![]() That cast is notable for being named entirely after musical terms. Sadly, you'll end up fighting the same monsters a lot. Battles cleverly mix the strategy of turn-based gaming with a solid action mechanism. His initial certainty - and later doubt - that the world is really just the product of his own dream is an important plotline, but his actual character (youthful and handsome, albeit bearing a strange likeness to existing paintings of Chopin, and resplendent in a top hat and dandy-ish coat and tails) sits in the shadow of the rest of the cast. In fact, Chopin himself is one of your regular party members, but arguably not really a lead character. ![]() Still, you never know.ĭespite a premise which seems, at first glance, downright pretentious, Eternal Sonata actually builds a solid narrative around a strong ensemble cast of characters. It suggests that as Frederic Chopin lay dying in Paris in 1849, in his final comatose hours he entered a fantasy world in his dreams - which is plausible, we suppose, although we'd be rather surprised if a 19th century Polish composer's dreams featured colourful, large-eyed anime characters and turn-based battles. The premise of Eternal Sonata is exceptionally odd. Here, though, the musical influence is even more obvious than in the likes of Silent Hill, whose development has been driven for years by composer Akira Yamaoka. In other words, Eternal Sonata is one of those rare but wonderful games whose design is led by the musicians. tri-Crescendo's boss, Hiroya Hatsushiba, is an audio guy he has worked for years as audio programmer for prolific composer (and fellow tri-Crescendo founder) Motoi Sakuraba. That history gives some clue as to why a Japanese developer would choose to make a game heavily based around the life and work of Polish classical pianist Frederic Chopin. Allegretto and Beat display their disturbing fetish for baked goods. tri-Crescendo's major previous project was the great but largely ignored GameCube RPG Baten Kaitos, but the team's background is as the audio division of parent studio tri-Ace, working on titles like Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile. No, I'm Not Going MadĮternal Sonata - a game sadly renamed from its brilliantly odd Japanese title, Trusty Bell - is the latest RPG from Japanese studio tri-Crescendo, and the company's first Xbox 360 title. Which roundabout introduction goes some way to explaining why I've just spent the best part of a week defeating an assortment of fantasy monsters with the aid of a spectacularly dandy-ish Frederic Chopin and his lethal conductors baton. ![]() It's no surprise, then, that European history comes out looking even more surreal when it's passed through the wringer. Their willingness to perform eye-popping rewriting on their own history is legendary witness the transformation of one of Japan's three key unifiers, Oda Nobunaga, into a fiery vengeful demon in the Onimusha series. To our minds, though, things get downright weird when game designers start playing with historical figures - Japanese game designers, especially. From the overtly psychedelic efforts of Jeff Minter's Tempest or Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Rez, through to the curiously domestic unreality of Keita Takahashi's Katamari Damacy, games provide some of the most unusual brain-fodder of any modern medium. Videogames have always been a rich vein for ardent fans of the surreal.
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