Eternal Sonata for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

So I popped in Eternal Sonata last week and have been playing it off and on for a while. After about 5 hours into the game, I'm not sure if I'll keep grinding away at it. 'Cause that's what it feels like: a grind.

First off, let me say, the graphics are phenomenal. I love the look of the characters. But the models... well, don't animate all that well. I kept getting freaked out during cut scenes when the characters wouldn't move their hands. I mean, their arms move, but their hands wouldn't rotate, flex, or otherwise appear more than just an extension of their arms. During most of the game this isn't noticeable, but I kept looking at their hands during cut scenes, and I found that annoying. 8/10.

The music in the game is awesome. Very much something I would expect about a story where Chopin is one of the main characters. Other sounds are... iffy. The voice work is okay for the most part, but battles open and close with the most annoying one-liners I've heard in a while ("Go clean yourself up!"????), and Beat is downright annoying whining little brat. 9/10.

Gameplay. Argh! Battles can be fun, but for the first few times. This is my biggest grip. See, you can only hold a certain number of items during battle, so that's a drawback. Combine that with the fact that you can only have 2 special abilities per character, of which you can select 1 to be a healing ability. But it only works if you're in the light or dark. So... trying to keep your characters healed in nigh-impossible if you run out of items. Then there's the block ability where you have to hit the B button at just the right nanosecond. I failed more often then not. 3/10

Story. Well, from what I played, it was really lame. I mean, an 8 year old kid with a gun/hammer/thing? The extra layer of Chopin being sick was nice, but the main story was boring. 5/10

Overall (not an average) 6/10. It's okay if you ain't got nothing else to play. Go read a book.

Excellent battle system, but a really bad story with excruciatingly long cut scenes. The actual game play makes this worth playing through despite the horrible story line.