 Review By: Nick Arvites |
Developer: | Namco Bandai |
| Publisher: | Namco Bandai | |
| Genre: | RPG | |
| ESRB: | Teen | |
| # Of Players: | 1 | |
| Online Play: | No | |
| Accessories: | HDTV 720p | |
| Buy Now: |   |
The glaring fault I found with the game was the dungeon construction. Few dungeons are straightforward, and most have some sort of puzzle component. The first one encountered, for example, requires you to roam around an abandoned fort and find rooms that contain switches. These switches move these rooms, which in turn makes different areas accessible. Fair enough. The problem is that there is only one hint that indicates you have to do something with the switch. There is really little guidance to it, and I finally turned to an Internet guide after wasting two hours of my life attempting to get through this dungeon. Even then, it took 30+ minutes with a crystal clear guide and map to get through the stupid puzzle without leaving good items behind. There were several other dungeons like this, all involving some other puzzle (like candles or warp portals) that made the game feel tedious and artificially added length to the time played. The dungeons often create a pacing problem as well. You feel like it takes ages to get to a new town (and shop), and ultimately wandering around a puzzle-dungeon doesn’t really advance the plot or entertain the player. I often found myself avoiding encounters just to get to a save point.
Speaking of save points, Eternal Sonata employs the checkpoint save system. In other words, you cannot save your data unless you find a save point on the world map. Thankfully, these points are relatively plentiful, and you shouldn’t run into the problem that some other games have where you go hours on end without seeing one. This is an example of something done right. I’m not a fan of the save point system, but this is a good implementation of an archaic system.
The game just totally missed me with the characters though. The main characters are roughly 14 years old, and the player has to deal with the standard clichés of 14 year old JRPG characters. One is the standard street urchin with a heart of gold (and sword of steel), while the other is the embodiment of goodness and innocence. Naturally, they have feelings for each other, which are expressed in first-crush or puppy-love type dialogue. Really, it’s pretty standard for any JRPG or anime involving teenage characters. It just gets annoying though, and never really feels resolved or addressed. The other characters look under 20, even if they’re supposed to be 30+. You occasionally see an NPC that looks old in a cutscene, usually with a puffy moustache or something otherwise obnoxious. The characters in your party have various interactions through the game, though you really don’t understand or comprehend the motivations of why some of them just pick up and follow you. Most of the voice work is good, and even a casual Adult Swim anime fan will recognize a few of the English voice actors.
The problem is that there are a few characters that cause me to cringe when they open their virtually animated mouths. One has this terrible southern accent (think bad impression of Scarlet O’Hara coming from an 8 year old), and a few others are just generic and almost blend with a few of the other characters. As a result I never really liked or got attached to any of the characters, I simply stopped caring. The one that does die in the game does so shortly after she is introduced, and she wasn’t that great of a character to begin with so it doesn’t feel like a real loss. I didn’t form any sort of attachment to any of the characters, and basically formed my parties based on who could win battles the soonest rather than which characters I liked the best.
Eternal Sonata also suffers from a common JRPG flaw in that the game left at least half-a-dozen plot threads hanging open. Themes and side plots were introduced that never actually resolved themselves. Maybe I’m expecting too much, but if the game lays the groundwork for, say, a love triangle and fails to deliver on a love story thread on either end of it, I feel disappointed. Even the plot elements that were resolved didn’t feel resolved. The ending suffers from Final Fantasy VII syndrome, where it makes no sense whatsoever (Cue the FF fanboy hate mail! - Ed). It refers you to the opening cutscene, and you get bombarded with a ton of dialogue being spoken by characters addressing the nature of reality and things along that nature. And really, not much of it makes sense. By saying that, I don’t mean that it doesn’t make sense in terms of what the characters are literally saying. Anyone that’s taken a philosophy course has heard these lines numerous times. The problem is that it doesn’t feel like it makes sense in the context of the game.
Posted: 2008-05-26 11:11:05 PST