Eternal Sonata is one of those Rare games where there's always something there to keep you hooked.
Maybe it was the girlish-looking cover. Maybe it was the Childish art design. Or, maybe it was the possibility that it would turn out to be another run-of-the-mill Japanese RPG. But one day, I was walking around in Game Crazy looking for something cheap (20-40 bucks with MVP card) and I saw this game on the shelves and I figured why not try it out? So I bought it and waited for my RRoD'd 360 to come back, and started playing it.
The game is just amazing, first and foremost. Part of the game is based on a true story, where the famous Pianist, Frederic Chopin is dying of a terminal Illness, and While Sleeping, He starts dreaming of this imaginary fantasy world, where the majority of the story takes place.
You start the game as a girl named Polka, one of the people in Chopin's dream, who meets Chopin. The two of them go on a quest to Castle Forte, where Polka wants to discuss unfair taxes on certain goods with the king. On the way they meet many characters who join Chopin and Polka on their quest, and they encounter dangerous enemies, dungeons and bosses.
The gameplay is also well-designed. The combat features combinations of turnbased gameplay as well as real-time. When it is your turn to make a move, you have about 5 or 6 seconds to move around the area and use as many attacts or spells as you want. The same goes for enemies
The graphics in the game can be good or bad depending on which parts of it you look at. If you're talking about character models or effects, then the game looks exceptionally well, now on the other hand, backgrounds and environments look worse than a 5 year old ps2 game, but we're talking about Japanese RPG's here, so if you can remember that, then you won't pull you're hair out because of it.
Eternal Sonata, overall a game that should be played by any RPG gamer, because it never becomes too unbalanced or hectic to ruin the experience.