Eternal SonataFollow

I rented this game to try it out a couple of days ago and I have mixed feelings. I love the story line so far, and the battle system is really cool, but I do have one gripe.

Never in all the years that I have played RPGs have I played a game where you have to grind to kill the regular monsters in an area in which you are supposed to be, repeatedly. This isn't a case of me just being under leveled at one point, for the last three areas (I just got Viola in my party) I have had to run around an area and hope to goddess that I only get one or two of one of the monsters to fight at a time until I've leveled up a couple of times. If I get three of them, I'm a goner. I don't mind having to go back and grind a bit to kill a boss (in fact I've had to two that with every boss except the last one), but grinding to kill trash monsters seems a bit ridiculous to me.

Part of me thinks that maybe this is an example of a game going back to old school RPG difficulty level, but I've played some older games and not had this problem. I've played Chrono Trigger, FFIV and FFVI, and not had this issue. Granted I did play the PS remakes of them, were they made easier for the PS than they were on the original SNES? Am I just a wuss and a crappy RPG player or have other people had this experience and frustration with the PS3 version as well?

Despite my complaints though, I'll probably still go buy the game when I have the cash.

Haha you must not have played lost odyssey then.

I'm not that far into the game myself, but I haven't had to grind. Namco Bandai also does the tales series though, so if you have a 360 get Tales of Vesperia. It's the best rpg I've played in years, has much of the same heart as Sonata, and you won't have to grind at all except maybe for the final boss, if you do the optional Fel Arms ending.



It's funny you mention iv because even at 60, zeromous can royally **** you up, and easily.

The only way I ever beat him (though I was playing the psx version) was to throw everything at him: as in, use edge to quite literally throw everything at him, let everyone else die but rosa and cecil afterward and time the cure iv bomb right after he would do big bang.

Edited, Jul 14th 2009 8:57am by Pensive

ffvi required a bit of grinding early on. In that first three party battle against kefka and his army, I almost got annihilated a few times with the characters levels as are.

Fortunately, it was possible to get terra alone with no party when she has to give an answer to bannon about fighting with them, and you get all of the experience for her, making her super terra up until the point where well.. she actually becomes super terra

The entire final dungeon of FF1 was like that. I got there at around... oh, level 21-25? Somewhere around there. Some of the monsters simply kick your ***. I got to the end boss and half my party was one-shotted. It sucks when you have no save points and LIFE doesn't work in battle, lol. Then I grinded up to around level 32, went in, and two-shot the end-boss. Chaos is a pansy.

I'd like to hear more about the game (Eternal Sonata) itself though, even some background. Now I'm interested!

It's pretty interesting I think, especially if you like classical music. Basically what's going on is you are in the last hours/days of the life of Polish composer Frederic Chopin. He's unconscious and you get scenes from the doctor and two women talking about his condition, but mostly it is in a fantasy world that Chopin has created in his mind. Frederic is one of the main characters, as well as a 14 year old girl named Polka who can perform magic, which in this world, means that she has some sort of illness which means she won't live for very long. The Duke that rules over this world has very high taxes on everything except a medicine that he produces that is called Mineral powder. The village that Polka is from produces Floral Powder, which essentially does the same thing but because it is highly taxed no one wants to buy it. Polka meets Frederic and the two become friends and he accompanies her to go visit the Duke to ask him to lower the taxes on the floral powder so the people in her village don't starve to death.

Along the way you come across Allegretto (Retto for short) and Beat, two brothers who steal bread and give it to poor people to eat. They too decide to go visit the Duke and ask him to lower taxes on everything, so people can afford to buy bread, etc. Eventually these two parties meet up and continue on together to meet the Duke.

The battle system is pretty cool. You can have three people in your party at any given time, and it's kind of a active battle system, but implemented way better than in FFXI as it is still turn based, but you have to move your characters around. There are also two different types of special attacks, light and dark. Which you can use depends upon whether you are in the sunlight or in the shade, but there are items you can use that restore HP and keep you in either light or darkness for up to 4 turns. Some of the monsters can change form based on whether they are in the sunlight or in shade as well, which is where I ran into trouble in one of the forests, as the coconuts in the shade are much more powerful and have more HP than when they are in the light. Another thing I really like is that your party members gain exp even if they aren't in the party, it's just at a reduced rate. This makes keeping everyone the same level infinitely easier.

I'm only about 8 hours into the game so far, so that's about all I can tell you Locke. :-)

Sounds really neat! I'll have to see if I can find it on the cheap online or something :)

I just bought Dragonquest VIII the other day; still need to play through that and Persona 3 FES: The Answer. Those two alone will probably take at least 120 hours, haha...

Ah, drat! My only current-generation system is a Wii. If a few more good-looking games come out on the PS3 I might have to give in and buy one...

Yeah, even FFXIII is coming out for the 360 too... *grumbles*

Ohh forgot about that one, but I saw the zero punctuation review and it confused me. I'm not sure I understand how a jrpg is set in world war 2...

I love all my consoles

I have the 360 version, but I haven't started it yet. Currently playing Dragon Quest VIII and just got LittleBIGPlanet last night and that may take precedence. I haven't finished Blue Dragon either yet

Warned you

Vesperia is miles better than Sonata, and at least kilometers better than most other rpgs I've played in recent times: certainly the eastern ones, and most of the western ones also.

I highly recommend switching voices to japanese. They sound just like any other japanese voices in anime, but at least they fit the art style, and the best part is that you can't understand them aside from just general context, or whenever they use katakana, so you can just zone out and listen to the voices as sounds rather than speech.

The experience is much more enjoyable.

***

Oh, there does exist a more generic jrpg. Luminous Arc is typical of the genre in every way. It's not a bad game, but it's not that great either.

The thing I enjoy about eternal sonata is the atmosphere, and the battle system isn't bad either. Trying to make too much sense of the story or characters is thinking too hard about it.

Edited, Jul 28th 2009 9:50pm by Pensive