[Click here to start from the first progress log]

I’ve been taking Eternal Sonata nice and slow up to this point, but nevertheless felt the urge to push a little further into it today. Not out of any real desire to experience more of the game, of course. Actually, I installed the disc to a flash drive to avoid wearing down the Xbox 360’s laser, but there’s only enough room on the drive to have one game installed at a time. That means that the pile of other 360 games I’ve purchased—which is pretty much all of the RPGs that aren’t backwards compatible with the Xbox One yet—are more or less being held hostage by Eternal Sonata.

“Oh right, Fauxpin is a part of this game!”

A whole bunch of pointless cutscenes await in the near future, but this is easily my favorite among them. It starts innocuously enough, with Royal Brat Baddie yelling at the guy who arrested the party for being stupid enough to think that rebels would show up at the front gate, but quickly jumps back to the party so that Allegretto can ask Fauxpin why he’s on this journey with everyone. The scene then transitions to “real life,” where the doctor mentions that the dying Fauxpin is “on a journey where he must face himself.” This is something you may have noticed earlier, but the doctor in these scenes has dialogue more suited to, say, a shady fortune-teller. It’s really strange to have a doctor magically divining what’s happening in Fauxpin’s head, especially given the degree of knowledge he possesses (in a much earlier cutscene, I seem to remember him bringing up that accepting the jRPG world as real will result in death as though that makes any sense whatsoever). Anyway, the scene moves back to the party, and Allegretto’s question triggers a full-blown existential breakdown. The background disappears, and Fauxpin gets into an argument with himself that’s meant to sound deep and philosophical and intelligent, but instead comes across as bromidic pseudo-intellectualism pretending to have depth.

The thing that I love about this is that the game has totally forgotten Fauxpin up to this point. He’s just been around for all of the wacky shenanigans preceding this scene, not serving any obvious purpose. You can almost see the writing room when this scene was conceived; I like to imagine that someone burst through the door with such force that stacks of papers were kicked up into the air. “When was the last time we had Fauxpin justify his continued presence?” demanded Writer A. “Oh,” replied Writer B, “not since the very beginning. Quick, let’s throw him a dilemma, and then we can get back to the real meat of Eternal Sonata: failed comedic sequences predicated on the random height-based rivalry that Beat and Salsa have!”

“Repeat that one more time for the camera?”

The plan is that everyone, rebels included, is going to return to Viola’s house and have a nice chat. Doing so requires crossing Cutscene Bridge, however, and it doesn’t fail to deliver a brand new cutscene. In it, everyone goes over the grand conspiracy that they had apparently learned about off-screen, but suddenly need explained again. I have my suspicions about why Eternal Sonata does this; while it would be more natural to have a single person reveal the entire conspiracy, currently superfluous characters like Fauxpin can join in and elaborate here because it’s not the first time they’re hearing of it. If that’s not the reason, then I don’t understand why everything would be framed like this—it serves no other purpose than making the characters appear to be incredibly dull. Anyway, Royal Brat Baddie’s scheme is to turn people into monsters so that they can use magic and be made into soldiers in case the nation needs to go to war, and he’s trying to get one of those glowing things we saw in the forest awhile back because it speeds up the process. That way he doesn’t have to continually sacrifice citizens for his army, and can instead create an army of magical, terminally ill monsters on demand whenever they’re needed.

Everyone spent so long on Cutscene Bridge, however, that the guy who threw them in prison catches up and wants a rematch. Beat is a party member this time and is able to take pictures of him, which isn’t a problem since he’s every bit as easy as the first time. Unfortunately, he blows up the bridge and everyone falls into the river below, which causes Allegretto and Viola to be separated from Polka, Beat, and Fauxpin. Talk about an instant improvement! The only downside is that it sticks us with the rebels, but we only have one empty slot and can fit Falsetto into it. She’s not anywhere near as annoying as totally-not-a-traitor Claves and too-serious-rebel-leader Jazz, so it’s not too bad. Her moves are even pretty decent, with her light special attack being a powerful ice move that hits multiple times. It’s a good thing that she’s comfortable to use, too, because this swamp area is full of enemies.

Someone finally has an intelligent thought

That last video cuts off right before the end because real life made me pause the game and I had to cut that out of the recording, but it’s only a few steps away from a nearby inn. The party decides to stay at the inn, but Viola, Allegretto, and Jazz stay up for awhile and talk. Allegretto mentions that it’s bothering him how they got arrested at the capital, bringing up how them being confused as rebels highlighted the fact that the guards were expecting rebels. That means Jazz has a spy in his group, and Falsetto and Claves were the only other people who knew about the plan to rescue Salsa. Now ask yourself: what’s the dumbest possible response that Jazz could have to this news? Surely even Eternal Sonata wouldn’t sink so low as to waste time by having him totally overlook the shifty-eyed, generally suspicious Claves in order to instead suspect Falsetto for no reason whatsoever, right?

We both know where this is going

Of course that’s exactly what happens. Just 11 seconds into the video above, you can see the look that Jazz gives Falsetto. I don’t remember how this eventually resolves, but it seems likely to continue on like this for awhile, so let’s move on to another topic for the time being. Namely, performing sessions. The short version is that you can pick up hidden “scores” around the world, and pairing them with the music of session-performing NPCs can net you various items if the two pieces complement one another. At 4:13, the party encounters one of these NPCs and gets an S-rank pairing, which causes him to hand over an equippable item that causes the party member wearing it to emit light (so no darkness attacks). That went onto Falsetto since I’m not a huge fan of her dark special attack right now. Something to note is that while the game tells you that interesting pairings which don’t entirely work have value nonetheless, you’ll often pair two things that seem to complement each other, only to be given an F-rank regardless. You can see that when I tried pairing my other two scores with him. This is inevitable whenever you try to translate something as subjective as music into a minigame, but it can still be frustrating.

Other than that, it’s just a trek through a poisonous swamp to the rebel base. One positive thing I have to say is that poison is handled in an interesting way in Eternal Sonata, with it not appearing to lower anyone’s HP as they run around outside of battle. Instead, everyone is automatically poisoned when they get into combat in this area, and each turn causes a small amount of damage that gradually adds up. Fortunately, Viola has a full-party heal that’s massively overpowered, and it keeps everyone’s health up despite being her secondary light attack (which means that there are points in the video where she accidentally attacks instead of healing).

[Click here to go to Eternal Sonata log #5]

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