Eternal Sonata (360) - Initial Impressions
Thank goodness this is better than both Enchanted Arms and Blue Dragon. It has the beauty to support the high definition display, and gameplay to help back it up, unlike Blue Dragon which, to me, looked great but play is rather generic.
The story is pretty good as it describes a dream that Frederick Chopin may have had while he was suffering mortally from illness. In the dream world, (to the point I’m at), your characters are learning that a medicinal powder given to the people by its ruler may have drastic ill side effects causing them to go mad, and requiring your party to find out the real reason its being given away.
Eternal Sonata has a lot of subtle elements in common with Star Ocean 3 (not surpising as both are from the same tree that gave us Tri-Ace and Tri-Crescendo). While the overworld stuff is pretty standard, the combat is semi-action based. At least to the point I am, when your characters’ turn is up, you can decide what to do, but once you start moving, you have 5 seconds (with bonus time for some hits) to move and strike. Each character has a normal attack and a special attack (the latter which you can learn and equip as you grow levels) which does more damage and can be used indefinitely. However, the system provides a combo bonus system called Echoes that the more consecutive normal hits used before a special attack will power up that special move. For weak foes, each character can power their own, but stronger foes may need the whole team to hit weak to give one character a power shot. Also, on the field of battle are light and shadows, and the special attacks change depending on where you are; similarly monsters will have different attacks of this nature and may also change form when in shadow. When monsters attack, you can also participate by attempting to block each. So far, after 10 hrs, I keep figuring out better ways to handle the combat in the game. I do note that there is a party level that changes some of the combat mechanics that happens about every chapter, which from what I can tell will help to keep combat fresh throughout the game.
If you played the demo, it does introduce most of the concepts of the game, so you get an idea what is going on from there.
Needless to say, the game’s beautifully rendered vividly and really looks outstanding. The only shame I’ve got so far is that the camera is fixed on all scenes so you can’t look around, but the angles they give are truly impressive.
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Metroid Prime 3: Corruption continues Retro Studio’s excellent revisioning of the original Metroid series, this time taking the game onto the Wii. Wisely, the game is built around the Wii controls, the rest of the game falling in behind this, as to make the experience of playing Corruption almost unique. This may lead to some changes in the game to make it a notch too easy, but its still a beautiful and interesting game that anyone with the system should really pick up.
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Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (MP2) is a very good sequel to the widely popular Metroid Prime, not veering at all from the established formula, yet adding some interesting elements and fixing some gameplay issues to keep the game fresh and new.
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