a pool of main characters that fluctuates at certain points in the game. You run through a plot, arbitrarily deciding that the kingdom can wait around on the brink while you get a sidequest or two done here and there. There's a main bad guy, a real bad guy, and a "surprise twist" bad guy. Pretty standard fare.
On the negative side are the cutscenes. And let me tell you, when I say 'cutscene', I in fact mean a full-length scene that was never cut. Eternal Sonata is like the director's cut RPG. I have not watched a video game cutscene that was this long since Final Fantasy came out in theaters. Seriously, I timed the end-game scene, which consists of an ending, half the credits, another ending, then the rest of the credits, and then a short length film that corrolates to the main themes of the game. There was a period of just under 54 minutes I had to wait before I got control of my XBox back so I could start a second playthrough for achievements. Ridiculous.
But, three things make this game entirely repeatable for me.
A: The end scene is the only cutscene I have found so far that isn't skippable. Which means I don't need to listen to the main characters prattle on about the existential quandaries of living inside Frederic Chopin's dreams as he lies dying in Paris. I hated Neon Genesis Evangelion for a reason, and I won't have that filth invade my house now! At any rate, I can safely skip them this time around, content in already knowing any necessary information that might creep through them.
B: The battles are fairly fun to play. The monsters themselves aren't particularly noteworthy or creative; it's easy to find the patterns that make each battle a breeze, and the travel screen is such that it's no difficult task to engineer yourself into always sneaking up on the monster groups, so you always get a sneak attack. For the most part, you can only really tell the bosses because they do a little more damage and take a little more time to kill.
But the combo system is what makes it fun for me. As you do regular hits, you build up 'echoes' which are basically multipliers for your specials. When you do use a special, your 'echoes' are spent and the count resets. At 24x and 32x (the highest you can go), your specials become 'super-special' (my own term), and at higher party levels (another really interesting aspect where the amount of items you can carry into battle, the amount of specials you can queue up on a character, the amount of tactical time you have at the start of a turn, etc. are upgraded and modified at certain points in the game), you can chain together multiple characters' specials.
I could keep going beyond the need of the post, but basically, fighting a battle is almost like playing a Mario Party minigame, except with a discernable pattern you can figure out. It's monstrous fun, even though it's repetitive.
C: The music is incredible. It's easy to screw up a tribute if you half-ass it, and a tribute to Frederic Chopin's music is even easier. But they got it right, in my opinion.
In addition to including seven of Chopin's actual pieces in the game (along with some educational info about Chopin's life that tie into the themes for each chapter in the game), the music for travel scenes and battle scenes alike really mesh well with Chopin's style, and really brings out the detail in an already visually beautiful game. I would easily download the soundtrack to this game off BitTorrent (Who buys CDs nowadays? Raise your hand so we can laugh at you!).
So, anyone reading that has an XBox 360, go out and pick up Eternal Sonata. You won't be disappointed. And you fools that bought a PS3 are even better off (never thought you'd hear that about a PS3 buyer, did you?!), because the version of the game coming to PS3 will include a couple extra scenes, and two extra playable characters. You'll have a game that's actually worth buying for your horrendous brick made of thrown-away money.