Hohoho! Ohh, Polka... When will your molesting antics stop? (Eternal Sonata) [NSF56k]

BushidoGamer

I don't have an Xbox 360 but this makes me wanna buy it in a heart beat.

New English Eternal Sonata story teaser:
http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/10058









Edit: Fine... I'll change the title to something more accurate, you boring people you.

schmads

Wow... that looks beautiful. This is going to be a really, really good year for the 360 for me. There is a "battle" vid here:

http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/10056

Edit: And to be fair, I just watched the Ratchet and Clank for the PS3 trailer, and now I want a PS3 as well. It all comes down to the games.

Recoil42

And a hands-on over at Joystiq:

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/03/16/hands-on-impressions-and-english-screens-of-eternal-sonata/

At the heart of Eternal Sonata is a turn-based, yet real-time battle system that is stable enough for more traditional JRPG fans, while packed with enough frantic action to keep the rest of us awake. Ditching both random encounters and even mana, the key element of Eternal Sonata's battle system is time. Each member of your party receives about five seconds per turn that can be utilized to move, attack, or cast as many spells as you can possibly work in.

Balancing out the latter is the Echoes system which garners more powerful spell effects with a damage multiplier gained by using only melee attacks. Party-based spells, or Harmony Chains as they're called, are also dependent on Echoes and can be chained up to six times for massive damage.

While technically impressive from a visual standpoint, there are no load times to speak of when jumping from exploration to battle. The battlefields themselves turn the lighting effects into a gameplay mechanic as certain abilities can only be accessed while standing in either light or darkness. Enemies are affected by this catch as well, morphing in real-time into completely different creatures which can have either positive or negative repercussions depending on the circumstances. Eternal Sonata also makes due without an overworld map and while we're told that you can venture back to previously explored territory, we were not shown just how that travel works.

Throughout those travels you'll be meeting and recruiting a cast of up to ten playable characters, all of whom keep up the musical motif. You may already be familiar with Chopin, Polka, Allegretto and Beat, but if you're sick of them come release day you'll be glad to know that you won't be stuck with them all the time. Parties can be fully customized and while certain situations call for specific characters, you can replace all four if you'd like. The cast looks to be extremely varied from the adorable forest-loli Salsa and her twin ring blades to Bass, the bishonen knight that wields, well, a gigantic sword-bass. Though all the characters sport weapons that double as musical instruments, the short-skirted hottie Falsetto was seen dealing damage barehanded.

Like most folk, Eternal Sonata had us at hello with its luscious visuals and charming style. Having played it, our appreciation for this title has gone from distant admiration to serious adoration. It may not reinvent the wheel of Japanese RPG's, but thus far Tri-Crescendo has managed to create one that has the ability to capture the hearts of those who typically wouldn't bother with the genre.

Zombiemambo

The battle system sounds really cool, reminds me of Grandia.

bruin

So a day one purchase for me.

The English voices don't sound too terrible either.

schmads

Zombiemambo wrote: »

The battle system sounds really cool, reminds me of Grandia.

It immediately made me think of Grandia, but then I couldn't quite figure out why, so I didn't mention it. It looks fun, though.

Edit: After seeing the screenshots on Joystiq, I need new pants. It looks like... like art. Like someone hand-drew every single one of those screenshots. Amazing. I mean, some games like Okami look great and artistic, but I can tell they're having to work hard to do it, to work around the PS2 limitations and to eliminate jaggies and the like. Enchanted Arms also looked like that. It looked technically beautiful, but lifeless and also shoddy in some areas. This, on the other hand, looks better than even the best Enchanted Arms screenshots. Wow.

Edit2: I hit upon this thread by accident, and I have no idea how the title relates to the game. Could you maybe stick Trusty Bell or Eternal Sonata in the title, so other people might see the video too?

AbsoluteZero

Man. The voice acting is stuffy as shit and the dialogue is painful.

Good ol' RPGs....

schmads

I don't know... I didn't notice any particular "wrongness" with the dialog. Of course, the last JRPG on the 360 that I played was Enchanted Arms, so my standards are a bit low right now. On the other hand, I found Enchanted Arms to be fun enough to finish, while I couldn't even find any interest in getting past the first couple of dungeons and exploring Oblivion. Obviously I just have strange preferences, but I found the combat completely unfulfilling, and prefer a good turn-based strategy, even if it isn't very deep. I'm hoping for something fun like that here. A 5-second battle timer, where you can do all you want? Interesting for sure...

Ginsane

This is going to be an amazing game!

Moss

Want game!