PS3 Eternal Sonata for February

By Robert Purchese Published 6 October, 2008

With added bars of content.

Atari plans to release the PS3 version of Eternal Sonata here in February 2009.

The wait should be worthwhile; developer tri-Crescendo has used the extra time to add new quests, battles and even multiple endings.

Characters Crescendo and Serenade are now playable, and extra costumes are included to beef up the level of customisation on offer. And, on top of all that, there's more music from Frederic Chopin, the famous composer the story is based around.

He slipped into a coma shortly before dying of tuberculosis, you see, and supposedly drifted off to a world of fantasy based on his life and work.

Unsurprisingly, then, music plays a central role in this JRPG, not only in setting but also as an inventive battle mechanic. Coupled with beautiful presentation, the result was 8/10 from Eurogamer.

Head over to our Eternal Sonata Xbox 360 review to find out more.

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 (29) Latest comment 3 years ago

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  • spookyzombie #1 3 years ago

    Looks like I'll be picking up an American copy this month then.

  • menage #2 3 years ago

    Don't. It's the most boring piece of JRPG you could ever play (and I'm not bored easily with those). Buttonbashing the same freaking enemy's 100 times and nothing more (apart from looking really prettty)

  • Colin8703 #3 3 years ago

    Does this mean that 360 owners will get an update then?

  • ParanoidZombie #4 3 years ago

    Since the game (x360 version) was released in 2006 in japan, we'll be talking about a 3 years old above average JRPG when the ps3 version is released in europe...Don't hold your breath.

  • miiiguel #5 3 years ago

    Too onirical, and I like that kind of stuff, just not that much.

  • michaelius #6 3 years ago

    I played demo from US PS store and game looks really nice. But not nice enough to result in full price purchase - I hope PS3 version will sale at platinum titles price then I'd buy it.

  • kendoji #7 3 years ago

    I bought this and deeply regretted it, by far the worst and most boring game I've played on the 360. I generally agree with Eurogamer reviews, but giving this 8/10 is utterly baffling to me.

  • menage #8 3 years ago

    @KENDOJI

    Totally agree. Giving this high marks while it's a snore fest, couldn't even bother continuing halfway through.

  • groovychainsaw #9 3 years ago

    It was worth it for the 3-player co-op combat - myself and friends have poured a fair few sessions in taking a character each. Admittedly the levelling and improvements don't have much depth, but its gets by on its grpahics and weird storyline. It probably would have been traded in by me now if not for the 3-player thing - reminds me of secrets of mana...

  • andywilkie35 #10 3 years ago

    i liked it.voice acting was typically terrible though

  • GamesConnoisseur #11 3 years ago

    Second farticusmaximus, visually very nice and nice game, but in short bursts rather than full on gaming non stop as can get very samey and boring, what with lots of fights but little real depth and variations.

    Still a nice JRPG game in spite of that, a game more for JRPG fans than for everybody.

  • Vanmunt #12 3 years ago

    @ Menage & Kendoji

    Totally agree, thank Cliff Richard others feel the same... pretty much the worse JRPG I have ever played, Euro 'Look over there he has no clothes on' Gamer gets it wrong with this review big time.

    Infinate = 5
    Sonata = 8

    ........... hmm.

  • menage #13 3 years ago

    How about BD=5??

    Sorry, but at least the gameplay was engaging in that one (on hard mode at least). I could play ES with my eyes closed and just whacking the buttons.

  • miiiguel #14 3 years ago

    "How about BD=5??"

    Tottaly agree in the "shock" thing. It must've been the weirdest (can I say "stupid" or "total nonsense" ?) score ever. On the other hand it had its merits, I disregard those rates completly nowdays. I read the reviews for the good elequoency (to improve my english), and as a ludic activity.
    Edited by 1 at 06/10/08 @ 12:16

  • miiiguel #15 3 years ago

    Well... is just that I do like BD a lot... ;)

    It has a nice litle story, and lots of style. Loved the electro-organic woman's voice saying "nothing"; "nothing"..., the opening credits rolling while the game already started. Lovely. Almost everything. 9/10.

  • Cappy #16 3 years ago

    Demo was okay.

    Not you must buy this game as soon as possible okay though. It felt rather overfamiliar, someplace I had been before in Tales of Symphonia, Tales of the Abyss, Radiata Stories and countless other games. Eternal Sonata of course has it's own features which make it slightly different, they could have gone much further though. I'm still waiting for a new JRPG which does more with the current consoles than give us slightly prettier graphics.

  • Goodfella #17 3 years ago

    Playing Eternal Sonata is like purgatory. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that.

  • menage #18 3 years ago

    @miliguel

    I loved it too. 9/10 might be a little much though:p

    But it was a great trip back too the games of old. LO was better even.

  • Aretak #19 3 years ago

    Eternal Sonata is an excellent game. Far better than either IU or BD. None of you could muster a slither of good taste between you.

  • viper_h #20 3 years ago

    I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought this was a snorefest. Kept my interest up to a point but when I got three new characters and they were all pretty much the same as my existing ones, I gave up.

    The game had some good ideas, but ended up being a button basher with no strategy and longwinded animations.

    At least it was more fun to play than Lost Odyssey though.

  • menage #21 3 years ago

    @viper

    You we're making a lot of sense, the last sentence ruined it though:p

  • YeOldeGamer #22 3 years ago

    I see from some of the comments that some of you care about gameplay more than story/characters.
    How very, very sad.

  • mkreku #23 3 years ago

    Yes, stupid people expecting enjoyable gameplay from a game. Hate those!

  • benstarkie #24 3 years ago

    there are some ridiculous words in the comments section. Onirical? Ludic?

    ES was so painfully boring I sent it back to Lovefilm and didn't shed a single tear. It was quite pretty though...

  • Scimarad #25 3 years ago

    I'd probably agree with the general sentiment towards ES in this thread but I didn't really get far enough to give it a fair appraisal.

  • Wildsleven #26 3 years ago

    im happy for you ps3 owners, it a good game worth the buy, go on save up some money lol

  • groovychainsaw #27 3 years ago

    For those who think it was a button masher - did you play on through the early stages? The battles get more depth as your party goes through arbitrary levels (after specific points in the game) which I found added enough complexity to the fights to be interesting. Certainly decision-making time and combining attacks/building up combos got more interesting. I found I was having make strategic decisions, trading off between healing and hitting most of the time...

  • viper_h #28 3 years ago

    I think I got to party level 3 or 4 before I gave up.

    A big problem with the game is that it's far too easy. A friend and I played co-op for 4 hours into the game and none of our characters even got KO'd once, let alone were we in any danger of a game over. I know there's a New Game+ option for after you beat the game, with harder enemies, but I'd rather have challenge the first time through.

    All my characters did ridiculous amounts of damage compared to the enemies so I ended up killing things in one turn. Pretty boring.

    And about my Lost Odyssey comment, I just didn't find that game much fun at all. Attack, magic or item commands? That's it? Also the whole turn based system pissed me off because you couldn't skip a characters turn, and the ring thing was annoying because sometimes your character would have a turn when you weren't expecting it, so you mistime the ring. Having to do that every attack was tedious too.

    I didn't like LO's graphics either - another world of sharp edges, dingy browns and greys. I just didn't enjoy it.

    Still, I didn't like FF12 either. Makes me wonder why I keep playing JRPGs...

  • saku_luk #29 3 years ago

    To bad me, and many others will get US copy....

    bad bad bad policy by EU publishers again....