Eternal Sonata

Aug. 15, 2008

I was curious tonight how a standard RPG would play out in the time of one hour. Since the expected playtime is usually 40+ hours, it seems like the first hour wouldn't be focused on as much. What I found pretty much confirmed that.

Category

RPG

Pros

• This game was very pretty. Is it just me or do people spend more time on making games pretty than anything else? Maybe that's because it's easy to make something pretty, since you know when it is...
• I'm a music geek, so everything being named after musical terms was pretty neat to me. I also liked how all the attacks had their own rhythm to them (which helped with blocking).
• I like RPGs that have a relaxed turn speed during fighting, giving you a chance to really think over your move.
• The game's interesting twist seemed interesting. Too bad it came around right at the hour mark.

Cons

• The voice acting hurt my head. I'm not sure what age group ES was pointed at, but did they really have to pick such voices for the game? I couldn't stand listening to Polka after a few scenes with her.
• Along those same lines, the narrative was painful, too. The conversations felt forced, the metaphors were shoved down my throat, and I can't stand it when people talk to themselves (which everyone in this game seems to do).
• The battle system seemed way too simple, and already by the end of 50 minutes I was feeling the grips of repeitive battles.
• The fixed camera in the battles was a little painful for me. I really wanted to be able to swing the camera around to see all the action, but instead I was stuck with just a few options.
• The first boss fight was anything but fun. Once I'd taken out his minions it was just turn after turn of using the same attacks over and over again. Plus, he started using health potions - LOTS and LOTS of health potions - which is just damn frustrating. He could've easily beaten me if he just chugged those things, it felt like the game itself was toying with me, trying to get me close to death before finally having the boss stop using the health potions all the time.
• After playing for 50 minutes, I got to the introductory credits. Great. I didn't want to waste my time watching them, so I tried to see if there is a skip cutscene function. Lo and behold, there was! Only, the cutscene skip went way past the credits and (from what I can gather) partway through the next scene! Fuck! If you're going to make a game with something people might want to skip on their first time around (like the credits), don't punish them by skipping way after that. It's the same way I hate TV shows on DVDs where the second chapter doesn't start immediately after the opening credits. Everyone wants to fast forward past them because they've already seen it a million times; make it easy!

Verdict

I found the battles repetitive, the story boring, and the narrative poor. But like I said - it seemed like the twist was on its way. Perhaps that would have been enough to grip me into playing the rest of the game? Regardless, the first hour was far from impressive.