X3F hands-on: Eternal Sonata
If you're crafty enough to find it, an Eternal Sonata demo is now available on Xbox Live Marketplace. We downloaded the demo yesterday and took it for a spin. First thing's first, the game is very pretty. While the geometry is actually very simple, the art style and the cel shaded characters are just jaw-dropping. The animation is well done and even the voice acting is decent (the demo features full English dialogue and menus). The big question is: how does it play? Read on to find out.
Eternal Sonata will be instantly familiar to Japanese RPG fans. Lots of bright colors, cute characters, and plenty of combat. The Eternal Sonata demo tasks you with fighting your way through a few monster-infested areas, exploring a town, and destroying a (relatively easy) boss. Town exploration, as you might expect, is almost exactly as it has been in every RPG since the NES era. Enter town, talk to people, enter people's homes, steal their healing items, rinse, repeat.
What most RPG fans want to know is how the combat works. We're happy to report that Eternal Sonata brings something fresh to turn-based combat. Rather than simply queuing up a set of actions and watching all of your characters do the dirty work, you actually take control of each member of your party. Once in control, you have a few options like using items, attacking, or unleashing a special move. What makes Eternal Sonata so interesting is that each character has a certain amount of time to move. Once you start moving, your time quickly ticks down (about 5 seconds or so). You job is to cram as much action into those five seconds as possible.
This real time element presents you with some new things to think about. Should you attack the giant enemy or go for the weaker enemy that isn't as far away? Since it will take less time to reach the weaker enemy, you'll have more time to attack once you reach it. The more attacks you chain together in one turn, the more your Echo meter builds up. As the meter gets higher, you can unleash more devastating versions of your magic attacks. So, you are presented with another choice, do you use magic attacks every turn, or do you chain combos together so that one character can unleash a particularly powerful spell? It's these touches that make combat really enjoyable and not a chore. Of course, you can avoid fights if you wish, as all enemies can be seen on the overworld map.They will follow you, though, so be sure not to be ambushed from behind, as it will give your enemies the first strike during the battle.
All in all, we thoroughly enjoyed our time with Eternal Sonata. RPG fans looking for some respite from the spate of shooters and action games available on the Xbox 360 should be very pleased with Namco Bandai's latest offering when it finally reaches the States. Here's hoping the storyline can live up to the gameplay.
