Game Journal – Eternal Sonata (Entry 10)

It’s a nice town that abuts the castle, with trees and small gardens throughout.  There are large combination sculpture/streetlights that look like G clefs, and some designs in stone on the ground.  It also includes an inn and a tavern.  There’s a sign in town that says thieves will be shot first and asked questions later, though, so Beat and Allegretto better keep their hands to themselves!

Absolutely gorgeous.  Tile floor, a cool looking chandelier supplemented by some natural light, tall vaulted ceilings, decorative plates on the walls, and a large stained glass window.  I just sat there for a bit and looked at it; there’s a ton of detail!

This place is just amazing.  All the details in the counter (where you pay) area and the stairs and just…wow…everything!

Another location with some nice details, from the intricate woodworked pattens on the staircase to the numerous different bottles behind the bar.  On the second floor is a piano sitting on a floor of green stained glass, and underlit from beneath.  Cool!  Among the regular bar patrons is a taciturn mercenary-looking guy who won’t talk to us.  Maybe a future party member?

He totally looks like one of the guys on the front of the box so I am going to go with yes, another party member.  I love how everyone at the bar has so much personality.  There’s the guy who proposed to some girl he likes and he’s all sad about it, there’s the regular drunkard, there’s some lady talking about something else.  This place just seems so alive and they put so much thought into the tiniest things.

That piano – if you go up to it, you have the option of listening to a piano piece, so of course I had to do so.  It played the sonata “Mazurka”, and it must have played the whole thing, as it played for fully 5 minutes!  Impressive.

Mazurka!  Tell me you were excited by this!  Freaking Aldnoah.Zero!!!  Yeah that song was long and really pretty.  Once again I just love the dedication to music in this game!

We also got quite a bit of information. Waltz employs a “brute” named Tuba. The border with our neighboring country is at the summit of Mt. Rock. The use of mineral powder to cure ailments is now law in the town – no other remedies allowed. Sounds like Waltz is accelerating his plans.

At long last our trading quest comes to an end, as we give a boy trying to find a way to save money the piggy bank we’ve got.  In exchange, he gives us an equippable accessory that allows the wearer to move much faster.  This is a great prize, as with our reduced action time, getting characters close to enemies quickly means more attacking time.

Yes this was much appreciated.  I really wanted it for Viola too because I love her but her movement is just so slow.

Over the past few sessions we’ve collected a few “scores”, which are short pieces of music that you can play, maybe 10 seconds long.  I wasn’t sure what they were for, but the game finally explained.  If you find another character with a score, you can pick one of your scores to play at the same time as theirs, and you get ranked based on how it sounds, along with a nice prize. Kind of a neat idea, and gives some reason to look for these scores.  After trying different scores, one of them was a hit, giving me a Rank A.  I got an EZI cracker, which is a cracker in the shape of the god EZI.  It has an “unknown effect”.  Hmmmm.  I’m intrigued.

I like this but I wish it was better explained or had more to it.  Right now it just seems random.  If you happen to have the right musical score you can synch it up with these random people who seem to want to play a score together?!  It feels like those Professor Layton moments where people are like, “Hey…the bridge is out. Want to solve a puzzle?!”  It’s just kinda odd.

Another cool new area, and another new musical theme, which is somewhat bombastic and worrying/menacing.  The cliffs are quite pretty, with large trees growing up and around rocks, climbing ivies and morning glories are everywhere, and small waterfalls are frequent.  The layout is also different that usual, with a feel almost like a side-scrolling platformer to give a sense of climbing up and down the cliffs.

I actually hate this kind of level.  It’s something about the screen moving vertically and horizontally that feels like too much is going on. Luckily Eternal Sonata balances this very well and I never felt like the level was overwhelming me.  The whole place is beautiful though.  There’s so much life to this place.  I love the green and the waterfalls.  Glorious nature!

The area also comes with a new enemy – bats that transform into scorpions in the darkness.  Battlefield position is more important than ever, as the bats have a number of weak, quick attacks, but the scorpions can poison us and are almost immune to normal-strength attacks.  The bats can also cause a status effect that generates a zone of darkness around a character, so if you try to attack a bat, it’ll suddenly turn into a scorpion!  Clever.

And then…not so glorious nature.  Oh man…I hate that ability that the bats have.  I am usually good at dodging this but when it hits, it turns my awesome Chopin into an unusable character because I can’t get close to the stupid bats.  The scorpions are terrible to battle.  In terms of game design though this is an awesome and intense idea.  Great job Eternal Sonata!  Also, thank goodness poison doesn’t carry to the next round.  With the way this game worked I was half expecting that to happen!

We finally rescue Phil wayyyyy down the cliffs, where he is suspended from a tree.  Allegretto is concerned for him, since he must have fallen a huge distance, but he is unharmed, and acts very out of it, almost as if he didn’t know how he got here.  He snaps out of it, though, and runs off to get home.  Interesting.

The lake at the bottom of the level is so beautiful. I just love the water effects in this game and to think it’s an older PS3 title….oh right…Phil…yes….
How did that loser even end up there?!  How did he survive this fall?!

In one of the houses is a small plant with fruit on it and a mask hanging from it.  When Allegretto inspects it, there is a note saying “One meal per person per day! More than that and the Iron Mask will cry”.  How… strange.

I totally didn’t catch this.  How…bizarre….I can’t even begin to interpret what that means.