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Why Eternal Sonata sucks so damn much

Hey, all. I beat Eternal Sonata a while ago, and I wasn't...well, I wasn't really a fan of it. But, because of the new ES PS3 shots (which look alright) and the incredibly polished look to it, I decided that I would force myself to do something unspeakable:

Replay Eternal Sonata.

Here's a quick reason why the game sucks:

Rahxephon91 said:
The game is really bad. Stupid characters and retarded story.

Here's a perfect example of the game's crappy story, writing, and cutscene direction.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ff-kea8HrIU

If you don't see whats wrong with this please don't play video games anymore.

Also the battle system gets boring really quick. Theres nothing to it.

Now, here's the LONG version:

Opnions seem to be so polar-opposite with this game. It's either you like it or hate it. Some of my RPG buds were calling me out - that I rushed through it, and I didn't "appreciate" the game. Yeah, I rushed through it, mainly because a) it's so bleh and b) THERE IS NO OTHER WAY TO GO THROUGH IT.

So because I love GAF I decided to warn GAFfers why this game sucks and you should not ever buy it or rent it. This is also a friendly warning for PS3 owners. I played through the whole thing twice, and have 1000/1000 achievements, so I believe my opinion is valid. OK, so let's start the game out fresh:

Right now it has an "A"

It has an incredible art direction as we all know. Going through the game a second time, I'm still in awe over the amount of detail that is poured into each section. It's truly remarkable. Stunning. It even makes Baten Kaitos's art look primitive, and that's saying a lot because I LOVE Baten Kaitos in so many ways (Dragona, you hear? I am NOT apart of the problem.)

While some may disagree, I also have to commend this game's soundtrack: This is arguably Motoi Sakuraba's best effort...ever. Most pieces are beautiful, catchy, or downright refreshing to listen to. Honestly, it barely even sounds like a Sakuraba soundtrack, outside a few rythmic styles. There are also a ton of tracks.

OK, so, still an "A"! woohoo!

But these are things that any gamer can tell me. Just watch a few videos and you can tell me it LOOKS amazing and SOUNDS wonderful. But, the environments are actually incredibly limited. Most towns consist of one of two blocks with two or three houses. The dungeons/areas are, in particular, linear. Linear isn't even the word. The entire game you're just running on a path, a straight-line path, which occasionally splits to show a chest. And that's it. Even the breathtaking fields that appear so expansive in the videos are nothing more than a yellow-brick-road-style of traveling that is one way or...well, one way. period. In a lot of cases, you can't even go back to where you stepped a few minutes ago. What makes the whole thing even more irritating is because the game knows that you're passing by enemies because the battles are so boring (I'll get to that in a bit), it places enemies on the path, forcing you to fight. There's one dungeon (
the back of the church
) where it's a straight line for half the dungeon, and every five steps you take there's an enemy. This lasts for like 10 enemies. How fun!

But that's not all. Near the end of the game, you can't even go back and do what you did. Did you like that hill? WAS IT PRETTY? Too fucking bad. Oh, did you think that swamp area had awesome music (which it did), do you want to go through the game just to leave it on and hear the awesome music? Yeah, whatever. Look, here's the nearly unexplainable, abrupt final set of dungeons - just finish it. (Again, we'll get to this later.) So, okay, this is stupid. There is only ONE sidequest--or so you think. Yeah, actually, you have to REPLAY the game, the entire game, to access a portal that sends you back to SOME locations. (Don't worry, it's not everywhere, so you'll still need to go through plenty of battles!) This sucks. But you know what sucks even more? Enemies HP (and possibly some other stuff) is 1.5 times higher than before! So, like, guess what? Battles just take longer! LOLZ! Keep in mind that if you're an achievement whore, the most you can get on the first playthrough is 340.

To top it off, the secret super duper dungeon has the most retarded design in an RPG ever. I can't even explain it. It's so bad. Gah.

OK, so it's been dropped down to a B. That's still okay, right?

