Eternal Sonata

I originally played this on release on the 360 but i imported it on my PS3 because i got rid of my 360 due to technical problems, and it is no different which is great.

The characters are charming in there mannerisms aswell as their visuals, the soundtrack hightens the events on screen also the battle system is interesting all of these points shows just how great ES is at telling its story. From this perspective ES already stands out among many other RPGs that have recently been released.

If you own a PS3 and want a decent RPG to play i would heartily recommend ES, from start to finish the story and the characters are so much fun to play. Plus it lasts longer than most games around now so why not give it a go

Thanks for reading :)

I bought this game after reading a number of positive reviews on various gaming websites and I must say that I am disappointed.
I am no stranger to JRPG's, but I do feel that this is a particularly weak release.

First, the good points:

It is a beautifully presented game. The cel-shaded characters and environments are rendered fantastically.

Also, the musical score is something special, and that is aside from the Chopin that ends each chapter.

On to the negative:

The game plays a lot like Final Fantasy, with the user selecting three members to fight out of a sizeable roster of characters. However, the gameplay is extremely repetitive. It consists of using a normal attack repeatedly until you build up enough Echoes to make a powerful special attack, then rinse and repeat. Sometimes you might want to move into the light or shadow to change what special attack you use, but most of the time you'll just run up behind the nearest enemy and smack them about until they die. Interspersed with this are boss fights which are abnormally more difficult than standard fights. I came across an annoying feature on a number of occasions in which a save sphere was placed some distance away from a boss fight, so you had to repeat an entire section to get back to where you were before.

The voice acting is ok, typical lost-in-translation Japanese nonsense provided by Americans who do an excellent impression of an annoying child. But the voice acting will eventually start to grate because of....

THE CUTSCENES!! I play RPG's mainly for the story and character development, and I love a good story. Despite this, the amount of bloated, overlong cutscenes in Eternal Sonata is astounding. You'll often find yourself sitting through 7 minutes of cutscene, too scared to skip it in case you miss some crucial plot point, only to find out it's seven minutes of some minor character wittering on about how they want to be a flower when they grow up. It's soul destroying whenever plenty of games manage to get an excellent story across without having a 20 minute cutscene in which a character reveals he doesn't like dancing. I have plenty of time for the whimsical nature of JRPG's, but this one takes the mickey.

As for character customisation, there is none. Picking up new weapons and armor will upgrade your stats, but your character will always look the same, whether in roaming mode, or in fights. No possibility of customization exists whatsoever.

These are just the main issues, there a few minor bugbears that I won't mention here.

I think that this game garnered positive reviews simply because it is one of the very few RPG's available on the PS3.

Simply, if you like RPG's with a strong, well delivered story and gameplay that really requires you to think, the Eternal Sonata isn't for you. If, on the other hand, you like repetitive fighting and a linear plot, get this game.

Beautiful scenery, even more beautiful music. An all familiar turn based battle system which starts off pausing between actions but as your party level progresses switches to real time which lets you ease into the game slowly if you're not a seasoned rpg player.

The voice acting was good which you can listen to in either english or japanese. The characters were believable and not annoying which is always a plus

Educational as well as you get little cut scenes during each chapter which details the real composer chopin's life. I found this added to the game emmensly.

The ps3 version has new costumes, characters and an additional dungeon which has made me buy this version rather than the xbox360 version.

Even if you dont like computer games, you should buy this if only to switch it on and listen to the music

I am a huge RPG fan, I enjoy the pacing much more than your standard shooters and am one of those geeks that really gets into the Final Fantasy games with all the laughter and tears that involves (blush). Anyway, Eternal Sonata is much in the same vein as it's superior big brother but it manages to be surprisingly original and endearing all at the same time.
One of the most important things in an RPG is going to be story and there's buckets of it here. Given, sometimes it can be told in a little bit of a childlike way and really does labour on some dullish points (we all hate taxes kids) but it does a good job of explaining character motivation and how intricately intertwined they are. Some of the cutscenes can be a bit laborious to get through but it's all there for a reason so just enjoy it. One of the coolest features is shown at the end of the chapter, there's a mini history lesson on the life of Chopin, personally I love this, I play the piano and quite a lot of Chopin and it's really interesting for me to find out where the motivation for some of his music came from. I will add here, this is specific to me and some might find this really boring but this is a game trying to teach you something as you play and that really has to be commended, I've certainly never seen it before and it's got to be a good thing.
Gameplay is very much standard RPG fare. Set amount of characters in battle, set amount of time to move and a handfull of attacks to choose from. It's nothing out of the oridnary but works quite well. I have found, on occasion, that some of the monsters you fight can be a little bit unbalanced in as much as you can be nailing a goat one minute only to take 2 steps and be pwned by some massive dragon. It's fine though, after a bit of a rant you'll be back trying again. Something I love here is the fact that battles can be fought multiplayer stylee. This is fantastic as I love a good RPG, my cousin isn't generally a fan and there's not a whole bunch of same screen multiplayers to choose from on PS3 but this has fared very well with us and we're both way too critical for our own good usually. Basically, you can assign characters to controller 2 for battles if you want to, it's a nice little feature and this game has benefitted from it masively in my opinion.
Not much more to add really, it's a solid littlebig game with a nice story, very decent characters and a good measure of education. If you like an RPG, you can't really go wrong here, it does its job well, the only thing I could pick up on is that sometimes the tone can be a bit childish but once you're past that and in your 5 year old head again, the game's ace.

I am a huge fan of RPG games but this game was a little dissapointing. Sure it looked great but I expect that from any PS3 game otherwise I might as well buy it for my PSP. The dialogue seemed really fake and the story even more so. It was the kind of dialogue you'd find ina kids TV show but things like this i can usually overlook.
My main issue was the repetitive game play. I have come to expect random battles in RPGs and like them usually but in this game it seemed I was fighting the same battles with the same moves over and over again. The moves list was limited, the weapons and armour didn't do anything spectacular and after I had completed it I traded it in straight away without even bothering to go to the bonus dungeon as i was bored of the gameplay. There were no decent mini games either which usually help to break the monotony of random battles.
All of this aside the game has it's moments. Chopins life story thrown in at various points is a nice distraction and his music is always appreciated when played in the game.
If you are expecting a game in the realms of of 'Oblivion' or 'Final fantasy' you will be very dissapointed. this game presents many good ideas but fails to fully capitalise on any of them.