Monthly Archives: December 2007

Eternal Sonata Demo

Finally got around to playing a ton of demos that I had downloaded for my Xbox 360, one of which was Eternal Sonanta. Here are my impressions from the demo – remember these are only opinions and may not reflect upon the full version of the game since I haven’t played it.

The first thing to note is that Eternal Sonata reminds me of Final Fantasy VII where the camera angle is restricted to what you see, and you move around the environment already there. It is quite annoying that a custom camera can’t be used with the right analog stick, since sometimes you just want to see where to go.

The same applies to battles. The battle system is a mixture of turn based and real time. You have a turn where you have a countdown timer to do whatever you want. After this, it is the next character’s turn. The problem is you must move around the “battle arena” and almost find the enemy before you can hit him – and this takes up time. If you could freely look around then at least you know in which direction to run in!

On the brighter note, the artwork is bright! It’s extremely colourful and crisp clear, looking very nice indeed! There didn’t seem to be much voice acting except when you finish a battle which seemed a shame. Something of this calibre with the artwork would have greatly benefitted with some solid voice work behind it.

Not much story is revealed in the demo, but it seems like a solid RPG. Back to camera angles, you can zoom out using the Left Trigger, but I’d much rather just view around freestyle…

Good ol’ days of KoToR…

I’m still currently replaying KoToR and it’s bringing back a lot of memories as well as constantly reminding at how good a game it is. To some degree it actually makes Mass Effect seem dull. Let me explain.

While Mass Effect has great graphics and beautiful environments, it doesn’t have the same “umph” to it as KoToR. In KoToR (this may only be because it is a Star Wars game) the environments are always rich and something is always happening. KoToR took side quests to a new level and really made you feel like you’re in the game. This phrase is thrown a lot these days but I mean it in the classic sense.

As for Mass Effect, while the environments are well detailed, there isn’t the same enthusiasm in the game. It seems a lot more one dimensional in what there is to do when compared to KoToR and this shows a lot after playing the two games side by side.

Could be because most of BioWare’s resources were put on graphics that they didn’t implement a more diverse plot into Mass Effect, but back when KoToR came out it was brilliant graphics wise and still looks good, so I’m not sure what seems to have diluted Mass Effect but it just doesn’t live up to the standards set by the first KoToR, which in my books probably goes down as one of the finest RPGs ever created.