I was fully intending on completing it 100% (i.e. getting all 1000 gamerscore points) before writing this review, but i got an hour into my 2nd play through before thinking “you know what, i really can’t be bothered to spend 20+ hours playing just to get a couple of extra score pieces for ~700 gamerscore”, so on with the review…

Graphics 8.5/10:
What can i say that screenshots haven’t already, lol. It is incredibly incredibly pretty, probably one of the best cel shaded things i’ve seen (a certain h-game beats it though imo, lol. (NSFW)). I really am amazed by how far cel shading has come in the past few years, i remember XIII and Killer 7 with their terrible cel shading in comparison, how long before we see a full length 3D cel shaded anime?

Other than the initial “wow” of the graphics, there’s a lot of other things that are really pretty too, like the hair, so so much better than any of the dodgy hair that Dead or Alive 4 had. And not only that, most of the game is really bright and cheerful to watch/play, none of those dark emo dungeons thank you very much!

While the majority of it was very pretty, there were 2 things that somewhat annoyed me throughout (hence the 8.5 and not 10)…

• Absolutely no changes of clothing. You equip a new dress or piece of armour but your clothes still look exactly the same. I thought this was meant to be “next gen”? I want to see Polka in the “fancy clothes” i bought for her. (apparantly the PS3 version will have customizable clothing though)
• There were very few monster designs, just different coloured versions of them later on. Did they run out of space on the disc, or were they just lazy?

Music 10/10:
For a game based around Chopin you’d hope it would have some high quality music. And boy does it not disappoint!

Absolutely amazing music score, full of beautiful piano melodies, and 7 pieces of Chopin’s work as performed by Russian pianist Stanislav Bunin.

Each of the 7 Chopin pieces is tied to a chapter in the game, and can be heard at various points. You’re also given quite a bit of background regarding the circumstances under which Chopin composed each piece, along with some insight into his life.

It really is a terrific soundtrack, and fits the game so so very well.

Story 7.5/10:
The story i’d say is pretty unique in concept, though probably not quite as fleshed out as well as it could be in some places, and rather generic in others.

Basic plot: Chopin is sleeping on his death bed, dreaming his final dream. The events of Eternal Sonata all take place inside that dream. Anyone who is terminally ill in this world can use magic, leaving them to be outcasts amongst society (fear of catching disease). Through various circumstances the group all meet up, and head off with the same goal of speaking to the count in the hopes he can resolve some of the issues they’re having with society.

You can easily tell the developers were trying to get a few social commentaries on modern society in their with the each of the characters motivations (tax, human destruction of natural habitats, war, etc.). I guess they weren’t trying to hide it, but it was a bit “meh”.

Now if it were just that on it’s own i probably would have given it quite a lower score, but the reason i gave it 7.5 is because of the way it all ties in with Chopin’s life. I went into this game not knowing anything about him other than that he was a composer, but i finished the game feeling thoroughly educated on his life, his works, and his death.

Each vague “chapter” in the game is tied to a piece of his music, and part of his life (leaving Poland, rebellions, suffering through tuberculosis etc.), and as mentioned earlier at the end of each chapter you’re given probably around a 10 minute descriptive video featuring actual pictures of locations and stuff talking about various parts of his life while one piece of music plays. It’s really quite clever how they tied it all into the plot as a lot of the events in game reflect parts of his life.

As for the ending… it was beautiful, asks a lot of questions on life, and gives a few insightful moments. (don’t forget to watch after the credits have ended for a “bonus” video… though it has no subtitles in Japanese voice mode)

Gameplay 9/10:
The battle system takes a little getting used to at first, but you’re given a tutorial on all the various functions as you progress. Basically it’s turn based, but when each character’s turn comes up they get to move around in real time and execute various attacks trying to build up the combo’s, and then unleash a special attack. The more combo’s the more powerful the special attack. Also note that you can use different special attacks depending on whether you’re standing in the light or dark on the battlefield, and that the enemy may also act different if they’re in dark/light.

Now that all seems pretty simple, but as you progress through the game you gain “party levels” which add more complex things to the battle system, and reduce the amount of time you have to make your move. One such advanced feature are the harmony chains, which let you chain together attacks from multiple characters in one characters turn for uber damage. And once you reach party level 6 you can chain together every character’s special attacks (so long as they’re in range) in one characters turn for truly uber damage. Only catch there is that the buttons for attack and special attack change randomly after each special on party level 6…… fun fun, gotta concentrate to get all 6 harmony chains, lol. As another review said somewhere, “the battle system is like a mini game in itself!”. It’s definitely the best battle system in an RPG i’ve played… ever. So much depth possible.