Yeah, well, the battle system sucks, too. Actually, it REALLY sucks. In the beginning it seems really cool. You have a party level, and that advances over time, possibly icnreasing the battle system experience. After about 20 battles, you notice that every single damn battle has the same damn strategy every damn time: you hit A as fast you can, you hit Y at the end (which is your super-duper move), and you sometimes hit x to pour out a healing item. That's it. This is no joke. Every enemy and every boss, this exact thing. So, once the game notices that it has a shitty battle engine, it decides to give you Party Level 2 or something. This adds "echoes," which basically just says the more you hit A and wait to hit your super-duper attack, the more damage--more or less.
OK, alright, this seems repetitive, but at least the battle system constantly evolves? Yeah, no, not really. There are more party levels, but the changes are so little that they're eiher unnoticable or stupid, purposefully making things harder for no reason.

And then there's the items. One of the characters has kind of a cool technique: he can take pictures. This is cool, in theory, but totally wronged in this game. I guarantee that if you take 10 pictures of ANYTHING--a rat's behind, your character picking her nose, etc--you will have enough money to last the entire game. See, the game gives a ridiculous amount of cash for this pictures, and while they do judge you, you can nearly buy all new armor, accesories, swords/etc, and 99x of items for just 10 or so pictures. And that's it. There is one side quest near the end (which is, of course, on your second playthrough) that has you take a reasonable picture of 20 enemies in the game, but that's it. Speaking of enemies..................

This game has the most limited amount of enemies I have ever seen in an RPG. I counted. There are about 20 differently designed enemies (excluding bosses), more or less, and the others are either different colored or have a little tiny thing added or misplaced to them to make them "different." Essentially, it's the same creature with the EXACT same attacks. Same attacks. Same attacks. In fact, each character has ...usually two attacks. Bosses have a little more. (And, by the way, repeat boss designs happen more than once, too!)

The game tries to get a little creative and adds a dark and light section to all areas. This, again, in theory, is cool. Too bad it actually sucks. See, when an enemy goes in the shade, let's say, they (a lot of them) are transformed into a different monster. Cool, I guess? But the monster is NOT unique. That exact monster is probably wondering around somewhere up above, blocking your path. There are some dungeons where there is, literally, only one enemy through the entire dungeon, if you can their transformation as the same. (Actually, there are a few dungeons who have one enemy. period. but that's another story.) I'll give this idea one good point: with your character, it changes your special attack. Sometimes you can only have a character heal with his or her power when she's in the light, as opposed to the dark. That's cool...!

Then there are the piano pieces. This, from the previews, looked to be yet another creative, cool gimmick to the game. But--yeah really--it falls flat. All this really is is essentially randomly playing through your collected score pieces to random folks that, by the way, have a piece that you can't yet hear until you totally fail. It's a big guessing game, and one where you have to match notes up as much as possible--or the sound of the instrument. There are a total of 32 pieces, so this becomes really annoying.

The game is also unusually short. It took me a little under 20 hours.

OK so what the hell, this sucks. We're at a "C" now.

"But, Fate, I don't care! As long as it has a good story, I can handle it! Really!" OK, OK, I hear you. And let me assure you: the story is ES's most embarassing part.

Now, there has been a lot of talk that ES's story is either shitty, too ambiguous, or simply so amazing that we are unable to comprehend such magnificence! Let me make the record perfectly clear: the story is a joke, an insult, and such a mess...I don't even know where to begin. I'm sure you all know the premise, so I will just explain why this sucks. The game places you in a dream and the game leaves you wondering "what am I doing, why am I here, is this a dream or reality, blah blah blah". And this is all cool, except--
the game never really answers this! You really have to fill in the gaps. For most of the game you're trying to resolve this inevitably haywire conflict that's not going anywhere. That's about 80% of the story. The other amount of it is simply trying to understand what the hell Frederic is doing, and hearing about scenes that are so boring and so made for five year olds that...I was tempted to skip nearly every one. Now, I'm a rabid RPGer, and I'm not the guy that skips scenes. BUT ES's scenes are so ungodly borign, awful, and nearly pointless, that's what happens. The characters throughout the game are especially lame, with only Polka, Frederic, and maybe Jazz having personality. Even Allegretto, the main dude, is nothing more than a guy who plays the lead man role thing. But his intentions and dreams and determination are so unbelievable. Even the enemies are stupid. I mean, the ultimate evil dude doesn't even look evil. (He also has a terrible corny voice, but that's another story.)
Finally, and the thing that really just kills any sensibility of the plot, is the ending:
it's unbelievably bad. it makes you feel like the entire game had no point other than to be like a grandma, slap my hand, and tell me that bad things are bad and bad peopel are bad and good people are good and life is great and I should appreciate life because life is good and not bad because it's good and not bad. Seriously, the whole lesson is as redundant and retardedly said as that very sentence. Now, this COULD have had potential--the whole dream thing and life versus reality thing, I mean--but most of the plot is this arbitrary let's-talk-to-these-conflicting-kings quest that the subtle mystery to the game is REALLY ABRUPTLY forced down your throat near the end of the game. It makes no damn sense. Now, I know someone has posted on GAF trying to make sense of the plot, and I dont' buy it. BUT, if that's the case, then that's stupid. Polka representing a character of Chopin's in real life, for example, should have been SPECIFICALLY shown and revealed, and why this is important.

