14 DAY TRIAL // 
Games will educate people if the content included in them gets to deserve the status of "art". Basing an RPG on Chopin's works, life and death is probably the most original concept I've stumbled upon in the last 5 of 6 years of my RPG fanaticism. I've played practically all of the Final Fantasy titles, the good old Vagrant Story, all of The Elder Scrolls, Baldur's Gate, Diablo, Kingdom Hearts and the old-school Chrono Cross. The list, of course continues, but never has a soundtrack and presentation impressed me like the one of Eternal Sonata. This beautiful game is a must-have, despite the fact that a couple of reviewers called it a rent-only, complaining about the game's length and constant reminding of moral values. I really don't see where the issue lies... If the game's lengthy, you'll get bored, if it's short you'll want more, but Eternal Sonata is a medium title (in terms of length), being certainly a replayable game. Tri-Crescendo, the developer of this product has done a wonderful job and it's safe to say that I've spent the past weeks playing the best RPG the Xbox 360 has ever seen.
Prelude Most people think about gamers, as adolescents who lack a decent notion of culture... Well, it seems they're wrong, since nowadays it takes quite a lot of brains and less brawns to start playing RPGs and horror survival titles. Even FPS titles require their share of neurons. Eternal Sonata introduces you to the fascinating world of Frederic Chopin, the brilliant piano composer who sadly died at the age of 39. The title's storyline setting is basically the fantasy world that was created in the composer's mind as he slept in his death bed. In this universe, some people possess magical powers, but they come with a huge price: terminal illnesses. Also, you'll surely notice that most characters and places you'll visit are named after musical genres or Chopin's pieces. Even the game's chapters borrowed a bit from the composer's superb works, with names like "Raindrops" or "Revolution".
The action of Eternal Sonata is based around Polka, a 14 year old girl suffering from an incurable illness, because she has the magical power of healing beings. By doing a bit of research, I found out that she was created to resemble Chopin's little sister, who had also passed away at the same age as Polka. Her homeland, Tenuto is also a virtual representation of Chopin's home in Poland. I won't spoil the fun of you finding out the plot details for yourself, but all you have to know is that Polka is a floral powder salesgirl, who teams up with Chopin and a pickpocketing boy named Allegretto plus the rebel group Andantino and they'll all be fighting the diabolical Count Waltz. While Polka is not content with the taxes on floral powder, Allegretto has to steal in order to live and hates the Count because of his taxes and drastic measures. Eternal Sonata is far more complex than it seems, as its plot deals with themes like love, politics and moral values.
Etude This great RPG will offer a decent experience thanks to its 30+ hours of gameplay, but it all depends on your approach: if you rush like a madman, avoid enemies and collect less items and experience points there's a chance you'll finish Eternal Sonata in 20 hours. However, if you're the type of RPG fan who takes his time and collects all the bits and pieces, while performing all additional tasks and unlocking all secrets, you could end up playing the game for more than 50 hours. This is not the typical role-playing game, because it features a semi-turn-based combat system mixed with real time action sequences. You can control a party of up to 10 characters and there's even the option of pulling some co-op moves, by playing the game with two other friends.
Of course, there's a huge world out there to explore, a magical and sad one, though, but sometimes you'll be frustrated by the fact that some dungeons and levels are far shorter and less challenging than you would have imagined. Side-quests aren't very appealing and won't really draw gamers to them, so it seems that the game is quite linear, but you'll have fun playing it. Throughout the fantastic world you'll visit, there are tons of Score Pieces to be found, if you're into exploring and taking part in quests. Those pieces of musical scores can be used to make up entire compositions with the aid of the other characters you'll encounter. You'll be rewarded if the song comes out right, which is pretty cool actually, adding a little musical twist to the experience. The characters you control have unique names like Polka, Viola, Beat or Allegretto, but they're well detailed and perform neat attacks. Unlike Final Fantasy titles, in Eternal Sonata you'll see the enemies roaming around the map, so you'll be able to avoid them or surprise them if you want.
Sometimes, dashing past foes comes in handy, if you've just ran out of healing items and health. As you fight and progress through the game, you can earn experience points, which will increase various attributes of your party members plus grant access to new skills. There's not much emphasis on accessories in this title, although you can change weapon, armor and some other accessory in order to alter attributes in a positive way and increase stats. Too bad that such changes pass unnoticed, from a graphical point of view. The above-mentioned items can be purchased from stores scattered throughout the world of Eternal Sonata, but you'll need to have a constant supply of money, so there's a lot of fighting to do if you want the best equipment. Cash is also found in various chests or earned, by selling items or even Beat's photos (the little guy snaps photos during combat).
