[Click here to start from the first progress log]

Today’s progress log consists mostly of tedium. More specifically, two sections in a row full of same-looking areas that are easy to get lost in, and in which you need to find a specific hidden thing in order to continue forward. That’s not a problem when Viola is in the party because of her powerful attacks and full-party heal, but the only available characters for the latter section are Polka, Beat, Fauxpin, and Salsa; their healing abilities haven’t scaled (or if they have, not nearly enough), meaning they have to burn through healing items left and right because they’re not strong enough to finish off enemies before taking damage. It becomes a bit of a mess, really.

Thinking with your head

Apparently Jazz and Claves are romantically involved. That’s not necessarily a sufficient explanation for him overlooking all of her suspicious behavior to instead point the finger at Falsetto, especially since a later cutscene explains that he and Falsetto grew up together (meaning he should know better), but it’s certainly a more functional explanation than most we get in this game. Good enough, I guess.

Items are shared between parties

It would make sense for each group of characters to have their own item pool now that they’re separated, but that wouldn’t be very player-friendly. Instead, Eternal Sonata waves the whole thing away and lets everyone share everything. That means that we can sell Beat’s photographs despite him being in the other party.

That goes for equippables, too. Falsetto gained a new attack while wandering around the graveyard (44:11 in the graveyard video embedded further down) that allowed her light and dark special attacks to be practically identical, and swapped out the item she had been using to allow only light special attacks for something that offered a small defensive boost. Once the graveyard was wrapped up and the Parade of Awful Characters took over, I was able to equip that item onto Fauxpin despite this not making much sense from a story perspective. I prefer this approach to arbitrarily gating off items, because it allows for more play style flexibility.

Speaking of equipped items…

I have no idea where I picked these up, but Viola has some “Recovery Gloves” equipped that cause her to regenerate health every time her turn starts. I think it’s something absurd like 10% of her total pool, too. Whatever it is, it’s pretty much turned her into an unstoppable killing machine, and adding her full-party heal on top of that has ensured that no enemies in this part of the game pose the slightest risk.

Here’s another bad text box

Come on. It takes actual effort to put a closing quotation mark on a separate line.

Wandering around a graveyard

As a refresher/update of what’s been happening in the story, the party (Viola and Allegretto, joined by rebels Jazz, Claves, and Falsetto) made it to the rebel base and was given free rein to wander around. They come across a young girl upset because she found a special kind of flower that can only be maintained with a special kind of water, and the water she needs is found in a monster-infested graveyard. Being a group of heroes with questionable priorities, everyone decides to go get the water rather than doing something about the country sacrificing the lives of its citizens to create an army of monsters. We’ll cross that bridge when we cutscene to it!

This is as good a time as any to remind any readers that I have almost no sense of direction. Put me in an area filled with same-y sections and I’m all but guaranteed to become lost. Still, I managed to navigate through the areas well enough. The gimmick here is that you have to light different colored candles using various flames you can steal from other candles, so this section is filled with lots of running back and forth to obtain as many flames as possible. It’s very easy to overlook an area and find yourself hopelessly stuck here, which I know for a fact because I distinctly remember getting stuck here the first time I played through the game.

After the graveyard boss is defeated and the water is obtained, there are about 20 minutes of cutscenes. First, Claves convinces Jazz that Falsetto can’t be the traitor in a surprising show of decency. Jazz is instantly convinced and decides to go check on everyone since they’re taking so long, at which point Claves is attacked by an agent of Royal Brat Baddie. This leads to the longest death scene in existence as she talks about how she regrets being a spy (which we knew all along, but is set up like it’s supposed to be a big reveal) and somehow manages to send a letter to the opposing nation of Baroque as an act of penance. After that, the scene switches to the other party, and we find out that they survived after being picked up by a Baroque ship that happened to be passing by. Badness this profound never dies.

Yo ho ho and a bottle of dumb

I found a score piece and did a little item management between videos (like putting the item removed from Falsetto onto Fauxpin, which I eventually regretted and removed), but the above video starts off at the very next cutscene. In it, Fauxpin and Polka have a conversation fraught with forced emotion and his typical pseudo-intellectualism, and then pirates get sick of their crap and decide to attack. This isn’t a fun pirate section, though. You end up having to find a key to unlock a door leading to the boss, and it’s hidden somewhere in the area. There are tons of doors, though, and all of the hallways (and most of the rooms) look pretty much identical. That wouldn’t be a problem if enemies didn’t respawn, but they do, and that makes it incredibly difficult to get your bearings and figure out which areas you haven’t yet explored. Enemies are also fast and have a tendency to chase you through the cramped corridors, and this group of characters sucks at defending themselves.

On the bright side, that means that the boss fight is more challenging the past several have been. Fauxpin even got knocked out! I think I could have really appreciated this fight if the normal fights leading up to it weren’t so annoying.

[Click here to go to Eternal Sonata log #6]

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