the game started out promising, but soon took a bad turn for me.  im only starting chapter 2 so hopefully it gets better, but right now the game just isnt doing it for me.  i respect what they were trying to doing for chopin, but they just over did it with some of the music references and scenes.  i like history and being well informed, but when im playing a game, i dont want to have to read about a composers life for 5 minutes.  also, just about every person and city takes a name of some sort of musical term.  i understand that the main game takes place in chopins dream, but that is just too much for me.  lastly, some of the fighting mechanics are off.  for instance, i was in the chorus plains and i was fighitng two of those yellow dragons at once.  well i got one down to where it was slouching so its almost dead, it comes to beats turn, and i use his gun so he attacks the other one instead that hasnt been hit.  as far as i can tell, theres no way to choose your target.  if there is, can someone please tell me how cuz i really want to give this game a good chance.  the actual story is good, if not a little cliche, but that doesnt bother me.  well anyway, that was my little rant.  i hope some people can tell it gets better, if not, its on to star ocean 4.

edit: i forgot to say i do enjoy the actual music, its very good, probably one of the best ive heard in a game.   its just it overkills the music theme.

The game is awfully boring, VA is par for the course lately with JRPGs which means it can be alright but typically read with little to no emotion so the lines come off bland and boring... so you have game play which takes a while, walking around in dungeons that takes a while coupled with walking around in town to talk to NPCs that usually say nothing of importance, and VA that's so monotone that complied with everything else it makes it an ambien pill in video game format.

1.  You should already be playing SO4... i gaurentee you u will never put it down once you start.

2. ES doesnt get any better BUT doesnt get any worse either

you can aim but they have to be in range once he gets into shooter mode u can change targets iirc

Apparently a good JRPG for 2007 means standards fell down somwhere between 2000-2007  

Also Star Ocean 4 suffers from a lot of the same problems, bad voice acting, story is really bland, and the environments are really bad, the one remarkable improvement versus ES is that SO4 has a pretty decent combat system.  In all honesty if people are big JRPG fans they shouldn't be playing home consoles rather handheld consoles as PSP and DS both slay the competition.

Great game. And great VA! I find that the characters have a lot of emotions.

I think Beat attacks the closest enemy. I don't exactly remember. Wait for Violin. SHE'S OP!!

Y'know, Eternal Sonata was one of those games on my "get around to" list. But this description makes it sound a bit like Fragile Dreams (another Tri-Crescendo title). The gameplay in that felt frankly awful; stretched out to create an artificial feel of getting somewhere. Only the story kept me going, but I fear that the subject of ES is much too niche.

Maybe I will still play this, but it has lost some appeal.

Nah don't listen to him. It's good enough to warrant at least trying it especially if you are a JRPG fan to begin with.

I liked eternal sonata, it gets good once the story kicks in and then the twists and turn made me go "oh noes"

JRPG fans play JRPG's undictated by platform...all is one in our world.

2. DS and PSP JRPGS arnt without fault themeselves either. too many ports and remakes..and too little fresh content( too much been there done that)

though Radiant Historia is fantastic

Not saying they should be playing handhelds for the fact that they're handhelds, I'm saying if you want to play good new JRPGs you should be playing handhelds cause that's where they come out, Final Fantasy 4 Heroes of Light destroys FFXIII for example, and there has yet to be a JRPG on the home consoles to even live up to Nostalgia (unless you count FFIV the after years which is made by the same team)  much less titles like Dragon Quest IX.

The big problem I see is that big names that have been trusted for years seem to release home console JRPGs and they turn out to be much worse than past games and not living up to standards, but fans of these companies fight tooth and nail to support these titles, while some really creative things are happening with small teams on the handhelds and things are evolving faster for JRPGs than they have in over a decade, while home console games are just stuck in that past decade where Cloud clones are the standard for story and the various parts of ROLE PLAYING are thrown out the window.