D

The is just shy of failing, but Sakuraba did such a standout music score and the art is so wonderful that I can't give it an F.




*So, Eternal Sonata is like that deadbeat GF/BF/friend/etc that you have. You know that there is potential with him or her--you really do--and you try so, so hard to get them to highlight these qualities. But they just never do. They always just go back to the drugs, or become lazy and don't do anything with their life, and maybe every once in a while they say something that sounds really cool and profound, but all it is is nonsense. You keep trying to like it, and the more you try, the more you hate the game, and the more you hate Tri-Crescendo. I seriously doubt that their PS3 port will fix this game to a C - range, so please do not pick this up if it comes out here. It's bad. Superbad (and not the cool "superbad" like the superbad movie. Super. Bad.) It's just such a shame, because this game looks wonderful, and, for some reason, the critics like it.
But they're wrong.




Thanks for listening! Thanks for letting me rant! I'm just trying to save anyone who has not played it yet :D Anyone who agrees or disagrees, I'd love to hear from.
 

Totz

Member
You mentioned the quality of the soundtrack, but didn't say specifically how awesome Sakuraba's arrangement of Chopin's "Revolutionary Etude" is.

It's awesomesauce.
 
Totz said:
You mentioned the quality of the soundtrack, but didn't say specifically how awesome Sakuraba's arrangement of Chopin's "Revolutionary Etude" is.

It's awesomesauce.

Impressive. I found the battle themes to be especially addictive.
 

Otheradam

Member
I agree that it's not a very interesting game. I don't know why all the PS3 people are waiting for this to come out...they will be disappointed I think (or really desperate to play a jrpg on PS3 and be blinded by it's faults).
 
loved the battles but the story......the fucking story....I almost never skip cutscenes that I have never seen but holy shit. I was pausing and skipping like I had ADD.
 
BigBlackGamer said:
loved the battles but the story......the fucking story....I almost never skip cutscenes that I have never seen but holy shit. I was pausing and skipping like I had ADD.

I'm just curious - why did you like the battles so much? I really want to know.
 

Pojo

Banned
I hope that new Tales of Game comes to the PS2, because I absolutely adore the art style of it and ES.

Yeah, I am a PS3/Wii owner. I really, really want an RPG. Really. :(
 

Alex

Member
I like it a fair bit, I'd probably double dip on the PS3 version. Super saccharine style is nice on occasion, absurdly polished, and just fun to play.

Not much in the way of a convoluted narrative, or overly depth chock mechanics, but I really just can't think of anything I really disliked about the game. It's just not one of those titles I feel compelled to break down.
 

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
Eternal Sonata is one of the worst JRPG's i've ever had the mispleasure of playing. It's a completely mess from beginning to end. Seriously, PS3 owners do yourselves a favor and skip this piece of shit.
 

Mejilan

Running off of Custom Firmware
Fate, if the shitty games we own is any barometer to the state of my soul, then Eternal Sonata would only represent a tiny drop in a very large barrel! :D

Otheradam said:
I agree that it's not a very interesting game. I don't know why all the PS3 people are waiting for this to come out...they will be disappointed I think (or really desperate to play a jrpg on PS3 and be blinded by it's faults).

Not desperation. It's pretty clear, however, that the PS3 version has quite a bit of additions and improvements. Enchanted Arms PS3 surprisingly came out here. I wouldn't want to settle for an inferior version IF another option is available to me.

