Demo Review: Eternal Sonata for Xbox 360

I had the recent privilege of playing the funnest role playing game for the Xbox 360. They finally made a game that satisfies the rpg gamer's quench for a good game. There are many points to this game that make it different in a good way, but the same in a great way.

The first positive point to this game is the battle system. You can see the enemies when you are walking from point A to point B. It's a much needed feature that many role playing games fail to put in. It makes a world of difference to know when you are going to run into an enemy. When a random enemy attacks you, its the equivalent of tripping over a step in real life. When you see the step, you can prepare yourself, you can avoid tripping and can have a smoother walk to where ever you're going. When you don't see the step, you trip, you get mad and you get really annoyed.

The second great feature of the battle system is that it's almost real time. You don't take turns like you would in the normal RPG sense. You have a bar on the left side that gives you a time limit to attack the enemies. It's somewhat like playing Zelda: Twilight Princess. You're able to run up and slash the enemies and also guard when it isn't your turn. You have different buttons assigned to different things. You can do your normal attack, a power attack or use an item. The next feature of the battle system makes the game completely worthwhile.

The best battle feature is that it's 4 players. You can configure the controls so that your friends can control the other people in your party. You can pick who you want to control, even if it's more than one character. The first player is the leader of the game playing. This means that in non battle sequences, he or she is the one controlling the main character who gets to talk to people, buy things, and explore. The first player is the one responsible for about 75% of the game playing, but this doesn't make the other players feel inactive. They are a part of the game and can give advice to where to go when lost and also what items to buy. It is similar to Tales of Symphonia on the Gamecube.

The battle system isn't the only great aspect to this game. It also has great graphics. They didn't spend a worthless amount of time trying to make the game seem as realistic as possible. The game has an anime style look. The characters are all teenagers and have that mystical aspect to them that gives the player the sense of another world. In other role playing games, you marvel at the graphics, but it doesn't provide a true escape from the real world.

Lastly, the game is all about musical related themes. All of the towns are named after something musical, such as tenuto. The characters are named after styles of music i.e. Jazz and Polka. The main character has the end of a violin as the handle for his sword. It's fun to see all the different musical references. The only thing that wasn't related to music was the items. An item that healed was named peach cookie. Unless they were referring to what renaissance people ate for dessert, it had no musical relation.

This game is definitely worth a look for anyone that is a fan of RPG games and also multiplayer rpg games. It hits store shelves in the fall 2007 and it looks like it's going to be rated T. The rating shows the game relies on art and creativity, instead of vice and violence, be sure to check it out.