Frédéric Chopin, the famous Polish pianist and composer died of tuberculosis at age 39. In his last hours while lying on his deathbed, he dreams of a world which is influenced by his life and music. In his dream, Chopin meets 14-year old Polka, a girl hated and shunned because of her magical abilities. Her burning desire to help others leads her on an adventure to find out the cause of the low prices of mineral powder, which she believes are harming her local trade of floral powder.
They meet Allegretto and Beat, two poor boys who are trying to make a difference. Knowing that merely stealing food for the poor is not an overall solution, Allegretto travels with Beat to try and solve the problems between socio-economic classes.
Eternal Sonata is the first game developed solely by Tri-Crescendo and intersects an original story (based around the life and music of Chopin) with educational cutscenes containing real paintings and photographs that detail Chopin's life and inspiration shown alongside his compositions. The dream world has lush bright designs mixed with strange plants and strange creatures was carefully designed to look like paintings from the surrealist movement1.
The battles become more complicated over time - the battle 'level' increases and various conditions make battling faster and more demanding on the player. The battle field also has a light system where if the character is standing in the light or shade their abilities are restricted accordingly.
The game was released on the PlayStation 3 the year after its Xbox 360 release and included new playable characters, the ability to change character costumes and two extra dungeons. Both versions include the ability to switch to Japanese voices.
