Try this sometime when you're in a public place: stand still and close your eyes, and just listen. Don't focus on anything in particular, just listen for the sound that you hear all around you. You'll probably notice a cadence, a rhythm to everyday life that emerges. It's this music of the world, this truly human sound, which has eluded composers and performers since the first notes were played. Only a few have come close to emulating the poetry of life with a mechanical instrument; Frederic Francois Chopin is but one of them. His death of tuberculosis cut short a life that was filled with the chords of strife and joy, but it served a greater purpose in the long run. If you believe this game, it sent him on his final fantastic journey.
Eternal Sonata opens with Chopin's deathbed, in 1849 in Paris, mere hours before he draws his final breath. While his friends and family look on, the motionless Frederic enters his final dream - one eerily reminiscent of certain elements in his tumultuous life. In this dreamscape, Frederic meets young Polka, a terminally ill girl whose disease has an odd side-effect: she can use magic in the time she has left. From there the two become involved in a brewing war between Polka's home nation of Forte, led by the maniacal Count Waltz, and the distant land of Baroque, led byt he benevolent Prince Crescendo. All the while, Frederic finds himself increasingly confused as to the nature of his participation; is this reality, or is it, as he believes, merely a dream?
Setting itself as a traditional action RPG, the game takes the player through a handful of chapters with ten colorful and unique playable characters. There's really nothing terribly exceptional or awful about the gameplay; combat is mostly routine but for some reason never becomes a chore, though later on you'll find yourself evading most of the encounters with little consequence in the long run. Eternal Sonata has few cities or towns, so there's often not much to do outside of the main game. In a refreshing disappointment, there are no mini-games to play save for the somewhat tedious and random Sessions. Sessions are just a musically-themed scavenger hunt; players must hunt out Score Pieces and match them to specific NPCs in the towns and dungeons for special items. Some Score Pieces cannot be located through the game's first run, instead being squirreled away in the game's Encore (New Game Plus) mode. Not to worry - you'll be able to start that up before you know it.
Where the game truly shines, however, is in its aesthetics. Eternal Sonata is, hands-down, the prettiest game I have ever played. Character models aren't just well-designed and well-rendered, they're positively gorgeous, littered with detail. From the feathers on the back of Allegretto's coat to the stars and spangles on Count Waltz's courtly clothes, every single character, NPC, and enemy in the game is lovingly and beautifully drawn. You can really see just how much care has gone into the game. During cinematic scenes, the characters' facial expressions change (even if the lip syncing leaves a little to be desired) and it almost looks like the characters are truly acting. Even the world itself is exquisitely detailed; the faux-writing system, usually clearly-readable, appears to be based on musical notation in its styling. It's a wondrous thing to behold. Only a photorealistic game could top this in terms of true beauty; though, every once in a great while, clipping glitches detract from the sublime scenery.
This is to say nothing of the fantastic audio. The voice acting is spot-on; the renditions of Chopin's piano pieces are immaculately rendered and completely unmolested (I'd be willing to bet they weren't even compressed on the disc); and the score, by Motoi Sakuraba, isn't just beautiful, it's nearly divine. One would expect nothing less from a game that revolves around music, but Eternal Sonata goes the extra mile by providing you with a music test in the options menu. There are some very minor complaints - the default mixing on the sound and voice volume oftentimes means that the first portions of characters' special attack quotes get obscured by the sound effects, and a couple of characters' voices are slightly grating - but for the most part, Eternal Sonata isn't just an argument for running your Xbox through a stereo system: it practically demands it. You owe it to yourself to hear this game in the greatest sound quality you can afford.
I'll be honest, I loved this game. But it's doomed to score as low as it does because of three very damning flaws. The first, and the most obvious, is the game's difficulty. There isn't any. I died perhaps four times throughout the entire run; with one exception, it was poor preparedness on my part, and the exception required simple levelling to overcome. That was the only time I ever did any serious or required grinding for levels. Throughout the final two dungeons, I evaded or ran from every encounter I could and I still finished the game with nary a hiccup - in point of fact, the last death I encountered was in the second-to-last dungeon and only because I dropped the controller! Anyone with any amount of skill will be able to complete the game without any trouble at all; I've yet to venture into the optional dungeon yet, but if it's as laughably easy as the previous portions of the game, then I clearly have nothing to fear. The Encore mode is something I may or may not do - it's supposedly tougher, but aside from achievements, why would I want to go through it again?
The second flaw is that the game is far too short. I finished it in under 24 hours of gameplay; this was with three tacked-on quests that served literally no purpose except to waylay the player. The 24 hour mark on the clock is usually when an RPG starts getting into the second or even third act, but Eternal Sonata just sort of ends. Based on the abbreviated progression of events, it seems clear that Tri-Crescendo was counting on stretching the game out over two or three titles a la dot Hack. For whatever reason, they just decided to wrap everything up after twenty hours and push the player into a rushed finale.
Which leads into the final and most souring flaw of the game: the story falls flat after those twenty hours. Seriously, it was going so well up until the battle with Count Waltz. I caught myself thinking through some of the plot developments even when I was away from the game - this is something I've not done in years, not since maybe Final Fantasy IX. The reason for the plot collapse is actually quite simple: Chopin. He has very little to do with the plot that revolves around Polka and Allegretto, and a specific event an hour from the game's end renders his entire involvement with the game completely confusing. Actually, come to think of it, the entire ending confuses things further than they already were.
Like I said, I loved this game. While I was playing it, I could overlook the flaws and some of the conventions used. Now that it's over, however, it's obvious that the game will disappoint people looking for an RPG on the 360 that's truly on the level of Final Fantasy. Much like most classical music, a lot of the enjoyment you'll get out of the game depends on what expectations you take going into it. Still, it's far from a waste of time. It's set an aesthetic bar extremely high for RPGs on the 360, and I doubt that we'll see that bar moved for a long time to come.