Would have been 10, but minus a point for you having basically no freedom on where you go, as seems to be the norm with Japanese RPG’s these days. You’re stuck on a linear path all the way to the end.

Actually that’s quite an important point, the game really did feel like a movie where you occasionally use your control stick to manually move to the next scene, lol. I guess that’s not really a complaint. But some of those cut scenes were *really* long, the wireless 360 controller kept turning off and pausing them due to inactivity on the controller, lol, developers should have added some sort of “keep alive” thing in the background, lol! ^_^

Also, i guess i should mention the side-quest dungeon at the end… bloody hell… longest maze of a dungeon ever, no map, every passage looks the same, took me 1/3rd of my total gameplay time just to finish it.

Final things about gameplay… it’s quite short (25 hours for me), and really easy once you’ve mastered the combat system (especially at party level 6), none of that swearing and replaying the same boss over and over until you beat them, lol, but possibly too easy.

Characters/Voice Acting 7/10:
First things first, i didn’t listen to the US dub voice overs, it has Johnny Yong Bosch in it, so i guess that sums up my feelings on that.

As for the Japanese voices, there were two that stood out for me:

Yumiko Kobayashi as Beat, such a cute young boy, lol (i think that’s the first time i’ve said that ever), she totally captures the spirit of that innocence Beat has.

…and Mika Kanai as Salsa, really fun character. From first meeting i thought “she’s gonna be crap at fighting, but she *has* to be in my party, made of win!!”, and little did i know, she turned out to be my best fighter, brilliant at chaining combo’s together for hueg damage! She had some really funny moments during the game too, especially her interaction with Beat, and that hat scene (you’ll know if you’ve played it)…

(i LOL’d hard)

As for the other voice acting and characters, well everyone should know Aya Hirano (Off-topic: her last two solo singles have been terrible imo, trying to launch a jpop career off the back of anime fans, yeah, we can all see it, don’t forget the fans who made you popular.) was there as Polka, voiced it well, but not anything amazing, and the other characters were generally forgettable.

Overall (not an average of the above points) 9/10:
Extremely pretty game, great the way they integrated Chopin’s life, death, and music into a fantasy setting. And has a really really great battle system. Probably still not worth buying a 360 purely for this one game though.

Good Points:
+Pretty
+Amazing battle system
+Great soundtrack
+Learnt a lot about Chopin

 Bad Points
-No clothing changes
-Quite short, linear, and easy for an RPG
-Parts of the plot could have done with more fleshing out

Seeing as i own a 360, and this was the first JRPG out for it over here, i just had to buy it regardless of what other reviews had to say. After a week, i’ve completed the game, and i guess i might aswell review it myself.

Graphics 7/10:
The graphics were overall quite excellent. The lighting effects are generally quite amazing in places, for example you walk out of a dark cave into the light, and it’s blinding at first and then the game adjusts to the light, just like your eyes would in real life. All that crap the marketing people at Sony and Microsoft keep banging on about “High Dynamic Range” is clearly evident in this game, and it generally looks great, especially when reflecting off of stonework walls or metallic surfaces.

Each of the cities has it’s own distinctive feel, altough some of them are quite a bit blander than others (you can tell they spent more time on Kyoto than the other cities).

There were only 2 “cutscenes” to speak of, but the game didn’t really need them, because at times even with the in-game graphics you were thinking “was that a cutscene or real time graphics”?

Even the little things were also quite enjoyable to watch, like the way the clothes and hair moved if you turned around quickly.

Well, that was the good things about the graphics, there were a few bad points aswell. Quite a few of the backgrounds were very bland, no footsteps in the snow/sand when you walked across it (i mean even ps2 games had this, lol), normal clothing looked kinda rubbery not like real material would look (armour based clothing looked great though), skin texture also looked rubbery, the water everywhere looked absolutely crap, the random battle backgrounds mostly don’t match your surroundings (i.e. you’re swimming in water, then suddenly random battle… and it shows you as being on land), and most annoying of all…. LACK OF CHARACTER DESIGNS!!! You’re walking around a town, there are loads of people, but they’re all using the same 4 character designs for that town… i mean would it hurt to adjust them even slightly?? Does a different colour hair or shirt really take that long to do?

Other than that, the graphics were excellent.

Music 0/10:
Music?? There was music??

