Eternal Sonata ~Trusty Bell~ Chopin's dream

Have you heard of the old wives' tale that you have the most pleasant of dreams right before you die? Well that's the question here. The creator of this wondrous JRPG had that thought "What did Frederic Chopin dream of before he died?" (Yes readers, Chopin IS a real person.) For those who haven't played it or have heard of it, then we'll try to get some aspects of the video game here in this review.

So overall, before I got my hands on this little charm I watched some clips of it. I was mystified by the graphics which gained the attention of being one of the most beautiful in video game history. (I believe it did, it came out around in 2007 so I was very impressed by how it looked) The graphics were just as breath taking as the scores that were used and I especially enjoyed being able to listen to Chopin's as well. You even get to learn history about him in between chapters and his life was rather interesting and tragic. But what I think is that true beauty has its tragedies. And folks, this game has its fair share of them.

Alright so we start out in this game through a poetic and pretty long opening with a very long description about the first town's setting. The characters here have good intentions and impressively long dialogue full of meaningful speeches and life changing tones, however, it does drag on for a while. I have the patience to listen to it over and over, but for others, I'm not too sure. Anyway, so there are a lot of cutscenes so be ready to think of this as more of a movie then just your regular cutscene.

The characters...well in all honesty there wasn't anything really special about them. Don't get me wrong, I do like all of the characters, but they didn't seem to have that much depth. It was more like they were so intent on their goals that they had no time to think of their feelings or anything. Well two out of all of them were very intent on their feelings about the situations, but other than that, they were pretty bland. Anyway, you got the heroine who can fight with an umbrella and magic, a musician who fights with a conductor's baton, your usual swordsman, a little kid who uses a gun, an archer, ANOTHER swordsman but with a better sword and better abilities, a hand to hand combat fighter (you thought it'd be a guy, WRONG, a girl!), a fighter who fights with a feather I believe aaaaaand two exclusive characters who are playable only on the PS3 version.

And guess what? Their names are music related! Yaaaaay! Actually, everything in the world is named after something concerning music, yes even the monsters are named about something music related. We all need to think of the monsters too!

The plot was overall interesting. I mean sure, it went with the whole "time to overthrow the government with random strangers I met along the way!" (Stranger danger does NOT exist in video games, ESPECIALLY JRPGs) The boss battles were also enjoyable, albeit, quite hard for me during my first playthrough, but they were really enjoyable! Oh speaking up battles, I should talk about the combat system which also made me interested in the game.

It being a Bamco product, I expected that they'd do real time battle, and also add in something original of their own creation and boy was I right! Everyone HAS to know about the turn by turn system by now if not (i.e. Pokemon, Final Fantasy) So Eternal Sonata fights using a turn by turn system with a time limit that reduces each time the party (not individual levels, as in the WHOLE party) levels up, the highest level is lvl. 6 which gives the best combat (I can't really word it) The party can only go up to three people and the player can control all of them. You can even counter attack and guard during the opponent's turn, but timing is key here. Light and shadow are heavily relied on here. So if you make a character stand in the light then their attacks will be only light attribute attacks, if you attack in the shadows then their attacks will be shadow attributes. Also, to get something that's similar to a combo attack, you can obtain some hit points to rise up something called Echoes that'll give the character who triggers the Echo more damage to their attack. There's more to say, but I'll just leave it at that.

Also, the dungeons are equally as breath taking in design but irritating while traveling and completing them. Even the sewers are just as gorgeous! There's a rainbow somewhere in there for some reason, no idea why, but there is. Anyway, I love the designs of the dungeons and even though they were arduous, I wished there was more so I could be captured in their beauty. Oh um got carried away, well all in all, these dungeons are full of difficult monsters, obstacles, instruments and there are some puzzles if I remember correctly!

Honestly, I'd make this longer, but I think I dragged it on long enough. I, as well as others, enjoy this game quite a lot! However, it was pretty shaky on the main character and some parts got me confused. Though, I guess it'd be my fault for the confusion since it's a pretty deep game and a lot of beautiful speeches and such, so it requires some good patience to think about what happens. Based on the life of Frederic Chopin is a video game dedicated to help people learn more about him and be able to listen to wonderfully made scores he wrote himself before his peaceful death in his sleep.

Ah they show what happens in the real world as well, just as a heads up and it gave us a good insight on what influences Chopin's dream sequence.

This game was worth buying and taking hours amongst hours of playing (with my brother's sudden interest and help in it as well). I give this game an 8.0 out of 10.