Well nazna is right, mrstickball is badmouthing ES like hell when he is busy with a second playtrough how many people do you know who call a game bad and go for a second playtrough? Exactly...And he finished it for sure once thx to his achievement list :).

I praised Eternal Sonata when I actually was involved in playing it, and the good/bad sides of the game hadn't sank in yet. Go check when the last time I praised ES was - It was almost a year ago.

Did you ever play a game that you really liked, but after time, realized it just wasn't as good as you thought it was? Maybe you never have, oh god of VGChartz, but ES was one of those games - just like Enchanted Arms, or Two Worlds.

ES was the first of a few JRPGs out on the X360. Forgive me, but when it came out, there weren't many comparisons (if you know of any this-gen JRPGs that came out before ES that I didn't play, please let me know). As time went on, and more JRPGs such as Lost Odyssey, and especially Tales of Vesperia have come out, the good points of Eternal Sonata....Just haven't seemed as good since most other games have ended up better.

And again, Naz...Show me the last time I praised Eternal Sonata. Last time I said it was awesome was well before it was announced as a multi-plat.

And Konnichiwa - Exactly how am I badmouthing ES? I was being honest with Playstation 3 owners, so they know what to expect. I've said time and time again, the game is around a 7.5-8.0 depending on how you play it (multiplayer or not was a major factor in it being good when I co-op'ed the entire game w/ my fiancee)

Go play ES, I dare you - and tell me what weak points the game has. If you can say the game is awesome in every way, then I'd question how long you've played JRPGs.

I'll gladly give you the quick rundown of things I do and do not like about ES (and mind you, I've reccomended ES to Playstation 3 owners before. I can find that post if you like).

Pros:

Great visuals

Perfect Music

Good combat system (to start with)

Negatives:

Battle system gets repetitive later on

Atrocious storyline

Borked difficulty/character management (you stay with 2 of the 3 characters due to being so overpowered)

Economy renders money useless - I had all the gold I needed within 30 minutes of starting.

And yes, I'm on a second playthrough, but I haven't finished it - despite owning ES for a whole year. It's not the easiest to trudge through the game on a 2nd playthrough just for achievements. But I want to since I'm high-er up on the list of best RPG gamers on the X360. That's why I'm doing the achievvements. If I wanted to play an RPG with replay value, I'd play Oblivion or Mass Effect :)

And Naz, what part of 'Eternal Sonata is worth picking up for PS3' did you not get? How was that bashing? I have legitimate issues with Eternal Sonata (have you played it?) which are valid, but still reccomend it to Playstation 3 owners, despite my negativity. It's not a game I'd buy for $60, since most of the game falls apart later in the game, souring the desire to play through a 2nd time, but it's still worth a rent at a minimum (for gorgeous cell shading, and excellent co-op gameplay), or purchase if it wasn't $60.

I'm just trying to get the point across that it's not a 8.7 game, as I really question if Namco fixed the major issues. IGN said there were cutscenes added, but failed to say if they fixed the storyline - and even then, they'd of had to re-write 80% of the cutscenes to make sense due to the nonsensical plot near the end (and if you think I ever liked that part, check the old MS forum posts about trying to figure out the story line).

I don't see why it would be hard to fathom that later on after playing through a game going back would make you see a lot of the flaws that you glazed over the first time.  I am in the same boat about the game.  I liked ES but going back for the encore playlist some of the flaws in the game started to become quite annoying.  I still had fun with the game and am working through it as we speak (well if I had a functioning box ).  I would recommend picking it up too.  Although I think older ports shouldn't be priced like they are but that's another debate for a different day.  It's also as easy as checking somebody's gamertag to see if they are full of shit or not about replaying something. 

Maybe you are right though that only the experience you have with something the first time should be what matters.  I mean that's what most newcomers to the game will experience themselves. Not every game (or movie, music, book or whatever) stays fresh for a repeat performance.  On the other hand having somebody give their honest opinion about something doesn't always mean they're out to belittle it out of spite for the platform it's on.

Now that you mentioned it, I am starting to like Lost Odyssey a little less.  The game is decent but the game's flaws are becoming more apparent to me.

