Reviewed on PS3.
| Eternal Sonata Cover Art |
It's a weird mix and personally would not cater to the mass public. There is an audience for this like myself but for the most part, wouldn't appeal to many others.
I like playing a lot of RPGs and looking at the cover, the gameplay, the graphics, gives me that sort of Grandia feel, or Tales feel if you've played those kind of games. The battle style is similar as well and I thought if I enjoy Tales games a lot, and Grandia games a lot, I would enjoy this one too.
All of the characters in the game is very classical themed, but music as well. We're talking names such as Polka, Jazz, Falsetto and more. Each have their own personality and they all fall into the story of the main character Frederic Chopin, who's a genius when it comes to classical music. In this fictional story, you go through a dream world of Chopin and his works, but also related to events within his historical life. If you're a fan of Chopin, there's some cool tidbits and a story that you can sink your teeth into.
Where the game faults and where my review suddenly takes a turn is the difficulty. The issue is not the difficulty being hard throughout the game, but it's like a roller coaster if I had to use that analogy. Easy, Medium, Hard, back to Medium, back to Easy, and then all of a sudden Extremely Difficult. There's no rhyme or reason why the sudden difficulty shift, especially if the game looks like the way it looks, and plays the way it plays.
You're going through a typical dungeons, facing off enemies, gearing them up, leveling up, and it all seems fair. Tough battle here and there, but then you just get completely wiped with unfair enemies. It's ridiculous and frustrating. You're forced to backtrack just to grind, level up to become stronger, just to proceed through that one simple area. Then the game is easy again since you're overleveled.
Any game that requires you to grind, just to become stronger, is bad design. Period. You may read this and wonder, what are you talking about? The Xbox 360 version is relatively easy. That's where I'll tell you I'm covering the PS3 version as that's the one I played. It wasn't just a simple port. They modified it to make it more difficult for whatever reason.
I'm all for challenge, but this isn't the type of challenge where you feel rewarded at the end. This is the type of challenge that angers you, and you question why are you playing this. I know, there are games like Dark Souls, or a classic like Ghost n Goblins, but those are difficult from the get-go. Not like Eternal Sonata, where it just gets ridiculously hard for no reason, and then back to easy again. To me, they did not play test this properly, because they would've realized this. They may have tested it dungeon by dungeon, but not start to finish like most players would.
If you can stomach this, then you're in for a solid 30 hour RPG. It's good, and it's fun, but I do not like grinding, and that's me. Another example I'll use here is Persona 3 on the PSP. That's the one I played specifiaclly, but when the boss became difficult all of a sudden and I was forced to grind for an hour or two, that turns me off. It's not a natural progression, and RPGs shouldn't be like that. Normal single player RPGs should not.
The music, the graphics, the sounds, all of that is very solid and very enjoyable. Start it off and you'll be warped into the world of Chopin and it's enjoyable while the difficulty remains a decent pace. However, this would be my first review, talking about a game that I never completed, and I don't think I ever will at this point. Maybe one day, but there's just too many games coming out, and not enough time to keep up.
Rating: 5/10
Though it's technically an 8 or 9 out of 10 if you are OK with grinding. It's very cool and not enough games are like this.
