What’s it been, two months? Sorry, I am lazy… very lazy. That’s it, no insane stories, no excuses, I was just lazy, sue me.
However, in my absence I have come across what may just be my new favorite video game, a little known JRPG by the name of Eternal Sonata.
What could possibly make this game to great as to not only challenge the Persona series for its exclusive spots in my top 3 favorite games, but to change my entire perception of how JRPG combat should work? Let me tell you.
First, the greatest thing about this game is the combat system. It works as a hybrid turn-based/real-time system similar to Valkyria Chronicles. In the beginning your characters have 5 seconds of Paused Active Time and Unlimited Tactical time, meaning so long as you do nothing your 5 seconds of Active Time will not deplete, but every action you take causes the bar to start counting down and once it reaches 0 your turn is over. As the game progresses you unlock Party Levels which begin to add restrictions in order to make battles more challenging and strategic. For example, at Party Level 2 your Active Time becomes Real-Time, once you take your first action the bar will count down regardless of if you stop, these restrictions continue to increase in intensity all the way to the end. However, to counteract this they also have bonuses from the Party Levels, such as 1.5x movement speed for party members, retaining “echoes” between battles, and the ability to chain multiple characters’ special abilities. Encounters take the visible enemy approach where you are able to see the encounters on the map as monsters and only touching them results in a battle, allowing you to skip groups of difficult enemies in favor of weaker ones, as well as lowering the ultimate attrition rate on your party’s healing items. Realistically, this game does everything about combat right, in fact, this game has spawned my new favorite combat system ever implemented into a game, the only thing I could possibly complain about is guarding, seeing as it’s the only way to significantly reduce damage taken Defense an almost worthless stat. Oh… and it’s 3 player co-operative, me and my two friends played through the entire game co-operatively, how awesome is that?
Now we get to the story of the game. I won’t go into detail explaining the story beyond it centering on 19th century Pianist and Composer Frederic Francois Chopin and his dreams as he is dying of Tuberculosis. Don’t worry, you don’t need to know anything about Chopin or music at all, there’s really only one dungeon that even mentions music in its puzzles and that is just a simple memorization puzzle. Throughout the story you will get bits of Chopin’s biography set to some of his music, giving the player insight into the portion of his life that influenced the world’s events in that chapter. It’s actually an extremely interesting portion of the game, not just to learn history or discover how the world is being shaped, but because of the music playing, doubtless you know something Chopin has written whether you know it or not, and simply discovering that he wrote it and what inspired him to write it is a truly unique experience. Also, do not be fooled by the seemingly saccharine cover, the game is mature in its story development, delving into morality, economics, politics, human society, philosophy, xenophobia, and existentialism. It is NOT an overly cheery JRPG with a “destroy the big baddy” plot.
But what about the characters? Surely a JRPG is just a crippled mass without a good cast. You’ve no worry in Eternal Sonata. Every character, except Beat the worthless runt, is colorful and deep with an at least average voice actor, plenty of character and the correct level of intensity. The cast is also varied, clocking in at 12 total playable characters (in the PS3 version) or 10 playable characters (in the 360 version).
If you are even a moderate fan of JRPGs I urge you to purchase this game immediately, it is superb, absolutely superb. I can personally guarantee that if you enjoy JRPGs this game will not disappoint you, especially if you can rope 2 others to play alongside you.