Okay stickball, fair enough. There are certainly games I enjoy less on later playthroughs or in retrospect.

If they fixed the story and added some sidequest then the game may actually be good. Personally I think PS3 owners should wait for WKS or pick up Valkyria Chronicles. ES was the most disappointing JRPG I've played this gen. Great graphics, great art style, great music, and great gameplay unfortunately the story and characters were terrible.

I hope the additional content rectifies the idiocy of one of the bonus characters. Anyone that played the 360 version knows who I'm talking about. I won't spoil who for the sake of PS3's owners considering a purchase of this game. I will say that what this character did was so moronic that I almost put down ES and never touched it again. I actually enjoyed Enchanted Arms more than ES...

I agree 100%, Darc.

The game *is* a lot of fun. It's a blast to play co-op with friends, because very few JRPGs have that option. However, just because it's fun, and even enjoyable, doesn't mean it's great (not a 8.7 great). As I said, when you get to the end, or beat it and look back in retrospect, you realize that the story is god-awfully confusing. I'm unsure if it's a translation issue, but it's a garbled mess. That was the worst part of the game.

Ultimately, it doesn't hold a candle to cream-of-the-crop JRPGs, but it's like Enchanted Arms or Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest: A servicable by-the-book (in some ways) JRPG. Fortunately, the game never stops being gorgeous, and is, at a minimum, a must-play for graphics aficianados.

Initially, I gave the game a 8.5, but as I stated earlier...In retrospect, I'd say a 7.5-8.0 depending if you use co-op or not. Any JRPG fan owes it to themselves to play it...But maybe not buy it.

And as Darc said, depending on the WKS release date, it looks to be far better. And Valkira Chronicles does too.

I'm looking forward to playing this game. It makes me happy that they made it even better for the PS3.

Here's Eternal Sonata (for X360) in a nutshell:

First 5 hours: Superb

Next 5 hours: Great

Last 10-20 hours: Progressively bad.

The game starts out firing on all cylinders. Thats why any early impression was good. The game is AWESOME when your first learning the battle system, and getting wow-ed by the graphics. The co-op was also a great plus.

But by the time the game ends, you go from thinking the game is one of the best JRPGs released this generation (on consoles), into thinking that it is somewhere just above Enchanted Arms, or other games. The story absolutely falls apart at the end, and made absolutely no sense, ruining the great start the game had.

Spoliers!

Going in, you think that Chopin's real life story is going to be explored in some depth. It's not. There are a few picture-based cutscenes about Chopin's life, but it's rarely conveyed in the actual game. By the end, the storyline is so nonsensical that my girlfriend and I were making fun of the storyline because it makes that little sense, and that poor of dialogue. My GF is a casual game player, for the most part, and SHE was making fun of it along side of me.

The battle system gets monotinous, as do the enemies later on. What starts out with maginificent design choices becomes very poor - Because your going to fight the same 10 kinds of enemies in different colors over, and over, and over again. Combos become routine, and battles become very routine by the end. The battle system, fun and awesome at first, becomes monotinous because when you get Harmony Chains, you can just mash the buttons and wind up killing the last boss in............3 turns. I don't even think the last boss hit me, he was that easy. And the 2-3 bosses before that too.

So with all of that, and having played Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, and most importantly, Tales of Vesperia, you realize how Eternal Sonata falls apart. It would seem that Namco just used Eternal Sonata as a test bed for the concepts in ToV (I've been very vocal about that one), as ToV takes every positive element from ES and kicks it up 5,000 notches. That's not because it's a X360 game, and it's not because ES went to PS3. I gladly invite every Playstation 3 player to play both Eternal Sonata and Tales of Vesperia, and decide which is the beefier, more polished, better game. Because in every respect outside of better cell shading, and maybe music, there's a noticible difference in execution. That both made ToV better, but ES worse at the same time, because by the time you get decently far in ToV, you realize how much of a mess ES was, because every grip I had with ES isn't there.

But that's not to say more JRPGs will come out, and make ToV look bad, but for now, ToV is just about the pinnacle I've seen of JRPGs at the moment.

The Last Remnant is coming out for the 360 this year. Maybe you should fix it. IMO, the 360 is the best console with the best library to offer to generation.