However, if they release the PS3's improvements as DLC on the 360, then I'll just get that version cheap. As it is, knowing Namco (Tales of Symphonia PS2), it's more likely that the PS3 version will NOT come out here, than otherwise. In which case, I'll wind up with the 360 version regardless. Once it gets cheaper!
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
It was an awful game which is a damn shame because the graphics and music were so good.

The gameplay and the story were just about the worst in the genre, though.
 

rykomatsu

Member
NB added extra content and rescripted to make the story clearer for the PS3...however good or bad the game is, though, i'm not gonna pick it up for the PS3 out of the sheer fact that the bitch Hirano Aya is part of the cast...
 
FateBreaker said:
I'm just curious - why did you like the battles so much? I really want to know.

I dunno I just liked the combat. It felt like it was a semi-action game. I dont like traditional turned base combat....I just liked the combat.
 

AkuMifune

Banned
Sinatar said:
Eternal Sonata is one of the worst JRPG's i've ever had the mispleasure of playing. It's a completely mess from beginning to end. Seriously, PS3 owners do yourselves a favor and skip this piece of shit.

I would if I could, but you wanna tell me another PS3 JRPG I can play this year? There's only 1 other, and I played that EM crap a year and a half ago.
 

Monroeski

Unconfirmed Member
FateBreaker said:
--This is a very long post, but I want to clairfy why ES sucks so much, because I'm getting sick of people who either played the demo or played it for a few hours praising it--
What about those who played the whole thing and still praise it?

Not an all time classic. Battle system had cool ideas, but they weren't implemented very well (and party levels were unlocked WAY too slowly). Cutscenes were very slow paced. The only time I'll ever play it again is to load some of my numerous savegames and marvel at the art design all over again.

But damned if I didn't enjoy it. Maybe it was just the art design and music that kept me going; I loved the character designs specifically, even though I wanted to throttle some of them (read: Salsa and Beat). Battles were mostly just hitting the same button over and over, but I found ways to keep myself entertained, such as trying to figure out the right combinations to try to kill all the enemies before my third character took a turn, or make sure none of the enemies got a turn, etc.

The end, though. What the hell? That shit just took a dive off the deep end. :D
 

KingJ2002

Member
i never understood how this game rated higher than blue dragon at the time because i found ES to be unbelievably boring and repetitive... I loved looking at new locations but i stopped playing right when i added that arrow shooting girl to my party... the story was so lame i just didnt care to finish and sent it back to gamefly.
 

alistairw

Just so you know, I have the best avatars ever.
I'm enjoying it. Not everyone wants a 300 hour experience. It's not great by any means, but it's fun.
 
The game is really bad. Stupid characters and retarded story.

Here's a perfect example of the game's crappy story, writing, and cutscene direction.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ff-kea8HrIU

If you don't see whats wrong with this please don't play video games anymore.

Also the battle system gets boring really quick. Theres nothing to it.
 
Rahxephon91 said:
The game is really bad. Stupid characters and retarded story.

Here's a perfect example of the game's crappy story, writing, and cutscene direction.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ff-kea8HrIU

If you don't see whats wrong with this please don't play video games anymore.

Also the battle system gets boring really quick. Theres nothing to it.

I knew it was that scene before I even clicked the link. :lol
 
Rahxephon91 said:
The game is really bad. Stupid characters and retarded story.

Here's a perfect example of the game's crappy story, writing, and cutscene direction.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ff-kea8HrIU

If you don't see whats wrong with this please don't play video games anymore.

Also the battle system gets boring really quick. Theres nothing to it.

Is that several different cutscenes spliced together? I have no idea what's going on.
 

icecream

Public Health Threat
Monroeski said:
What about those who played the whole thing and still praise it?
That reflects more on the player than the game...

FateBreaker said:
I knew it was that scene before I even clicked the link.
That was definitely the breaking point in the story for me. :lol
 

duckroll

Member
Night_Trekker said:
Is that several different cutscenes spliced together? I have no idea what's going on.

No, it's one scene. One singular scene that is possibly the worst in the entire game.
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
Rahxephon91 said:
The game is really bad. Stupid characters and retarded story.

