Eternal Sonata

A friend of mine mentioned Eternal Sonata in one of our many gaming chats because someone he worked with claimed it was the most inspiring game he had ever played. Looking for a reason to start a specific game is normally the hardest part of actually playing a game for me, so I took this random conversation as inspiration of my own to get cracking with a backlog title from 2007.

I have to say that the selling point was completely over-egged and I’m still not 100% sure what the game was about. The alternative title for the game is Torasuti Beru: Shopan no Yume which translates to Trusty Bell: Chopin’s Dream, and while the second part is referenced through the entire game, I do not recall a bell appearing anywhere, Trusty or otherwise.

Anyway in some attempt to summarise the plot, Frederic Chopin, the famous composer, is on his death bed in the real world and is supposedly dreaming. The game takes place in this dream world and you initially follow a girl named Polka, a 14-year-old who can kill dangerous monsters with an umbrella. Later you mean Allegretto and Beat. I don’t have much of a problem with Allegretto. He is a 16 year old with a sword and an attitude reminiscent of many JRPG’s but Beat is an 8 year old armed with a gun. Seriously, what the fuck?! How irresponsible is that.

Firstly, as this is supposed to be Chopin’s dream, it doesn’t make much sense that we spend time with other characters away from him, which happens throughout the game. I can see that this has been done to drive the so called plot so not a massive issue – especially as I didn’t developed a liking for any of the characters. Chopin especially raised bile in my throat.

My other criticism of the characters in general is that they don’t half come out with some shit. Polka’s mother talks to her when she is like 5 and basically describes the world as being a pit of despair – is that something you really want to tell your 5 year old daughter? Allegretto also comes out with some shit about the darkness in the hearts of men which would be fine... if he wasn’t a 16 year old.

So my problem with the plot is that the characters are ridiculous and unrelatable and the story doesn’t seem to have any point to it. It is also interspersed with history lessons about Chopin’s life leading up his death which was weird and it really broke any kind of flow the game could develop and destroyed the escapism factor.

There was one character I did like called Claves but this was short lived. I thought she was a tasty piece of animated ass but shortly after she is introduced, she goes on a never ending monologue by which point I just wanted her to shut the fuck up.

Anyway, there is a game here at the end of the day and, as I’ve already mentioned, it’s a JRPG with a turn-based battle system. There are no random encounters and battles can be avoided by running around the monsters on the field. This is of course a bad idea though, because you will need to level up in order to fight the bosses.

The battle system involves 6 party levels which get progressively more complex as you progress through the game. It basically boils down to you having 4 or 5 seconds to deal as much damage to the enemies as you can and then they have a turn going at you. It’s not overly complicated and you don’t have to spend ages setting up a decent team. Once you get the three best characters with a combination of offensive and healing abilities, all battles become fairly straight forward even late in the game.

A side note on the music; I didn’t notice so much but when other people were around when I was playing, they commented on how sinfully irritating it was. It’s all too high-pitched to be considered nice background music which is all RPG music should be.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 22 Achievements

Eternal Sonata is a slog to put it mildly. In order to get all 22 achievements, you are going to have to complete two 25 hour-plus playthroughs – normal and then Encore Mode. Following the game’s story will net you twelve of them and full praise if you manage to stick it out and get this far.

Like all RPG’s there is the optional ultimate dungeon and while Enchanted Arms didn’t make you do theirs, there are 5 achievements for playing through the optional dungeon in Eternal Sonata and then completing the game.

Now, there are 5 others for playing through the game a second time but hilariously enough you don’t actually have to complete the game again so I have no idea if there is a better ending and as per my earlier comments, I couldn’t care less. 3 of the 5 achievements relate to quest strands that, for some unknown reason, can only be completed in Encore Mode and these are simple enough.

That just leaves two collectible achievements and these are where the challenge comes in. I say challenge, like there is any way anyone is going to spend the time searching for all of these hidden items and add another 25 plus hours to a playthrough. No, by challenge, what I actually mean is planning. You have to collect 32 score pieces, some of which can only be collected in Encore Mode, and 21 EZI items which you need the aforementioned score pieces to get.

Score pieces carry over playthoughs but EZI items don’t so there’s no point getting EZIs on the first playthough. Also, there is no in game numbering system for the score pieces so you have to keep track of these manually and if you don’t, it makes 100% completion a much more arduous task.

Downloadable Content – N/A

As you can probably tell, I didn’t enjoy Eternal Sonata but I think it may be because I missed the point. I think it is meant to be some of the old ‘games as art’ situation and while some games pull this off, I felt Eternal Sonata falls short. In addition, towards the end I got the feeling that the game was actually patronising me for wasting my time playing it and also told me what I need to do in life to be a good person. I can accept these kind of comments from other living humans when I’ve done bad things but these imagined JRPG characters can go fuck themselves.