Eternal Sonata - Review

Added September 26th, 2007 by Jason Stafford

Frédéric Chopin was born in Zelazowa Wola, a suburb of Warsaw, Poland in 1810. Known as the Poet of the Piano, Chopin is renowned for his compositions during the romantic period. From upbeat and beautiful mazurkas and waltzes to sullen and forlorn nocturnes, Chopin's music touches on a wide range of human emotion. He escaped Poland at the age of twenty immediately prior to an insurrection, only to never again return to his homeland. Always a sickly man, Chopin died in Paris, France in 1849 at the age of thirty-nine.

Playing tri-Crescendo's Eternal Sonata, you'll learn all this and more about the great composer. Not only is he one of the characters in the new RPG from the developers of the Baten Kaitos series, but the entire world takes place in Chopin's dreamworld as he lays on his deathbed. Despite the rather dreary origins of Eternal Sonata's world, it's a dazzling and whimsical place developed around the music and life experiences of Chopin.

Eternal Sonata begins with the journey of a young girl. Polka, who can harness magic, something that only those with a terminal illness can do. Despite her impending demise, she longs to sell the floral powder she makes, but is unable due to high taxes placed on it, despite a similar product called mineral powder being entirely tax-free. Two young vagabonds named Allegretto and Beat make their appearance and want to lower taxes so they no longer have to steal food to survive. Chopin himself tags along out of an initial interest in his dreamworld. Armed with their earnest intentions, the team decides to head out to make a better world, picking up more help along the way and immersing themselves into ever more complications.

Lacking side-areas almost completely, the majority of the game is a straight path to the final confrontation. Despite some of its sinister subject matter, Eternal Sonata maintains a fairly constant upbeat feel. Unfortunately, much of the story is developed through an overabundance of monologue and stilted dialogue. Though a certain facet of the story may have already been explained or shown, it will be explained once again through discourse between the characters. This constant repetition of key facts or further explanation where none is necessary is often detrimental in breaking the pace of the story. When Eternal Sonata isn't throwing the story right into your face and allows itself to rely on subtlety and context, it can evoke some truly memorable and emotional moments. It's disappointing that more emphasis isn't placed on these devices, but the story is more than adequate enough to feel like it's at least going somewhere in spite of itself.

Moreover, the voice-acting rests on a scale between good to sub-par that usually balances at bland. Emotion and delivery are often quite off-putting. Only a small handful of the voice-actors are able to make an impression with their portrayal, which further hinders the story's presentation. Though not nearly as awful as can be found in other games, there's a certain detachment that's painfully obvious. Rather than accept the characters and have smooth and natural dialogue, the quality of the acting itself comes into question.

While the dialogue often fails, the world and character designs flourish. Eternal Sonata's environments are dazzling and vibrant. The rich palette used to craft the surrounding areas never ceases to impress; even more so when effects such as heat vapors, waterfalls or falling snow are put to great use. Despite the lush backdrop of Eternal Sonata, it's the characters that really steal the show. Anime-style design lends itself to an almost cel-shaded appearance, but with fully modeled characters. An emphasis is placed on color infused with musical and theatrical touches. Every new player in the world that gets introduced is unique and fresh, yet still held together by these solid themes with wonderful results.

The game's score is quite impressive. Chopin's works form instrumental segue pieces, although much of the in-game music is original composition. Ranging from gloomy to carefree, the soundtrack adds a definite level of depth to the importance placed on music in Eternal Sonata. Had a game about an amazing composer been rife with terrible music, the entire orchestration would fall flat. Fortunately, the music not only fully complements the game, but is often good enough that it stands above the rest of what's happening as a testament to itself.

Of course, no RPG is truly complete without having to battle it out with enemies and bosses. If there's anything that tri-Crescendo obviously learned from working with tri-Ace for so long, it's creating a solid battle system. Akin to Star Ocean: Til the End of Time, enemies will freely roam the maps, triggering a fight when they make contact with the party. Depending on if the enemy is touched from the rear or front, or if the enemy happens to engage the party from behind will set the table of the fight. Again borrowing a page from Star Ocean, Eternal Sonata's fights happen on a free-roam battlefield on which the characters will be moved around. Sonata, however, is at heart a turn-based battle system. Each character's turn begins with an amount of Tactical Time, which decides how long you have to keep the character still before their Action Gauge, or available turn time, begins counting down. Once any action is taken, such as moving or attacking, the Action Gauge will begin running out from that point on until the character's turn is over.

A key component to battles in Eternal Sonata lies in its special attacks. Characters' special attacks will be either light or dark in nature, and can only be used when standing in light or dark areas in the battlefield. An Echo Gauge builds up as enemies are hit, further strengthening the power of special attacks and even allowing special attacks to be strung together in a Harmony Chain when the gauge is full enough. Using a special attack depletes the Echo Gauge, but subsequent hits from the special attack(s) will begin filling it once more. Each special attack can be used a limitless amount of times per battle, with the only real restrictions being whether the character is in light or darkness. Every ability has an amount of time that it takes to use, but strangely, one mustn't have that much time left in the Action Gauge. Because of this, a special attack can merely be thrown in at the end of each character's turn, immensely decreasing the difficulty of battles.

This system places a marginal emphasis on strategy, but it takes a while for Eternal Sonata's battle system to fully evolve. That's because of a Party Level system, which levels up at intervals throughout the storyline, allowing more use out of the battle system's features such as the Echo Gauge, Harmony Chains and a higher inventory for equipping items for use in battle. On the same hand, restrictions are slowly placed upon the player, such as lowering the amount of Tactical or Action time available per turn. At first, the battle system is very bare-bones and unassuming, and it's peculiar that it's fleshed out in this fashion.

When not worrying about how your own character's turn will be spent, you'll have to worry about the enemy. You'll have an opportunity to guard against enemy attacks and reduce their damage with correct timing with the B button. Later on, the ability to counterattack certain enemy actions with the A button comes into play. This system, regretfully, isn't designed well, and the available time to react ranges from half-asleep to psychic premonition. Moreover, once counterattacks are introduced, the restrictions placed on not being able to counter any attack places too much strain on the system, as hitting counterattack when the attack cannot be countered doesn't result in a guard. Countering isn't about reacting to the guard prompt so much as it is hoping that the enemy uses the attack you're timing yourself for, and guarding is much the same. Still, in light of the often arbitrary guard system, the battles often provide little difficulty, even against bosses.

Dazzlingly brilliant art and character designs help to separate Eternal Sonata visually from the rest of the pack, and create a world that blends perfectly with the music of Chopin. Poor dialogue may occasionally shatter this otherwise remarkable backdrop, but the rest of the story is more than adequate enough to convey a story of love, struggle, life, and death; at times in captivating ways. Add a battle system that despite its minor flaws and lack of difficulty manages to be plenty of fun and finish everything off with a fairly lengthy adventure that's not over just because the credits are rolling, and there's plenty of magic in Eternal Sonata. It may not be the magnum opus some are dreaming of, but it certainly doesn't fall flat.