Post by xxvi2us on May 18, 2008 23:53:38 GMT -5
Finally bought it, and I have to say it IS worth it.
www.gamefaqs.com/console/xbox360/image/934162.html
www.gamespot.com/xbox360/rpg/trustybellchopinnoyume/images.html
Screenshots
eternalsonata.namcobandaigames.com/
NA official website
So basically Eternal Sonata was made by the people who brought you Valkyrie Profile and Star Ocean. Aka Tri-Ace
But! It was made by Tri-Crescendo, the people who make music for Tri Ace.
So now onto the review..
Story- 8.5/10 Finished the story, and well, overall its great. Its a nice change from other games and has many plot twists to keep you thinking. Its a story where you don't have to think too deeply until you get to the latter half of the game where the story behind Polka unfolds. Ending is inbetween a little confusing and easy to understand. But you gotta piece together what you know from the cutscenes and put it all together.
Graphics- 10/10 (Personally I would give an 11) ...Gawd.. I cant explain this.. Word's I'd use are Amazing, Insane, Crisp, Clean, Detailed... And probably some of the fudgeing nicest graphics I've seen in a loong time. I can't even put into words how amazing they are... Visuals are best on 1080i or 1080p settings so make sure you have an HD TV
Music - 9/10 Eternal Sonata, the whole game's physical appearance is about music. Names, Towns, and just about everything has its own music based name. Which is awesome btw.. Like the town of Retardando, the nation of Baroque, and the Evil Count Waltz.
The actual music is what you'd expect from a music based game. From etudes to fortes and so on. Its really quite amazing how everything fits in perfectly with the situation your facing ingame.
Plus you can view your music at the menu screen so basically you have the whole soundtrack to listen to when your bored.
Gameplay- 9/10 Here's what sets it apart from other RPGs.
Normal Gameplay
The player controls a party to explore the world, talking with its peoples, buying and selling equipment at shops, and encountering monsters while in the field. These encounters are visible, and the player can opt to avoid the encounter, if possible, as well as gaining an edge on the monsters by approaching them from behind. Also it is very cinematic, having many cutsceans that last up to twenty minutes, or even longer, but most of em are actually interesting to watch. But some.. not so much.
The only camera thing is that while moving through an area or well just about everywhere, its a fixed camera. Plus more or less the game is really linear and doesn't require you to backtrack unless you want to get an item you missed earlier on. Never bothered me though..
Cutscenes - Big part of gameplay cuz the game is very cinematic. Even minor moments are shown with awesome cutscenes. Thank God you can pause in the middle of them and skip them when you want to.
Combat
So basically its turn based, but you get 2 different timers.
Tactical Time is your time before any action with the character your using. So when you start your turn you have Tactical Time to decide what to do with your character.
Action Bar - This is the real important thing to watch during battle. The action bar is your time to attack, heal, or whatever you need to do before the bar runs out. It starts when you move, attack, or when your tactical time runs out.
Overall Combat - Basically it pulls up an action based combat system. So within the time your action bar allows you go around using regular attacks, items, and special attacks. Regular attacks are your standard hit em moves. But the thing about em is that they build up Echo points. Echo points are basically stringing combos together so that the more echo points you have, the stronger your special attack would be. It builds up like this: Strong: 4,8,12,16.. Super Insanely Strong :24,32
For example... A regular special attack without echo points would deal about 5000 damage, but if you built up about 32 echo points it may deal 30000 or more damage. It makes a real difference in a battle whether you save em or use em.
Special attacks don't require any kind of MP,SP, or anything. So you can use them as many times as you want. They are your super strong attacks that you can link with normal attacks to give the enemy lots of punishment. Special attacks usually take 3 seconds to use and hardly leave any time left for any other attacks, which is why they should be used when there is 1 or less seconds left.
Light and Darkness- On certain spots on the map there is shade and there is light. Depending on where you stand it changes the type of special attack you use. But this factor is more important for enemies because, when enemies shift from dark to light many things can happen (usually bad things). They can transform making them stronger and giving them different attacks. They change the type of attacks they use. And the cool thing is if you need to use a dark attack but there is no shadow. You can actually stand in the enemy's shadow!
