Now that I have spent another hour with
eternal sonata, here are my thoughts...
The Story:As mentioned in my previous post, the story is involving (albeit a little childlike at times - this lends the game an innocence that is not only refreshing but also effective in conveying a myriad of feelings throughout the plot twists) and the characters are well developed... The characters are very believable thanks to thought that went into the dialog as well as the effort spent on their voice acting... The themes in the game may appear childish to some but
alot of what is mentioned in the game does happen in our current environment... The development of the plot is also well paced... The player is not bombarded with too many
cutscenes with extraneous info (
ala the
MGS series) and is just told what he/she needs to know at that point in time...
Video / Audio:
The visuals and audio are brilliantly done... The visuals are well detailed and colourful while the sound is bolstered by a brilliant soundtrack and top class voice acting...
Gameplay:Gameplay is based on a tried and tested format... Save points are scattered across the world and are not too far from one another to cause the player to replay large portions of the map due to the death of the party...
Battles can be avoided by merely sidestepping the enemies (
ala blue dragon - thank goodness for the game being random encounter free!!!)... When the player decides to engage the battle by running into the enemy, an action gauge is used (turns are dependent on the speed rating of each character i.e. faster characters get their turns first and vice
versa) and portions of the gauge are used up when an action (moving, attacking etc.) is performed, once the gauge is depleted, the turn is passed to the next character...
The inventory and party screens are simpler than its other
jrpg counterparts and this in my opinion is a good thing... It allows the player to spend more time living the adventure rather than looking at stats and equipping their characters...
Overall:Everything looks and feels good... This is miles ahead of the
subpar jrpgs that preceded it... Those
jrpgs may have boasted larger budgets, more famous talents and better advertising but this is definitely the best
jrpg on the
xbox 360 at this point in time...
