Eternal Sonata
Platforms: Xbox 360
Developer: Tri-Crescendo

Eternal Sonata is a JRPG with a slight twist, It's a bit educational..wait come back! It's not "Mario is Missing" or anything that bad.

Eternal Sonata is set in the dream world inside the real life, famous piano composer, Frederic Chopin. Chopin died like..years and years ago, but his music was awesome, and i find it quite original that a game, specifically a JRPG would base it's story around a real life Composer.

Story:

The game opens with Mr Chopin in his death bed, and a doctor and 2 woman waiting for him to wake up and get better. We enter Chopin's head where he has dreamed up a world where there are people, some of the people can use Magic, the disadvantage to using magic is that, that you will die soon, talk about grim. aside from that he also dreams up Monsters and Kingdoms at war etc, Over the course of the Story, Chopin meets many different characters and all of them confuse him more, as he trys to figure out if it's a dream or is it really reality, so far the story seems to have alot of potential, only then the story seems to fade away and pop back up about half way though the game, only to fade out and come back right at the end.

I feel like Eternal Sonata had loads of missed opportunities for story telling
which is a shame as the game try's to tell you a story that's happening in Chopin's dream world about a evil count who wants power and all the other cliche JRPG storys. Which is a real shame as the story did have alot of potential..until that moment in story.

The characters really need alot more depth too, just when you think a certain character is going to have a nice story background for them..they don't. some character's have no point to story and are just boring, hell 2 of the party characters are direct clones of each other,even in there looks. It's not what I expect from a JRPG. It just seems lazy.

The Voice acting in this game is available in Japanese and English, which is good only not, because if you have it in Japanese not every cut-scene is subbed and if you have it in English you have to listen to a few quite annoying Voice actor's, not all are bad, but some are really bad.

Gameplay:
The gameplay outside of battle is quite linear, Normally it's go up the "X" Tower to get "X" item, most of the dungeons are filler and can get a little bit boring after awhile, however the game does have fun, The game holds 2 side quests a Trading sequence side quest and a extra optional dungeon which is tough compared to the rest of the game.

As awhole the gameplay does hold up as typical JRPG stuff outside of battle, which in my books isn't that bad of a thing, in some cases though, you may need a break as Eternal Sonata doesn't do a good job of breaking the gameplay up much.

The battle System is Eternal Sonata is where the real fun is,The system is turn-based, but has a heavy emphasis on movement and timing, so it's also Real-time. You have to run and face your enemies to attack them, and you have a limited amount of time to do it. (It actually reminds me of the RPG Grandia for the PS1 except Eternal Sonata battle system is more advanced.),There is something quite feel good about pulling of a 25+ hit combo on a onion monster. As you level up, so does your party level which means you have less time to attack, and battles get more tougher.

The only thing I didn't really like about the battle system was there is no MP or SP, so you can use your special moves whenever you want with no fear of running low on MP/SP just time. I fell the game would have been much harder if the developer's had put in a MP/SP system.

also, on a side note, most of the boss battles seemed chucked in, and not really any relevance to the story, seemed very old school, I'm not to sure where i stand on this...also weapons didn't chance with your character if you bought them a new weapon, this isn't 1991, it's 2008 -_-

Music:

There's no Denying that the Music in Eternal Sonata is amazing, some bits aren't that good, but there are more good score's than there is not so good scores.

The game also has pieces of Chopin's music, which is recorded by some other pianist, and there all sound awesome. Sound is quite good too, no complains from me, apart from the English voice acting, I really don't like to listen to Tails (Beat) and Nurse Joy from pokemon in a RPG(Volia).

Graphics:

Simply the best anime cell shading I've seen in a video game so far. every area is beautiful, the animation is great, although sometimes the lips are a bit out of sync with the voices, not that it really matters, I can't really say anything to fault the graphics at all.
It looks almost as good as the anime movie Appleseed. I was pretty much drooling when i first started the game.


Overall:

Eternal Sonata, is a great game, but it's missing a lot of stuff to make it a "must have" Story could have been much better, instead of just dismissing it with the excuse of "It was just a dream". Character development sucks, and there all need more depth, It's worth a rent, and buy it if it's cheap.

So as my first 360 RPG game i was little disappointed, but at the same time Eternal Sonata does offer some good levels of fun!

Pro's:
- Brilliant Battle system, even if a bit flawed
- Brilliant Music
- Brilliant Graphics

Con's:
- Story starts off great than disappears, then gets rushed at the end and gets ruined
- Character depth wasn't there.
- Gameplay is too linear, and if you play for too long can get a bit boring.

Score:
7.9 out of 10