Life and Leisure. Tech and Toys.

I ended up siding with Eternal Sonata over Blue Dragon. Even though I’ve been waiting for Blue Dragon since last year, after playing the Blue Dragon demo I just didn’t see what the hype was about anymore. I’ve been playing Eternal Sonata for the past 2 hours and so far I have no regrets. I played the demo before I made the purchase so I knew what I was getting before I bought it.

The first thing I did when the game booted up was changed the voice acting to the original Japanese audio. Maybe I should have given the English voice acting a chance but I wanted to play the game the way it was meant to be played. Some of the conversations still have the common silences found in JRPGs but at least its better than listening to the awkward English voice acting.

So far the gameplay has been engaging with the active battle sequences and the path has been pretty straight forward. I’ve been very curious in my exploration of forests and towns and you can tell there are places that you’ll revisit. These are easily marked by doors that are locked and caves that you can’t explore.

The story revolves around music so its no surprise that the music is top notch. The sound track isn’t one hundred percent Chopin’s but the music blends nicely.

Another piece of the game that you won’t find anywhere else is the musical interlude that play out like an educational slide show. At first I wondering what was going on but after sitting through the first one I’m actually looking forward to seeing and hearing the next one.

The story so far is still mysterious but the characters that are being built up are given a good basis to shine. Another reason why I started playing using the Japanese voice acting is because we get to hear more of Aya Hirano’s great acting, popular for playing Haruhi in “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya“. While the voice is definitely the same you won’t hear her commanding people around like in the anime.

Blue Dragon will have to wait for a video game drought… which won’t be until 2008.

This game deserves at least a 9 but IGN gave it an 8.3