An emotional story and beautiful presentation make this one of the best JRPGs from this gen.
In Chopin's dream,the ruler of the Fort kingdom named 'Count Waltz' is making people become his slaves by getting them addicted to a mineral and the mineral is eventually fatal and it will weaken the defenses of other kingdoms.In this dreamworld,people who can use magic are dying from a disease,such as Chopin himself,who is dying from tuberculosis.The game has other characters who play a big role in the story,some of those characters are:-
Polka-Who is a cute 14 year old blonde haired girl with pig tails and she can use magic,which means she is dying from a disease and Polka doesn't have long left to live and is shunned my many people because of her magic ability but she tries to be cheerful.
Allegretto-Is a 16-year old orphan who steals to survive and he looks after another homeless little boy named 'Beat'.
Beat-Is 8 years old and he uses a camera to take pictures to sell for money.
Viola-Is a 26-year old,elf-eared shepherd from the countryside.She's has a tough personality and she's a great archer.
Salsa-Is an 8 year old guardian of Agogo Forest.Salsa likes to collect hats and she is very energetic.She uses a pair of powerful rings as weapons.
There's other playable characters but I will let you discover them for yourself.
The story in the game can be sad because some of the characters are dying or will die and you'll see a heartfelt but sad love story.
The battle system combines turn based and action.
Your characters and the enemies take turns attacking eachother with combos or using actions.
There is a guard button and it requires delicate timing(the slower,weaker enemies give you more time to block their attacks)but the stronger,faster bosses make you react very quickly if you want to block their attacks(when your characters block,they'll still lose health but not as much)and effective blocking can make boss battles against some tough bosses much more survivable.
The bosses in Eternal Sonata can be very tough,even if you're highly levelled.
The actions you can use are positioning your character,using a healing spell or buff or using an item.However,during each turn,you have a very small amount of time to perform attacks or an action and you'll need to balance attacking,healing and moving your characters around within the limited amount of time you have each turn.
Positioning your characters in light or dark will effect what abilities they can do.
Every character can perform a very powerful attack after they've hit enemies a certain number of times without using a special skill or spell and sometimes it can be worth the gamble of not commanding a character to heal themselves or other characters for period of time so they can perform a powerful attack on a boss.
Also each character can hold only a very small amount of items(I think 5?).
Your characters don't require MP to use magic and I like this feature because you can use spells like crazy and it keeps the battle system fast.
The diversity of the characters can make the battles fun.Some characters swordsmen who can do a good amount of attack damage.Viola's arrows can do even more damage than sword attacks but you have to manually aim her arrows and sometimes they can miss their target.Polka has great healing magic but is a bit weak in attack.Chopin is in the middle range with attack power and healing magic.On the otherhand,swordsmen such as Algretto aren't great healers.
And you'll be travelling to different towns and interacting with NPCs and watching the story unfold.The game has no random battles.The game also had some tough puzzles too.
The game's graphics are very beautiful.The way cel shading and color is used for this game is stunning.You'll see lush green fields and beautiful flowers and I love the purple flowers that glow at night.There's also waterfalls and detailed towns and nice looking buildings as well as caves/dungeons and snow and volcanic environments.
As you would expect,some of Chopin's music is in this game and even though Chopin isn't my favorite classical composer(I prefer Pachelbel and Beethoven)it's nice his music is in this game and you can even try to play it yourself.
Some of the character conversations can be very emotional and have good dialogue and voice acting.The music for the emotional moments can be heartfelt.