Crescendo Combat plays a vital part in the title's gameplay segment and it seems that the developers implemented a pretty neat combat scheme. You'll be influenced by the light or darkness surrounding you, be it the shadow you've cast upon the earth with your body or the shadow of trees in a forest. Your abilities change depending on the place you move to ? you'll gain access to light attacks in lighted areas, and dark attacks in the shadows. Of course, it may seem predictable, but light attacks are healing ones and those who do less damage, when compared to the shadow ones, which are rather offensive and deal enough damage to smithe all foes. I mentioned a semi-turn-based combat system above and I guess that now's the time to explain this great concept. You can only control 3 party members at a time during fights and each of them has an alloted time of action, shown with the aid of a gauge. As you attack or simply move around, the gauge gets depleted and it's the opponent's time to strike. So basically, it's a turn-based battle with a twist of real action times.
Characters can perform either regular attacks or special ones, which are available at any point during battles. There's a second meter you'll surely like to keep your eyes on, the Echo meter, which builds up as you do damage through normal attacks and keep chaining them. This gauge gets depleted when performing Special skills or healing, adding some extra punch to attacks and some more curative power to such spells. You might be wondering what you will be doing when the enemy strikes. Don't fret, as there's a Guard button for you and even a Counterattack move later on in the game. Too bad that I rarely got to really use them, as it's quite hard to get timing right when the enemy strikes quickly. Blocking an attack reduces the damage taken through it, while a counter move may even stop the creature's turn allowing you to pull your usual stunts and defeat the beast.
Comparing Eternal Sonata's battle system to the ones present in other RPGs, you'll surely find the item using concept unusual. There's a limited number of items you can use during combats, so you must ready them, but thank God, they're easily accessible through the game's intuitive controls. Let's get back for a second, to the entire shadow/light system, as there's more to it than it seems. Shadows and light areas can be "triggered", so to say by players and creatures, as they move or the dynamic setting around them moves. The time of day changes, clouds move, a strike will throw you into a shadowy area... That's a brilliant gameplay mechanic we have to congratulate the developers for. I really don't know if the battles would been as appealing without this cool gimmick. You'll surely feel that the game's getting rather tough as you progress, but that's a natural evolution of gameplay, rather than a developing AI.
The difficulty comes from the shorter action time you get during battles, not from those nasty creatures, as one might expect. It's true that the first bosses can be a real pain, but not if you've played previous RPGs and have a couple of tricks up your sleeve. Exploring environments is not a difficult task, since the universe of Eternal Sonata is a linear one, without too many hideouts and hidden areas. Every quest and side-quest is pretty straight forward, although you'll find that the game gets way too fragmented because of dialogues, pieces of storyline delivered in original ways, cutscenes and various other (beautiful) ways of portraying Chopin's fantasy world. If you're into Square-Enix's works, this won't be an issue, but if you fall in love with the combat system and want to level up and collect all items in a hurry, you'll surely be skipping many cutscenes and chit-chatter scenes.
Fugue Eternal Sonata is truly the best RPG on Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, for now and this applies to its graphics, too. Its colored environments, romantic settings and beautifully designed characters are able to draw you into a fairy tale world that will hold you in its grasp for weeks and months after you've finished playing the game. It doesn't really matter that most enemies look alike and that the camera is fixed, when the cutscenes look great, the battle animations are stunning (as you can see in the pics below) and all of this visual package gets complemented by a brilliant score. If this truly resembles Chopin's homeland, Poland is one beautiful country, while the developers of Eternal Sonata have not spared one bit of the color spectrum to deliver this pleasant graphical experience. So much for post-apocalyptic and urban settings, filled with depression, dark blue and shades of gray. It's nice to get to play a colorful RPG every now and then in this world of sci-fi storylines.
Menuet I've been listening to the game's OST for a while now, brilliantly created by the composer Motoi Sakuraba and the pianist Stanislav Bunin, the man who can re-create Chopin's masterpieces best. The audio score of Eternal Sonata is obviously based on Chopin's works, which are re-done or simply introduced to us in their original version. The title offers support for 5.1 surround sound, so you'll hear the beautiful tunes in all their splendor. From Etude Op. 10 to Polonaise O. 53, Eternal Sonata's songs will make your day and turn you from a Guitar Hero addict to a lover of classical music.
Requiem This RPG is more than a game you play in order to show your friends the potential of the Xbox 360 you've just bought or your skills when it comes to role playing titles. It's a statement of the genre, it's a work of art including other works of art and I consider it to be a super homage to the man and genius we know as Chopin. What matters most is the revelation you feel at some point during the game: if people are sick and they're going to die because they possess magical powers isn't this some sort of parallel with the Polish composer's condition? He was a brilliant man, with great songs and he died prematurely... Thankfully, his magic still flows, but not on those records you should have listened to back when you were a child with a more sensitive soul, but inside this great title, Eternal Sonata.