Here's a perfect example of the game's crappy story, writing, and cutscene direction.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ff-kea8HrIU

If you don't see whats wrong with this please don't play video games anymore.

Also the battle system gets boring really quick. Theres nothing to it.

Oh my god.

Wow.

That Youtube scene is just incredible. Is that how all of the English version is? The Japanese voice acting was nothing special, but it wasn't nearly as bad as that scene. The translators must not have even tried to make the English sound natural at all. That scene was like 100% direct translations. I could pretty much tell exactly what the original Japanese expressions were just from watching that video.

I just can't believe they released it like that. The whole scene makes absolutely no sense in English.

I thought the story was awful in Japanese, but it must be like 100x worse in the English version. How could you all play through that?
 

jj984jj

He's a pretty swell guy in my books anyway.
I agree, this is the worst RPG on the 360 to date. The fact that this game was only 20 hours was a godsend, it should have been half that (maybe then it would've been decent). I'm so glad tri-Crescendo is co-developing their next project with another, more experienced, team.

angelfly said:
Just like with Blue Dragon it gets tons of hate on GAF but I really really enjoyed it.
Except that there are a lot more glaring flaws in this game. Blue Dragon was a great take on the traditional RPG formula. Eternal Sonata tried to do something different and failed, the execution was just poor. The battles became repetitive, the dialogue just dragged on in the overzealous amount of cut-scenes, and the game had more than its fair share of poorly designed dungeons.
 

duckroll

Member
Zefah said:
The Japanese voice acting was nothing special, but it wasn't nearly as bad as that scene. The translators must not have even tried to make the English sound natural at all. That scene was like 100% direct translations. I could pretty much tell exactly what the original Japanese expressions were just from watching that video.

I played the Japanese version, and honestly imo it's just as bad. The problem is not with the actual voice acting but how the scenes in the game are directed and how the lines are split up and paced. It's done very, very poorly and hence it's totally unnatural in any language.
 

keanerie

Member
2daepg7.jpg
 

White Man

Member
I enjoyed it. Probably the first JRPG I've played to completion since FF10. It being one of the few next gen RPGs helped. Combat could have used more options, but it was briskly paced and the party level stuff spiced it up throughout the course of the game. The story and characters were pretty terrible, but if you play JRPGs for the story, there's probably something wrong with you anyway. I will say it got particularly bad towards the end, but by the time it got terrible, you were already close enough to the end that you were committed.

It's better than Enchanted Arms. I know, that's not saying much. If you're a PS3 owner starved for an RPG, this is probably good enough. It's not Beyond the Beyond bad or anything--it's a decent Tri-Ace-ish RPG with gorgeous graphics and music and a bad to terrible set of story and characters. I can guarantee you've played and finished much worse if you've been an RPG fan for any length of time.

It also helped me get into classical music a bit! True story! Can't put a price on that.
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
duckroll said:
I played the Japanese version, and honestly imo it's just as bad. The problem is not with the actual voice acting but how the scenes in the game are directed and how the lines are split up and paced. It's done very, very poorly and hence it's totally unnatural in any language.

Oh it was definitely bad, but it was nothing compared to this. Sure the story made no sense, but you could at least tell what the characters were saying. "I've known her since childhood, so we can tell almost everything about each other." ... "Everything..." Lines like this make absolutely no sense in English. It is obvious that they just directly translated the original Japanese and hamfisted it into the game.

I was able to watch the cutscenes in Japanese even though they were awful, but no one should be subjected to the voice acting / script of the English version if that Youtube video is any indication of it.
 
Another bad cutscene is the one where the bow lady all of sudden says she loves Jazz.

Is it me or did that come out of nowhere.

As for Blue Dragon. Blue Dragon may not have a good story ,but its not trying to. It's a harmless adventure.

ES tries to have a meaningful story and fails miserably.
 

duckroll

Member
Zefah said:
I was able to watch the cutscenes in Japanese even though they were awful, but no one should be subjected to the voice acting / script of the English version if that Youtube video is any indication of it.

Well, I dunno. When I got to this scene in my play through, I literally started laughing because it was so retarded. Definitely the worst cutscenes in any RPG this generation so far.
 

jman2050

Member
How the hell do you make a scene featuring the death of an important character boring? That takes a special sort of bumbling.
 
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