FINAL IMPRESSIONS: Eternal Sonata (SPOILERS)
By Jacob Bond
March 24th, 2008

I'll be honest, ever since I finished the game I want to get a collection of Chopin's music. I think it's inevitable at this point because everything I heard in the game was absolutely gorgeous. He truly was a musical genius.

Anyway, that's another topic entirely. I'm here to talk about the game. One of the biggest problems I had with the story was (the in dream story, not the "Chopin's trying to deal with death" story) how many subplots, romances, etc. with little or no conclusion. There were a LOT of problems with it.

The big problem seems to be a lack of proper set up. While Polka and Allegretto's love story was okay (it could have used a lot more details to flesh it out, but it was acceptable). But a lot of other things were thrown in without any development or follow up. For example, the whole "traitor" subplot. Shortly after first meeting Claves, Falsetto, and Jazz we're immediately given the idea that one is a traitor. Which I guess is okay but within an hour two the traitor was already revealed to be Claves. When she dies immediately after being outed as the traitor, there's a huge sappy scene as if we're supposed to care. But how could I care? I didn't know this character well at all because there was no attempt to make me care about her. It was also pretty clear she was the traitor when it was suggested it was either her or Falsetto. If you're going to do a traitor story and expect us to care about a character who dies, there has to be some attempt to develop the story and character.

Another issue was all of the romance plots without any resolution. Falsetto's love for Jazz was okay since it was established they were childhood friends, but it never saw a hint of a conclusion at all. What got me most was the sudden revelation of Viola's love for Jazz. WTF?! It was introduced out of nowhere even though nothing in the game up to that point showed the two having some kind of personal connection (I don't think Viola ever actually spoke to Jazz directly in the game at all). After it was introduced Viola talked about it for about five minutes and then there was absolutely NOTHING mentioned of it again. It was completely pointless to throw it in there other than as a quick attempt to give Viola some more personality in the game. Honestly out of all the characters Viola hardly needed anything to make her character relatable.

I also never got the feeling that Count Waltz's part of the story was important at all. I was expecting some epic story but it never really came close. There was no explanation of why the Agogos made mineral powder so effective (and dangerous) or why Polka made them glow. It was like they came up with this idea centered around Chopin but needed filler to get to that part of the story, but they didn't care enough or couldn't be bothered to try hard on the dream story.

Whew. So yeah, the dream story had a ton of problems and little-to-no resolutions. But the story with Chopin was amazing.

If you didn't pick up on it, it seems the story was in a loop. The game begins and ends with Polka jumping off a cliff, restarting the story. When Polka goes to the tree to tie her fortune to it, there are several bad fortunes she tied to it in previous visits. Polka's stone, given to her by someone she loved, was from Allegretto halfway through the game, even though Polka had it since the beginning. Polka jumped off the cliff knowing if she didn't it would mean Chopin would die in the real world. But his refusal to let go of the real world kept him hanging on.

Chopin, finally deciding it was time to accept his fate, saved Polka and breaking the story's loop. But doing so resulted in his death in the real world.

The one thing I'm confused about is if the dream world continues to exist now that Chopin is dead. After he passes away in the real world and his spirit leaves his body, he's shown in the background in the dream world as Polka and Allegretto kiss. It doesn't seem like this world could still exist since it existed only in Chopin's mind. With his death I would figure the dream world and all of its people would be gone as well.

Something to note I didn't notice until someone pointed it out was the flowers that bloomed at 2am in the beginning of the game. Chopin died in the real world at 2am.

Anyway, this only makes my experience of the game more conflicted because the overall "Chopin dealing with his own death" story was absolutely amazing and set up well, but the dream story with the warring nations and Agogos seemed utterly pointless with all of the problems it had. That's why I felt the game was still worth playing but took a big hit on my score because of the annoying story problems.

One final thing is the dialog. Some was fine, other parts felt like it was there to come off as philosophical (even if it wasn't necessary), and Chopin's doctor's dialog was absolutely horrible. Still, the ending worked and was a nice.