E3 07: Eternal Sonata Hands On
From seeing the various trailers and screenshots, we all know that Eternal Sonata is beautiful, but nothing can quite prepare you for how it looks in person. Saying that it’s stunning would be understating things. We’ve written about Eternal Sonata quite a few times in the past, so I’ll quickly summarize the plot and then move on to how the game plays.
Eternal Sonata takes place in the dreams of the composer Chopin as he lies on his deathbed. Within this world, people who are terminally ill have magical powers and as such, are shunned by the community at large.
The gameplay is interesting in a variety of ways. To start, the game is played as a standard single player RPG with a three person party system and characters that can be swapped out. But once the battle starts, your other party members can actually be controlled by other players, something I’ve hardly ever seen in a traditional RPG. The battle system itself is an interesting mix of turn based and real time fighting. Each player takes his turn to fight and is given either four or six seconds (depending on the mode you are playing in) to do whatever it is you are going to do be it attacking, healing, casting magic, pulling off special moves or running up to get closer to an enemy. Once your time is up, play moves on to the next character or enemy. It’s really a perfect mix of the two battle styles.
You can also equip yourself with magic spells that come in two varieties, light and dark. In an interesting game mechanic, your light spells only work when you are standing in sunlight while your dark spells only work when you are either in the shade or it’s night time. Certain objects can also be carried that will provide you with light or dark just in case you are caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some enemies also change depending on whether they are in the light or the shade, making the player some times have to lure the creatures into the appropriate shade of brightness to make a killing blow.
Eternal Sonata is one of the titles that is joining the long list of games I’ve seen here at E3 that is going to make it a great year to be an Xbox 360 owner. And if you haven’t already bought one, now may well be the time.
Fruit Brute
Posted to E3 on 13 July 2007
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: E3, Eternal Sonta, hands on
I can't wait to play this game. I just need to buy a 360 first.
This game and Blue Dragon is the reason why I don't care about Final Fantasy XIII not coming to the Xbox.