I was looking forward to playing Final Fantasy 11 online in December and was very excited to get a copy. However, the excitment quickly turned into annoyance as it took nearly 8 hours to get all of the game set up and extras downloaded. The $16 a month for a character and $1 for each additional character didn't really impress me either. The controls were wonky, the graphics not that stunning and the character design was so limited that I almost didn't want to play. I tried 2 hours of gameplay and ended up deleting my character and account because it was just way too boring. Enter Eternal Sonata. A friend of mine leant me his copy of this game and at first, I was skeptical due to it's cutesy opening and extremely long cut scenes. After 2 hours of game-play however, I becamedrawn into Sonata's vibrant andfantastical world.This game is everything Final Fantasy 11 should have been. Beautiful scenery, charming characters, easy gameplay, and, above all, an interesting and compelling story. I only wish I had discovered Eternal Sonata before I wasted the $40 on Final Fantasy 11.