Game Journal – Eternal Sonata (Entry 08)

I’m going to skip the other play sessions because it’s silly to go back at this point.  Yes, for Fermata is huge and I actually think it plays nicely into the name of the Fort

Fermata: is a symbol of musical notation indicating that the note should be prolonged beyond its normal duration or note value would indicate.

The Fort totally felt like it went on….FOREVER!!! I like your “hugeosity” term. So perfect!

I think the camera angle was actually quite damaging to the way the Fort played out.  I spent waaaaay to long in the first area because I couldn’t see that ladder that is hanging “towards the screen” (facing away from me, the player’s point of view) and goes down to a lower level.  Afterwards it was okay because I was on the lookout for ladders. 

I will admit the level shifting was clever and not COMPLETELY overwhelming.  I was worried this place was going to be like the water temple and you’d have to keep track of what opened when certain water levels were changed.  Ugh…that place was just the worst….

It took me a while to get the hang of the “Lords of Darkness” (so hilariously awesome because they are doofy little rats), but towards the end I was able to block them. I was playing the game while Alex was here one evening and he mentioned that it was interesting that the Lords of Darkness would sniff the air and then hop around helplessly trying to find you. I’m not sure if this was bad AI programming or brilliant programming. The brilliant part being that they programmers may have actually taken into account that the rats are blind (they have milky white eyes) and have them sniff the air to “search” for you. It was an interesting observation nonetheless.

The sound the witches make when they attack you is ridiculous. I know they are supposed to be tragic because they are victims of too much mineral powder but I had a hard time taking them seriously.

Did you notice the boss was actually totally easy? After those rats, his slow attacks were so simple to block!!! I think the Fort was well designed to get you to grind like crazy without noticing it. I give that a lot of credit. I also thought that the little “cryptic hints” were totally pointless. Even if you hadn’t found the one that said “fight…monster…key”, you would have fought the boss because it was the next logical step. It actually would have been more interesting if you needed to get things in a certain order based on those hints, and THAT would let you get to the boss.