Seriously… there is literally no soundtrack. 1 piece of battle music throughout the whole game, and what seemed like nothing else. How can they even think of selling a “soundtrack”, it’s a total disgrace for what should be a “next generation” game.

Story 6/10:
Well, the story was fairly generic for a JRPG. Ordinary guy, stuff happens, realises he has some sort of power, saves the world.

Basically, there are these golems mankind created to do stuff (battle, maid’s etc.), 1000 years ago there was a huge golem war, mankind fought golems and the most powerful of all, the “devil golems” ended up destroying most of the world before being sealed away. 1000 years later, the golems are being used for peaceful purposes, and the story about the devil golems is seen as a fairy tale. Then one day the golems go crazy and the main character Atsuma inadvertantly awakens the devil golem sealed underneath his city… The Ice Queen (she looks like she’s into bondage). Stuff happens, his friend gets kidnapped, his city destroyed, he goes on a mission to save the world.

One notable thing about the story is that it’s got quite a few comedy moments, for example throughout the beginning of the game whenever you come across a new obstacle or something you can use, Atsuma (who is pretty thick) has to ask his friend Toya how to use it, and his reply is constantly “Well according to my knowledge, you must press the A button.”, that might not seem that funny, but when you walk up to a ladder for the first time, you’ll be in stitches! ^_^ And also, the whole scene in Junk City where they have to figure out who stole this rare item, they gather all the evidence, then one of the girls, Karin, asks Atsuma “The only way the thief could get in was through this small vent, what does that tell us?”, and you have two responses for Atsuma: “The thief is small”, or “The thief is using a trained mouse to steal things”, if you ever play the game, choose the 2nd option, because Atsuma goes into a hilarious rant (including sound effects) about how this thief has been training a mouse and speaking to it in mouse talk. ^_^

The Japanese voice acting for this game is pretty cool too, especially Yuki’s voice, that angry tomboy kid voice fits her character perfectly! The only problem with listening to the Japanese is that the subtitles are written for the English voices, so there are a few mistakes. e.g. Yuki calls herself “The King of Golem Hunters”, but the subtitles say queen. And the subtitles completly missed out a pretty funny joke at the end of the game, when Yuki talks about her golem hunter class, Atsuma mishears her and thought she said “golden hamburger”… but the subtitles were completly wrong there.

This game has 2 endings… one gay ending, and one gay ending. (that’s all i’m gonna say about that, you’ll see if you play it )

Overall, the story is generic, but still pretty enjoyable, and the characters are definitely fun!

Gameplay 7/10:
If you’ve ever played a JRPG before then you know what to expect here, random battles etc. The battle system here was somewhat different to the average final fantasy, which was refereshing. It uses a 4×3 grid where you can move your characters around on, different attacks have different ranges etc. and standing behind another character when being attacked reduces damage. So slightly more interesting than the normal boring turn based stuff. Even if you were to get bored of this battle system, then there’s an “auto” and “fast forward” options, so you don’t actually have to do anything during battles!

There were a couple of bad things about the gameplay. First of all it’s pretty linear, like FFX was… you have 1 path, you follow it pretty much all the way to the end, there aren’t many oppertunities to explore the world. Second, the whole game was too damn easy, not once was i challenged like i am in FF games, the final boss took an amazing 3 attempts (unlike FF which can take many many attempts… at least in my case, lol), and the side-quest boss, which is supposedly harder than the end boss, i defeated first time within about 5 mins. And i was barely above level 50 out of 99.

The online portion of the game looks good on paper… bring your golems online and battle other people, but it totally doesn’t work. Hardly anyone plays, and those that do are just using the most powerful golems… no point in playing unless you all have the most powerful golems.

Overall (not an average of the above points) 8/10:
A very enjoyable game, i mean i played non-stop for a week and clocked up 50 hours of gameplay, which is pretty good. Dispite the little things that were unpolished, the game was great fun, which is all that matters really.

Good Points:
+Great lighting effects
+Funny characters
+Interesting battle system

Bad Points
-Minor graphical issues that screamed “we were rushed when making this”
-Lack of proper soundtrack
-Too easy

Well, Japan are out of the World Cup, they needed to beat Brazil by 2 goals to go through, clearly an impossible task. Hopes were raised after Japan unexpectedly went 1-0 ahead in the first half, but Brazil soon came back, and ended up winning 4-1.

