I'm going to resurrect this thread, so I can vent about the recent game I played

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Well, last weekend I decided to go on xbox live (I was soooooooo bored) and download some demos to play. I grabbed a few "horror shooters" (yawn), Mirrors edge and 2 J-rpg games - Blue Dragon and Eternal Sonata. So after playing through all the demos within 3 hours I decided I really liked Blue Dragon and Eternal Sonata, and I went and bought them for £5 each at GAME.
All this week I've been playing Eternal Sonata and finished it yesterday after 20 hours of play. Well at least it lasted longer than most offline games I play.
What is Eternal Sonata? It's a turn based JRPG (for the Xbox 360) - that's ultimately the gameplay. Then there's also "History lessons" dumped in about the pianist Chopin; as well as boat loads of social commentary. The whole game is centred around "music" - all the characters and places have some sort of "music concept" stuck in there somewhere.
The game started out really good. You slowly met more characters, got new abilities and fought your way through to "Count Waltz". The game peaked for me just before you head off to stop a Prince from sacrificing himself. After that it just turns into a "I can't be bothered writing any more scripts, lets just give them uber items and go home".
You get entangled with the characters relationships and problems. After each cut-scene you want to know what's going to happen next. Or you want to know what the next ability is you are going to get. The world you travel though looks great too. The details and scenery are nice to look at, even though there are occasional frame rate dips. Even the history lessons were acceptable, although they got repetative after a while.
By the time I fought Count Waltz I was level 32, then within the final hour I was level 56. (because surprise surprise, he isn't the ultimate bad guy -.-) The final boss was easy, he did tiny damage, was really slow and had low HP.
The creators also managed to destroy the scenery by having the compulsory "looks like shit" land. Throughout the game you are met with lovely and detailed lands full of flowers etc. But then they go and dump you in a black room with glowing lights (rainbow road?), then an empty red land. It just totally destroyed the game for me.
The ending was so annoying as well. You get all the characters talking at you about "If this is a dream, how do you know it's a dream" blah blah blah. And it just goes on and on. It's as if they are trying to talk you out of suicide.
Then you see the main female character sacrifice herself, only to be met with more social commentary. Then you get to see the intro again. Then she comes back to life. Then you get ten years of credits. Then it's a childish story about a snail and caterpillar asking about "the shape of life". Then it dumps you on a blank screen and you're forced to enter the dashboard. That all took about an hour to pass.
They've managed to destroy what could have been a great game/ending and created a "I'm bored now, let's end this" game. Everything you work for at the beginning of the game (levelling up, collecting items etc) is destroyed within the last hour by giving you god mode items and truck loads of exp.
However the game did keep me occupied for 20 hours, and everything, apart from the last hour (+ ending), was enjoyable. I would only recommend this game if you're a turn based RPG fanatic or you're really bored and want something different (like me). You can also get the demo on Xbox Live if you want to try the gameplay out.
BT