I’ll never forget him saying “Look, you can play as a cute little girl with a dress and fight big scawwy monstows” and laughing his ass off. This game was purchased for me as a Christmas gift by my dear friend Jeff-who originally bought it as a joke because he used to mock me for playing bright and colorful Japanese RPGs and this one looked to be something he could really sink his troll teeth into. The names of the characters, the spells, everything revolves around musical terminology, and in this we see that this is probably exactly what a fevered, dying dream of a world-famous composer may actually consist of. While the game follows some standard jRPG tropes of the era-group of scrappy friends with conviction all band together to face a big bad evil ruler-there are many ways in which it departs the rather formulaic genre, and the primary departure is in that the entire game is about music. We play the game as Polka and her friends and allies, in this dream world, though sometimes the viewpoint is switched to the real world where Chopin’s loved ones surround him on his death bed, speculating on what he might be dreaming about. It is a Japanese RPG with anime-style characters, a co-op battle system, a bright and cheery cartoon color palette, and… classical music, references to 19th century European history, and a fascinating story-featuring a famous Polish composer as a playable character, swords, magic, and monsters.Įven by jRPG standards, this one was a tough sell: Famous Polish composer Frédéric Chopin, who passed away at 39 years old, is lying on his deathbed in the beginning of the game, having a fever dream in which a young girl named Polka is similarly dying of the “magic disease”, where she has magical powers, but this means she is doomed to die. On the border between dreams and reality, Chopin discovers the light that shines in all of us in this enduring tale of good and evil, love and betrayal.” -Description on the back of the jewel case for Eternal Sonata, a 2008 game for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3Įternal Sonata is a very odd game. In his final hours, he experiences a fantastical dream where he encounters a young girl facing a terrible destiny and the boy who will fight to save her.
“On his deathbed, the famous composer, Chopin, drifts between this life and the next.
However, I can’t deny that even though 2008 was a year that I summarize as one of my “lost years”, some of my best memories with my boys came from that same year, and one of those memories involves a strange video game… A divorce, a dying business, a stressful job, a terrifying stalking situation, and more. The year 2008 was a dark year for me, for many reasons.
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