Beautiful Graphics, Dry Gameplay. (Detailed Review)
Eternal Sonata has beautiful graphics I must say. The colors are extremely vibrant, detailed, and everything looks full of life. There are also a lot of nice atmospheric effects like light shining through different objects, things glowing, and a near perfect use of the bloom effect, not to much and not to little. The character models are very nice and remind me of the style of the characters in the FF Tactics world of Ivalice. They are extremely cute somewhat deformed characters dressed in finely tailored old world outfits which I quite enjoyed, though the exceedingly cute style may grate on some individuals over time but I personally enjoy it. There are many lovely views and vistas throughout the game with wispy clouds and sun soaked skies, fields full of flowers, cozy little towns, hamlets and other things that help you lend your imagination to the world.
The music in Eternal Sonata is good, but I would not say great, it does its purpose but nothing really stands out. It's not like you are going to be humming it to yourself when your not playing the game like very memorable soundtracks do. Really the thing the music does best is in sentimental moments during the story. The battle tunes are all pretty standard. There is a nice story they tell you during parts of the game about Chopin's life which features stunning pictures of landscapes and European architecture while featuring his music in the background which is a nice diversion. The voice acting on the English side of things I must say is good but again, exceedingly cute and may not be everyone's cup of tea. The Japanese voice acting is very standard. If you listen to it you could swear you've heard these same voices 50 times before watching anime. They are not bad but again nothing unique or special.
There are a good amount of bosses in the game, though some are recycled a few times and don't pose much of a challenge.
The Bad:
This is where Eternal Sonata fails, its gameplay. Eternal Sonata has an extremely linear style of map structure and those beautiful graphics don't feel as good as they should be because you know that you are never going to be able to explore them and you are usually limited to a very predictable and boring path while progressing through the game. They throw in the odd treasure box on the map just to your left and right, usually full of junk just for filler, because "they have to". You know, the RPG makers guidebook said so.
Another really uninspired, and after you have done it enough times, downright cruel filler technique the designers use are annoying backtracking through the maps and dungeons. You do this either to (you guessed it) flip a switch or go very far back in the area to get a treasure chest that is now available due to said switch. They got you running around like a monkey trying to get through some dungeons and it becomes painfully obvious that this type of archaic gameplay is filler for this RPG. As a gamer I don't want my time to be burned in wasting it running around because a designer wanted to pad his/her game with 5 more game hours. As a gamer I want that time to be filled with entertainment and something creative and innovative.
Now on to the battle mechanics of this game, much lauded as "unique". Well at first it is interesting but when you get 6 hours into the game and you have still only fought 6 different enemies and two of them just a palette swap it gets very boring. The battles themselves though in "active time" and on an open and 3D field, they just don't seem as variable as they should be. The game promoters tried to lead you to believe that this makes them really dynamic, but this is not the case. The enemies are just plain dumb and often waste the active time they have doing nonsensical things instead of efficiently attacking you therefore leaving them wide open to a fierce beat down by you and your teammates. Though you can technically do whatever you want in the battle you will in reality be doing the same approach over and over again since the enemies always react in a predictable manner, appear in the same spots, and have limited attack variability. Because of this you will soon find the most efficient method of taking them down in the least amount of time possible thus rinsing and repeating that tactic over and over again. So it really becomes irrelevant that you can use the whole battlefield because there really is no need or incentive to do things a different way than the same way over and over again unless your goal is to just spend more time in the battle.
This game is very easy which just exacerbates the problem and lends to the theory that this game might have been made for smaller kids. This game actually plays surprisingly similar to your traditional turn based RPG that came out 15 years ago since you really are doing the same button combos over and over. Its a shame the battles don't require more strategy since the ability to use different attacks whether you are in the light or dark is unique and could have been utilized more if there was more difficulty involved.
The designers got seriously lazy when it came to designing enemies in this game since there is a real shortage and variety of them. Usually you will be only fighting two or three different enemies during stages of the game between bosses and combine that with low challenge combat, backtracking, palette swapping, and boring map design (not graphics) you got yourself a rather dry RPG experience.
To make the game even direr is the weapon system in this game. All the weapons you get are all the same except in stats and have no real effect on how the game is played. Some of them have status effects on them but their effect on the battle is very minimal. None of them change much unlike what you would expect from most RPG's and they don't change your on-screen representative while your playing as well. I'm sure this was done because there was no point in doing so since the lazy designers at some earlier stage already decided that they were going to make weapons change in stats only. Changing the in-game graphics would create things such as changes in a weapons length which would then lead to a nasty thing like (lord forbid) them having to make the gameplay variable. No, lets just keep it totally generic through the whole game, "Yeah, easy Fred". It seems like the only people who were actually working on this product were the graphics and character designers who did a wonderful job with their inspired work, its just to bad they got teamed up with these guys.
Another aspect of this game that just screams lazy design is the broken monetary system within the game. Money very soon becomes irrelevant thereby just adding to the lack of satisfaction and incentive you get from combat. This is a result of an ability one of your teammates has. During battle he has the ability to take pictures of monsters and you can then sell them at your local shop. But the problem is that you can sell these photos for ridiculous amounts of money sometimes netting you 70000 GP and you can take unlimited amounts of these photos. Why is 70000 GP much you ask? Well when your upgrades at the shop cost you around 300 GP per item and your healing items under a hundred to a couple hundred you see what I'm getting at. You can quickly max out your inventory with healing items further making the games already dry combat even more easy and irrelevant.
So as a final note I really cannot say I would recommend this game to fellow connoisseurs out there since it ads nothing to the genre but some pretty graphics. But I could recommend this game to your young ones since the story is light and the challenge quite easy and I'm sure they would enjoy themselves. I'm not saying anyone else will not enjoy this game but its is very dry, thats all I can say about it. Its only saving grace is its graphics but after you play it long enough you will probably wish they were transplanted onto another game instead.
Graphics: 8.5/10
Sound: 7.5/10
Gameplay: 4.5/10
My Tilt: 5/10
Replay Value: Low, due to very low extra content, side-quests and interesting secret items.
Final Score: 6/10