Items-You put items into a set which you can use during battle. Each item has a certain value from 1 to say 7. And you get a limited amount of space to stuff your items in so that you can use them during battle. So in the beginning you can only carry 10 points total, but at the end about 40-50. So thats about 10-50 items you can carry depending on the item value. The higher the value the better the item is. Plus during battle you just need to select your item from the set list using RB or LB and select it by pressing X. Its a really simple concept but I just can't put it into words.
Encore Mode
Basically hard mode. You unlock it after finishing the game once. In encore mode enemies have double health 1.5x the att and def and they give you the same amount of XP as you would in the normal game. About 75% of the achievements are unlocked in encore mode so your gonna have to play it.
So basically encore mode is hard mode with all of the sidequests and special goodies available.
So things you can do are, get ALL of the score pieces, get ALL of the achievements, more sidequests, secrets, SUPER weapons, and a bunch of other things I cant remember.
Yeah the difficulty is revved up a ****load. Many normal enemies will probably one hit you or take out half of your health with 1 blow. Many of the bosses will definanltly one hit you. And the toughest would probably be.
6. Rondo (Top of Aria Tower)
5. Dolce(3rd Baroque Tavern)
4. Dolce (2nd Wah Lava Cave)
3. Rondo (2nd Mysterious Unison Basement Level 11)
2. Dolce (1st Pirate Ship Dolce)
1. Dolce (4th Woodblock Groves South Center)
You fight Dolce 4 times if your doing the pirates treasure quest. Trust me they will MURDER YOU. I tried at least 2-5 times each individual fight. But this is on encore mode but in the normal thing they're not bad. But there are people who are level 80 and can't beat Rondo (2nd). And Dolce and her subordinates gang you and kill you in 2 seconds if your not careful.
Overall- 9.3/10
Awesome game. I got tired of killing people in FPS's so I wanted an RPG. And this is probably one of the best original RPG's ive played so far. Amazing graphics, fun gameplay, many sidequests and secrets. Many good things can be said about Eternal Sonata.
www.gamefaqs.com/console/xbox360/image/934162.html
www.gamespot.com/xbox360/rpg/trustybellchopinnoyume/images.html
Screenshots
eternalsonata.namcobandaigames.com/
NA official website
So basically Eternal Sonata was made by the people who brought you Valkyrie Profile and Star Ocean. Aka Tri-Ace
But! It was made by Tri-Crescendo, the people who make music for Tri Ace.
So now onto the review..
Story- 8.5/10 Finished the story, and well, overall its great. Its a nice change from other games and has many plot twists to keep you thinking. Its a story where you don't have to think too deeply until you get to the latter half of the game where the story behind Polka unfolds. Ending is inbetween a little confusing and easy to understand. But you gotta piece together what you know from the cutscenes and put it all together.
Graphics- 10/10 (Personally I would give an 11) ...Gawd.. I cant explain this.. Word's I'd use are Amazing, Insane, Crisp, Clean, Detailed... And probably some of the fudgeing nicest graphics I've seen in a loong time. I can't even put into words how amazing they are... Visuals are best on 1080i or 1080p settings so make sure you have an HD TV
Music - 9/10 Eternal Sonata, the whole game's physical appearance is about music. Names, Towns, and just about everything has its own music based name. Which is awesome btw.. Like the town of Retardando, the nation of Baroque, and the Evil Count Waltz.
The actual music is what you'd expect from a music based game. From etudes to fortes and so on. Its really quite amazing how everything fits in perfectly with the situation your facing ingame.
Plus you can view your music at the menu screen so basically you have the whole soundtrack to listen to when your bored.
Gameplay- 9/10 Here's what sets it apart from other RPGs.
Normal Gameplay
The player controls a party to explore the world, talking with its peoples, buying and selling equipment at shops, and encountering monsters while in the field. These encounters are visible, and the player can opt to avoid the encounter, if possible, as well as gaining an edge on the monsters by approaching them from behind. Also it is very cinematic, having many cutsceans that last up to twenty minutes, or even longer, but most of em are actually interesting to watch. But some.. not so much.
