AMN's Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.

What the Game's About
Well known for their musical contribution in the Valkyrie Profile, Star Ocean and the Baten Kaitos series, tri-Crescendo takes a swing at creating their own video game, Eternal Sonata. Released in Japan in June as Trusty Bell, this is unlike most Xbox 360 software. Tri-Crescendo takes a chance with a cel-shaded style RPG that involves a strong emotional storyline and a very unique battle system. Based on the famous Polish pianist Frédéric Chopin, Eternal Sonata takes place on Chopin's deathbed, as he enters a so-called dream world where he must battle for his life and simultaneously encounter some real-life crises. While the concept may sound very bizarre, tri-Crescendo and Namco Bandai surely do not skip on the goods, as Eternal Sonata offers an RPG experience that mixes traditional RPG elements with new-age ones.

What's Hot
What sets this game apart from any generic RPG is its light and dark feature, which not only affects your characters but the enemies around you. When you enter a dark or light area during battle, your character will switch between special attacks. Enemies will also transform into weaker or more powerful variants, depending on the shading in one area. This gives the game a very strategic twist that works very well and makes it all the more enjoyable.

In towns, dungeons and battles, the game runs smoother than any other RPG on the market, with close to no loading times what so ever. This keeps the action and adventure fluent, as you'll never have to wait for battles to load.

The gameplay itself is a strong point. The battle system itself is a mix between turn based and real-time gameplay. Similar to something like Radiata Stories or Star Ocean, each battle you enter places you in a battle arena, in which you are allowed to move freely for a set amount of time. Overall, the amount of strategic freedom that that you are given feels fresh in a genre that sometimes feels stale.

Besides the quite hectic gameplay, the visuals presentation plays a large role in why Eternal Sonata is so enjoyable. The visual style and direction is just plain beautiful. It's not the most detailed game you'll see – it has some very plain and even mediocre textures – but the amount of color and cel-shaded beauty in the game is overwhelming. Like the visuals, the sound department is obviously a major focus for a game that is about a famous pianist. There is never a dull moment, as each scene and battle sequence is composed with passion and captures the raw emotion of each character and ongoing events.

Eternal Sonata's story starts off rather slow but quickly picks up and becomes quite deeper as time progresses. The characters that fill the story are wonderful; each one is full of life and has a unique personality, and with the option for traditional Japanese voice-overs, the game allows you to enjoy each character with even more emotion.

What's Not
As said as before, Eternal Sonata is a beautiful game, artistically, and from the moment you begin playing, you want to look all over the place. Sadly, the gorgeous visuals are limited by a fixed camera system.


The game is short -- plain and simple. If you don't do any of the side quests you can finish the game in between twenty and thirty hours, which makes it a bit shorter than most Japanese RPGs. This isn't much of a problem, but what really drags the game down is the lack of adventure. The game can be easily compared to the overall adventure style of FromSoftware's Enchanted Arms – both games are so linear. Eternal Sonata's environments have more life to them, but the concept is very similar, as you're just traveling from point A to point B the whole time.

Dungeons and towns aren't all that impressive, either. You are only given a couple pathways to branch off into, but what makes things worse is each location off the main trail doesn't last very long. And in each town there are only a couple NPCs who actually have something interesting to say, making this world feel sometimes boring. While it is fun to collect Score pieces, it feels like you can pretty much ignore the entire world around you and still finish the game.

Final Word
Thus far, Eternal Sonata is the best Japanese RPG on the Xbox 360. While the game is far from perfect and it could have been so much more, it does have some very entertaining and unique traits that will have any fans of the genre jumping for joy. The plot may seem bizarre and far from something like Final Fantasy, but it works out well. Being this is a tri-Crescendo's first attempt at a full blown video game, it is going to be amazing to see what they will show off in the future. There were a couple disappointments, such as a linear and short story and relatively dull cities and dungeons, but nothing that could tear any dedicated fan away from their enjoyment. Regardless of these few shortcomings, Eternal Sonata is adorable, very creative and an experience that fans of the genre shouldn't miss out on.