Fresh bits for Sonata PS3

By Robert Purchese Published 5 November, 2007

Characters, costumes, events.

Namco Bandai has said that the PS3 version of Eternal Sonata will come with new content.

Among the additions are two new playable characters Crescendo and Serenade, a costume system you can use to alternate what your troops wear, and events to help sink you deeper into the storyline (well spotted, IGN).

Eternal Sonata was given the green light on PS3 in September, but will not be arriving on shop shelves until next year.

The Xbox 360 version, however, is already out and has received wide critical acclaim for its sumptuous artistic style, inventive gameplay and wonderful score.

Pop over to our Eternal Sonata review to find out why it is one of our 12 Games of Christmas on Xbox 360.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (25) Latest comment 4 years ago

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  • BBIAJ #1 4 years ago

    Any chance of the 360 getting any of this new content via DLC, for free?

  • Penguinzoot #2 4 years ago

    ^^ I was just about to post this question. So, any news on DLC for the 360?
    Edited by 1 at 05/11/07 @ 11:22

  • Darren #3 4 years ago

    I wonder how the new characters will fit into the game? I'm some 25 hours into the game and already have a choice of 3 out of NINE varied characters for my party so I'm not sure the game needs more unless you only get to play them for a short while. Actually I can imagine them being used during the pirate raid at the start of Chapter 4...

    As for the costumes, well sadly the 360 version shows your characters wearing the same stuff throughout the game - it doesn't change despite upgrading your outfits throughout the game - so that sounds like a nice extra for the PS3 version, particularly as the game has loads of gorgeously rendered and lengthy cutscenes so you can view them (more even than Blue Dragon which came on THREE DVDs and Eternal Sonata's arguably look superior!).

  • LeD #4 4 years ago

    Hmm, I think I may hold out for the PS3 version of this game. Possibly.

  • menage #5 4 years ago

    I think the cut scenes in BD weren't all in engine so that's probably the 3DVD thing.

    They do look wonderful in both.

    I want DLC!! Especially the costumes.

  • GamesProgrammer Verified Games Team Programmer, Eutechnyx Ltd. #6 4 years ago

    I can see them doing it as DLC, but being on XBOX Live i doubt it will be FREE

  • philw #7 4 years ago

    Isn't this news a bit old now? I remember reading it on IGN yonks ago.

  • XdarXideX #8 4 years ago

    I hope it's available as DLC, free or not. I hate console exclusives. The game does support DLC so who knows.

  • Caimbeul #9 4 years ago

    sod just bought it

  • Darren #10 4 years ago

    @Menage - Blue Dragon did use a lot of pre-rendered FMV, true, but it was made to look almost exactly the same as the ingame stuff. However, all of Eternal Sonata's cutscenes are ingame and the artwork is far more detailed so it begs the question of why BD used pre-rendered cutscenes in the first place. Mind you, those FMV cutscenes are the only parts of the game that don't tear... LOL

  • Xerx3s #11 4 years ago

    Any chance of the 360 getting any of this new content via DLC, for free?

    Remember the so called exclusive material for splintercell?

  • menage #12 4 years ago

    @Darren

    I'm only at chapter 3 in Sonata, but BD use a couiple of mass scenes (raid on the flying airship comes to mind), which probably were to big in scale to do in engine. The tearing was unnecessary though, maybe LO will fix that with the new engine and all.
    Edited by 1 at 05/11/07 @ 12:16

  • DB2k #13 4 years ago

    Thats ace. PS3 owners can have it in April when 360 owners are then playing whatever PS3 owners can purchase in December.

  • Darren #14 4 years ago

    I must admit I really enjoyed Blue Dragon even if it does seem a bit ordinary in comparison to Eternal Sonata. However, BD was technically a bit shonky really, what with all the tearing and the horrendous slowdown at times. It's a shame that Mistwalker didn't use that extra eight months translation time to refine the engine further. Considering how simplistic (but charming!) the visuals are, it really is surprising that it doesn't all run smoothly. At least, Eternal Sonata gets that right. Apart from the poor texture filtering and lack of camera control, the engine and visuals are outstanding.

  • menage #15 4 years ago

    At least BD's combat is a bit deeper, that's one thing I don't really find all that great about ES. It's really simplistic at times (just ram the button and finish of with a special). BD hat least has some depth, especially on hard mode.

    I rate them equally, I love them both.

  • Darren #16 4 years ago

    BD's combat is far too easy by default though (the Hard mode came too late for me to try it) whereas ES gets it just right, reasonable to challenging with much tougher boss fights. Like you, I rate both games but feel that ES's more action-orientated combat, which forces you to act quickly, combined with its richer story and better defined characters makes it the better game. I'd love to see a sequel to BD though.
    Edited by 1 at 05/11/07 @ 14:47

  • GamesConnoisseur #17 4 years ago

    Have both games and would recommend Eternal Sonata to PS3 owners for next year, aside from much anticipated FFXIII to come for PS3, X360 seem to have much better availabilities of RPGs.
    Both multi platform and exclusives (Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Infinite UnDiscovery etc) and certainly in the comparative timeframe, far better than what was on Xbox.

  • mkreku #18 4 years ago

    Hmm.. I wonder if they're putting in stuff that was cut from the 360 version due to DVD size constraints.. or if they're really creating new artwork from scratch?

  • Monkey_Puncher #19 4 years ago

    If they do bring the content out for Live they'll have to do it free as developers aren't aloud to charge for content that's available on other systems free.....at least that's how it's supposed to work

  • menage #20 4 years ago

    It wasn't a diskspace thing (I heard), more of a time-related have to release it sometime thing.

  • Gurgeh #21 4 years ago

    "Hmm.. I wonder if they're putting in stuff that was cut from the 360 version due to DVD size constraints.. or if they're really creating new artwork from scratch? "

    There are no DVD size constraints, you just have multiple DVDs or better compression.

    Check the rant over on:
    [link url=http://jbooth.blogspot.com/2007/10/ps3-miscon ceptions-and-spin.html
    ]http://jb ooth.blogspot.com/2007/10/ps3-m...[/link]

    "But it's got a lot more space than DVD"

    Ok, you got me there - it does have a lot more space, and there is the potential to use that to do something cool, but thats unlikely to be realized in any useful way... Most developers who use the entire Blue Ray drive are doing it to work around other problems with the ps3 such as it's slow loading - for instance, in Resistance: Fall of Man, every art asset is stored on disk once for every level that uses it. So rather than storing one copy of a texture, you're storing it 12 times. If you took that entire game and removed all the duplicate data, it would likely fit on a DVD without any problem."

  • kissthestick #22 4 years ago

    nice incentive for PS3 owners

  • spookyzombie #23 4 years ago

    I'm still waiting for the gamerpics on XBL. The American's have had them on their XBL for a while now, but still no sign of them over here. Same can be said for Blue Dragon too : (

  • Rirekon #24 4 years ago

    My only realy problem with Eternal Sonata was the fixed camera, which was painful in combat with enemies sitting off screen.

  • menage #25 4 years ago

    You can zoom out you know, hold the L button for a full scale view.