I guess i should make a comment about England eh, seeing as i am English afterall. Well, all i can say is “uninspiring”. We’ve got through the group stages, but we haven’t played convincingly well. Beckham’s crossing has been poor. Our forwards have been poor. Half of our defence has been poor. And our tactics have been poor. IMO Beckham should come off, Lennon should replace him. I think Crouch should also come off and Walcott replace him (we might aswell try him out). Our last game was a slight improvement over previous ones (even though we only drew), and i think the fact that Joe Cole *finally* started passing it to Ashley Cole helped matters a lot. Uhh, anyway… i think we may possilby beat Ecuador, and possibly then go on to get to the semi-finals, where we’ll probably lose to Spain, but i’m not particularly hopefull, we certainly need to improve, this is not the way a World Cup winning team should play.

Staying with the spirit of the World Cup, here’s a semi-review (i say semi-review, because we all know how sucky my “reviews” are) of a Korean manhwa i started reading called Angel Cup:

Where better to start i guess than the front cover. Nice colour scheme, stands out fairly well, and you can tell straight away it’s about girls football. Only critique would be the girl seems a bit too umm “glossy” as if she’s wearing plastic clothes and covered with oil.

The story itself is a pretty basic sports story… team of misfits gets together, gradually improves, finally reaches their goal (at least i’m guessing they do).

The only comments i have about the way the story was introduced in the first half of the book was that it didn’t flow very well, it was jumping all over the place. While i appreciate that there are several parts of the story being introduced at once, there is surely no need to keep jumping between each one every couple of pages. Luckily once the backstory was introduced this jumping seemed settle down and we got into the flow of the story.

I have a couple of criticisims about the artwork too, the girl characters are cute, but there were a couple of discrepancies in the way the main character was drawn to being with, which were slightly offputting, but as with the story, this seemed to sort itself out by the end of the volume. Also, on the topic of character designs, the girls are cute! ^_^ But, the male characters look too umm… “American” in design for my tastes.

The only other thing with this is i’m finding it slightly hard to learn/remember all the Korean character names, lol. But i guess that’s my fault, lol. -_-

Other than all of the above, i think the main reasons for my continued reading are the cute girls, and the fact that they all have distinct and interesting personalities, with seeming a fairly large backstory behind each person (which i’m hoping will be expanded upon in future volumes). I’m not usually one to read manga with a lot of action, but i shall be looking forward to carrying on with this series.

There really are quite a lot of good manhwa out there, it’s good that Tokyopop are bringing more of this over here. This (along with iD_eNTITY) put Jonathan Clements comments in neo magazine to shame, where he called all manhwa “crappy Korean knock-offs”, i for one think that is an utterly un-acceptable comment for a professional magazine to be publishing in print.

Other minor news… i’m finally playing Doushin – Same Heart!! What a long wait that was! It better live up to expectations, lol. Windows Live Messenger is finally out of beta, it looks shiny, but i’m waiting for Messenger Plus Live to be released this Saturday before i try it out fully. And also, i think i’m addicted to HP Lovecraft’s stories, they’re just so atmospheric. ^_^

Oh, and i can’t leave without a picutre update:

The new Battlestar Galactica sucks, don’t watch it!!! I mean wtf, Starbuck is a girl?!?! Boomer is a girl (a rather hot girl might i add )?!?!?! The cylons look like humans?!?!?! Baltar is a wuss?!?!?! They got rid of all references to the Egyptian’s?!?!?! And quite frankly the 70′s lasers look better than the crappy CGI missiles the vipers now have. So, yeah, don’t bother watching it, it sucks more than a Dyson trapped inside a black hole!

Oh, wait, you were expecting me to say happy new year and stuff? Well, yeah, happy new year! Christmas was rather fun (was a shame that Nizlopi didn’t get christmas #1 though)! I’ll now post pictures of stuff i got:

Hmm… my bookshelf is now overflowing with stuff. I guess the notable new purchases would be, Itsudatte My Santa limited edition box set (yes, in Japanese, no subtitles) with Mai figure

OS-tan fanbook (yes again, in Japanese) with OS-tan figures (now all i need to complete my collection is that damn 2k-tan figure, i swear she’s impossible to find!!!!).

An Ito Noizi (the guy that done Shakugan no Shana) artbook (i must say, that this is possibly the best dustcover i’ve seen for a hardback book ever! The photo’s don’t do it justice, it just has to be seen in person! I’d like to know who the girl is that appears to be some sort of Playstation-tan):

My lovely two calendars, Suzuka and School Rumble:

And i’m sure the eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed the nice new console on top of my shelf (and the fact i’m currently downloading the Quake 4 demo!). Please note: all the above was purchased by me, and not christmas presents.As for *actual* christmas presents, i got DVD’s, and Fushigi Yugi manga vol 1-6!

