Eternal Sonata (PS3)

Title translation: cure for insomnia.
11/4/2008 5:20 PM | 1 Comments | Page 1 of 3

I want you to forget for a minute that Eternal Sonata is meant to be about the last days of the composer Frédéric Chopin. Mentally block off the real-world story ties and look at the game for what it is. Specifically, Sonata feels very much like many other Japanese role-playing games, packed as it is with pathos, static characters and big battle effects meant to offset the stilted story. The playable presence of Chopin aside, there are distinguishing characteristics: notably, the beautiful visual design and music, the latter being a mix of Chopin's work with original compositions by Motoi Sakuraba.

Even with those perks, Eternal Sonata -- which now graces the PlayStation 3 after debuting to some acclaim last year on the RPG-starved Xbox 360 -- appears to have less ambition and gameplay than the average JRPG. Like too many titles in the genre, Sonata crams all its good ideas into the battle system, leaving players many barren, sterile pathways along which to trudge between fight scenes.

But wait. We're not meant to see Sonata as sterile. Just look at how colorful it is! There's no question that every screen is packed with detail and tones drawn from a marvelous color palette. Characters are costumed in elaborate, multilayered outfits; every building looks as if it was created with no thought to function or budget; and even the flora and fauna exhibit more light sources than the average room in Dead Space. Hire Tim Burton as a designer with no practical constraints for a production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and you might be close.

But barely any shred of that design has impact on the gameplay, and very little even resonates within the story. Levels are almost wholly non-interactive, and lack corners to explore. You'll progress in a fully linear fashion through pathways and dungeons, perhaps opening a chest here and throwing a switch there. "Linear" doesn't have to be a bad word, but telling a story about loss and creativity in a game world that the characters barely touch feels like a deep, serious mistake.

For a 20- to 30-hour experience, the story feels much longer. While they aren't quite from the Hideo Kojima school of cut scenes, the story clips are drawn out and static -- replete with detail, just like the in-game areas, but no more lifelike. Characters are frequently immobile and impassive, even in some of the worst circumstances. This isn't adroit cinematic storytelling; it's more like a pre-viz meant as a template for the real action.

(This isn't the place for a meditation on the JRPG audience, but I always feel a twinge of despair when I imagine that the same fans of Eternal Sonata would never sit through the deliberately paced beauty of films like "Wild Strawberries" or the original "Solaris." If only Bergman and Tarkovsky had taken cool battle systems into account.)