The only camera thing is that while moving through an area or well just about everywhere, its a fixed camera. Plus more or less the game is really linear and doesn't require you to backtrack unless you want to get an item you missed earlier on. Never bothered me though..
Cutscenes - Big part of gameplay cuz the game is very cinematic. Even minor moments are shown with awesome cutscenes. Thank God you can pause in the middle of them and skip them when you want to.
Combat
So basically its turn based, but you get 2 different timers.
Tactical Time is your time before any action with the character your using. So when you start your turn you have Tactical Time to decide what to do with your character.
Action Bar - This is the real important thing to watch during battle. The action bar is your time to attack, heal, or whatever you need to do before the bar runs out. It starts when you move, attack, or when your tactical time runs out.
Overall Combat - Basically it pulls up an action based combat system. So within the time your action bar allows you go around using regular attacks, items, and special attacks. Regular attacks are your standard hit em moves. But the thing about em is that they build up Echo points. Echo points are basically stringing combos together so that the more echo points you have, the stronger your special attack would be. It builds up like this: Strong: 4,8,12,16.. Super Insanely Strong :24,32
For example... A regular special attack without echo points would deal about 5000 damage, but if you built up about 32 echo points it may deal 30000 or more damage. It makes a real difference in a battle whether you save em or use em.
Special attacks don't require any kind of MP,SP, or anything. So you can use them as many times as you want. They are your super strong attacks that you can link with normal attacks to give the enemy lots of punishment. Special attacks usually take 3 seconds to use and hardly leave any time left for any other attacks, which is why they should be used when there is 1 or less seconds left.
Light and Darkness- On certain spots on the map there is shade and there is light. Depending on where you stand it changes the type of special attack you use. But this factor is more important for enemies because, when enemies shift from dark to light many things can happen (usually bad things). They can transform making them stronger and giving them different attacks. They change the type of attacks they use. And the cool thing is if you need to use a dark attack but there is no shadow. You can actually stand in the enemy's shadow!
Items-You put items into a set which you can use during battle. Each item has a certain value from 1 to say 7. And you get a limited amount of space to stuff your items in so that you can use them during battle. So in the beginning you can only carry 10 points total, but at the end about 40-50. So thats about 10-50 items you can carry depending on the item value. The higher the value the better the item is. Plus during battle you just need to select your item from the set list using RB or LB and select it by pressing X. Its a really simple concept but I just can't put it into words.
Encore Mode
Basically hard mode. You unlock it after finishing the game once. In encore mode enemies have double health 1.5x the att and def and they give you the same amount of XP as you would in the normal game. About 75% of the achievements are unlocked in encore mode so your gonna have to play it.
So basically encore mode is hard mode with all of the sidequests and special goodies available.
So things you can do are, get ALL of the score pieces, get ALL of the achievements, more sidequests, secrets, SUPER weapons, and a bunch of other things I cant remember.
Yeah the difficulty is revved up a ****load. Many normal enemies will probably one hit you or take out half of your health with 1 blow. Many of the bosses will definanltly one hit you. And the toughest would probably be.
6. Rondo (Top of Aria Tower)
5. Dolce(3rd Baroque Tavern)
4. Dolce (2nd Wah Lava Cave)
3. Rondo (2nd Mysterious Unison Basement Level 11)
2. Dolce (1st Pirate Ship Dolce)
1. Dolce (4th Woodblock Groves South Center)
You fight Dolce 4 times if your doing the pirates treasure quest. Trust me they will MURDER YOU. I tried at least 2-5 times each individual fight. But this is on encore mode but in the normal thing they're not bad. But there are people who are level 80 and can't beat Rondo (2nd). And Dolce and her subordinates gang you and kill you in 2 seconds if your not careful.
Overall- 9.3/10
Awesome game. I got tired of killing people in FPS's so I wanted an RPG. And this is probably one of the best original RPG's ive played so far. Amazing graphics, fun gameplay, many sidequests and secrets. Many good things can be said about Eternal Sonata.