Ok, now that’s over with, let me give my opinions on the Xbox 360, first of all, i’d like to point out, i have no actual games yet, i’m still waiting for DOA 4 to come out (naked Hitomi in end movie, w00t!!), hopefully it won’t be too long. But here’s my opinions based on demo’s and stuff i’ve been downloading. Overall, i think it’s pretty damn good, the xbox live feature is a must! If you get one of these, but don’t get xbox live, then i hardly see the point of you buying it in the first place. All your achievements in games are uploaded to your gamertag once you connect to xbox live (which i must mention connected without needing any configuration on my part… just plug and play!). And xbox live has a whole host of other features… like downloading demo’s of most games (most of which suck at the moment i have to say, they don’t look next-gen at all. Condemned looks the best out of all the games so far but plays about as fast as a dead snail frozen in a glacier. *cough*framerate issues*cough*), downloading trailers, downloading new dashboard themes etc. The other nice feature is i can connect my mp3 player to it, and play music from that while i’m playing games. And also, the buddy list and voice conversations are quite cool, you can send messages and stuff or speak to someone even if you’re playing a single player game, or watching a DVD!! But by far the most impressive feature so far has been the xbox live arcade… the Geometry Wars game is simply amazing, it’s a 2D shooter, and it’s addictive as hell, and seeing as i have no other games to play right now, i’ll be working my way up the leader board of this (currently ranked in the top 4000 players!).My Gamertag is on the sidebar if anyone’s interested.

Ok, now i’ve said all the good things, i’ll list a few little “issues” i’ve found so far:- Most of the games so far suck. They totally don’t look next-generation. And Fifa 06 looks damn right ugly, who the hell came up with that blur effect? It sucks about as much as the new Battlestar Galactica.

- Playing old xbox games isn’t exactly smooth. e.g. DOA3 the opening and ending movies are all jerky.
- Certain DVD’s are also jerky when playing.
- There’s no way to see what song is currently playing when you’re listening to music in fullscreen “visualization” mode.
- The game demo’s were slightly jerky (only in the opening sequence not the actual game), but i’m assuming that’s because they’re running off of a slow hard drive and not the dvd drive.
- There’s not enough gamertag icons to choose from, and you can’t add your own.
- You can’t do anything else when downloading something, so if you’re downloading a 900MB demo, you’ll have to leave it there for like an hour.
- The media remote doesn’t have a subtitle or audio button, so in order to turn subtitles on or off, or change audio language you have to open up a menu. Slightly annoying for someone who’s DVD collection is 90% anime! >_Ok, onto some other random stuff… SCHOOL RUMBLE SEASON 2 COMMING THIS SPRING!!!!1111 W00T!!!!!11

New quotes:

‘MMORPG = Most Men Online Roleplaying Girls’, “If the Xbox 360 console falls and hits someone, especially a small child, it could cause serious injury.” – Xbox 360 Instruction Manual

Well, that’s all for now, see ya again soon!

I have to say, that the CGI in that film was simply breathtaking, there were several occasions when you were left thinking “Was that real footage, or more CGI?”, and the hand drawn backgrounds were stunning too.

(click to enlarge)

Some of the animation though left a lot to be desired, and sometimes didn’t really fit in next to the stunning CGI (i think the reason they didn’t use CGI for the people was because they said that with the current technology CGI models would have been too limiting, so they used animation instead).

The story had an amazing amount of potential (basic plot: in the future because of global warming the skies are constantly cloudy, and none of the cities exist anymore, some lucky people got to live in the Ecoban…a sort of city in a bubble, but the rest of the people live on the outside working as slaves to power the Ecoban.), like i say, the story had an amazing amount of potential, and so much could have been expanded upon, but it was simply too short, and seemed rushed, the characters were pretty stereotypical and lifeless, and the plot twists (if they can be called that) could be seen coming a mile off. This would have benifited from being a 6 episode OVA instead of a rushed movie.

The voice acting was ok, there were no voices that annoyed me, but equally there were no voices that were outstanding, and sometimes the lip-sync was a bit off.

Overall, a below average film who’s only saving grace is the stunning CGI. Perhaps in 10 years time it could be re-made into a 6-12 episode, fully CGI animated OVA, then it might be worth watching.

6/10
Reviewer: InsaneLampshade