Trusty Bell: Eternal Sonata

[RivaOni]

After hearing about a demo of a new RPG hitting the Xbox Live Marketplace in Japan, and due to the shortage of any Eastern RPG’s on our shores at the moment, I decided to set myself up a Japanese Xbox Live Silver account.

And while it meant having to set up a new Hotmail email account to do so, it was well worth it as Eternal Sonata seems to be a damn fine gaming experience, something that many many gamers believe we should be seeing more of on the 360. The demos a bit on the short side, clocking in at around 15 minutes long I reckon, and isn’t too challenging, plus it has a different take on the JRPG formula.

As with Grandia and many other more niche RPG’s from that particular corner of the world, enemies are visible on screen before battle commences, meaning that, if you wish, you can avoid them. Its when you get into the battles that things become interesting, it keeps the old tried and tested turn based game play that has served the genre so well for so long, but instead of issuing commands via menu’s you can hammer the A button to launch normal attacks (ranged or close combat depending on what’s equipped for each character), use X to use items and Y gives you access to special attacks or magic, that seemingly increase in power dependent on how many combo’s you land on an enemy in the time limit given for each character. It makes for a different, but fun battle element and if the game is as successful as it seems it deserves to be, then its one I feel could catch on, maybe more so than Final Fantasy XII’s MMORPG style system, which has generated mixed opinions from gamers so far.

Visually, Trusty Bell is absolutely gorgeous, it seems that Namco Bandai have used the same team as Baiten Kaitos, as the two titles bare more than a striking resemblance, however, there’s a very strong hint of the Atelier Iris games in the character design, which is no bad thing as I personally find that series incredibly charming and warm.

The one surprising thing about the demo is that it was all in English language, maybe Namco knew that people such as myself had been hankering after a game of this sort and would go out of their way to sample it, although it would be interesting to find out of the retail Japanese release of the game is all English too, not only that but this could hint at the possibility of it being region free, although that wouldn’t explain the September release date for the US and the June 14th release date for the Japanese version, with no European release seemingly planned.

[Shino]

I'm very interested in this game. Only thing is, I don't know what system I getting it for yet. I want to see what people say about the 2 versions first.

[RivaOni]

Theres 2 versions? first I'd heard of it was the demo on Live. You really should set up a JP silver account and give it a try Shino.

[Shino]

[RivaOni]

Well they've been saying that for absolutely ages. Besides once its downloaded you can play it on any of your accounts, hence why I've got Aegis Wing on my Chixie N Riva tag even though thats US only.

[Shino]

[BK]

Just wanted to bump this one up since the newest OXM has an Eternal Sonata demo "exclusively". (here in the states, anyways) While it was quite enjoyable to play, it didn't comepletely strike me as a "must own" at $60. Maybe after a price drop after it's release.

[Ultrawolf]

Dang it, I really wanna play this demo but I don't want to go out and buy an issue of OXM.