Well, I just received an answer from the Ebay seller who sold me the Haruhi figma. Turns out, their return policy is a little misleading. While their policy states that they’ll refund or exchange an item within 14 days of receiving it, the policy wasn’t clear on the when the item broke. Turns out, it has to be broken on arrival. Why didn’t they just say that?? Annoying.

So I paid for the new Haruhi figma I won (another $19.99) and I should be getting that in 6-14 days after they ship. Last time, it took 21 days for me to receive it after I paid for it, but hopefully they’ll ship it faster.

On a lighter note, while I was going thru my RSS feeds thingy, I stumbled upon a great deal on a video game that I love in my Amazon deals feed: Eternal Sonata for the PS3.

Only one word can describe this game. Amazing. Simply put, it’s an RPG that takes place in the dreams of a dying Frederic Chopin (couldn’t get accents on the e’s), the French composer from the 17th century. The game is an RPG that has a very political/philosophical story that touches on topics such as life itself (life being nothing but a mere manifestation of one’s dreams, meaning nothing truly exists) and the threat of invasion by a giant tyrannical nation. The game first released on the Xbox 360 (x360 from here on out) in 2007 and was rereleased on the PS3 with additional content. I played and completed the x360 version and bought the PS3 version a while back, but haven’t actually opened it yet (I’m waiting until summer vacation to play it for a reason I’ll explain below). Let’s take a closer look:

Gameplay.

As I mentioned before, this game is an RPG, altho not a very traditional on. This game is more of an action-RPG in a sense that the game isn’t entirely turn based where the characters just sit still then attack. Instead, in this game you can move your characters around the field during battle, altho there is an action gauge that gets used up. As you progress thru this game, this gauge kind of levels up (more like levels down, you’ll see) along with your player level. At the beginning of the game, the gauge only dropped whenever you moved, attacked or used an item (any action other than just standing, really), but as you level up your player level, the gauge will change from just dropping as you move to dropping continuously as soon as you move (this means once you move a little bit, you hafto keep moving or you waste your available movement time).

The battle mechanic is very interesting. As I mentioned before, you have limited time to move/attack when in battle, which means you hafto come up with strategies to deal with certain enemies. There are different attacks you can choose from, ranging from physical melee attacks to special attacks which include long range attacks and even some combo physical/long range attacks. But another interesting part of battle is the light and dark aspect.

In the battle field you’ll see a lot of rocks or trees or ceiling lamps that will affect the course of battle. Like I said before, this game has a lot of conceptual aspect to it, one of them being light and dark. Simply put, being in the dark or shining in the light will drastically change the game.

When you move around from different levels of light, your character’s attacks will change, along with the physical form of the enemies and their stats. Let’s say there’s this bat monster that you’re fighting. When you’re in the light (or dark, again it’s been a while) you’ll be fighting a really weak bat, but once he stumbles into the shadow cast by a rock, he changes into a ferocious giant crab with high defense stats. This means that you hafto defeat the bat before he can get into the shadows and makes itself near impossible to break.

Also, when you’re fighting, your attacks change with the light/dark too. Let’s say that one move in the light is a really strong physical combo where your character runs up to the enemy and unleashes a 10 hit combo. In the dark, however, it could change to a one hit long range attack. This means you have to really think about where you are on the field in relation to your target and the moves that you use. Of course, you can move around the field and try to drag an enemy into the light or into the shadows to try and optimize the damage you deal.

Characters.

There is quite a large variety of characters to play from in this game. As I mentioned before, the game is an RPG so you can control up to 3 different characters at one given time in battle. Of course, you can switch characters out if one is dying or you feel that another one has a certain advantage in battle (I don’t recall if this is true, but I’m pretty sure it is; it’s been a while since I’ve played).

Each character is named after a musical term, with the exception of Chopin, has a unique background that makes them all very believable as people. They all have their own goals and hopes that keep them motivated to see the story thru to the end. You’ll fall in love with every character and they’re all really well designed. The voice acting also, is excellent imo, unlike some other dub work done in localized Japanese RPGs.

Every character has a different weapon, such as Allegretto using a sword or Polka using magic. This changes their attacks as well, which you gain more of as you level up. While relationships between the characters don’t really progress, they all still fit together well. There’s also a love story in there somewhere, but it’s hard to tell who loves who lol.

Story.

As I said before, the story is about a giant nation that’s threatening to over take a smaller city. The story also revolves around the dreams the Chopin was having as he lay on his death bed. This is kind of confusing, but it works out in the end. Most of the game is grounded in reality, with the exception of the monsters and the magic, but this quickly changes as you get to the end (like most RPGs). As you progress, the story shifts focus from more physical problems to the mental issues the Chopin and some of the other characters have to face.

Throughout the game, you’ll also be given a mini bio about Chopin himself (which I got bored of and stopped paying attention to) in the form of mini episodes after every chapter. While this helps people learn more about the main character (MC), to me it was just a nuicense because you can skip or speed it up (from what I remember, but maybe the PS3 version is different).

The x360 version had a good amount of acheivement, most of which require a second play thru. The PS3 version doesn’t have trophy support (for now) which upsets me, but whatever, it’s the game that counts, not the game (yea right…). The second play thru offers more options I think and is in the form of a new game+, so you’ll have extra thing (perhaps the final weapons available at the beginning??).

So whether you’re a music fan (this game has an amazing score composed of some of Chopin’s songs along with other composers’) or an RPG fan, or not, this game is truly a fantastic game. It looks amazing btw (should have mentioned this before). The game looks like it’s cell-shaded, but I’m not entirely sure. Either way, the game looks amazing and colorful and bright (on the x360, but might be a bit darker/browner on the PS3 like all multiplats) and just plays like a movie. I hightly recommend it for everyone and Amazon has it for less than $40 (probably cheaper for x360 now).

Ok, well now that that’s done, it’s time for me to go eat lunch. I woke up at 11:45AM and just read on my iPhone Kindle app until 1PM lol (I’m almost done with my book so time for another one). Still no word from HLJ, but I don’t expect anything from them until late tonight or sometime Monday, I’ll update when I receive word. Also, I think I have an idea about the Haruhi figma, but we’ll see…

(Eternal Sonata is a trademark of Bandai Entertainment. PS3 belongs to Sony and is amazing might I add. Xbox360 belongs to Microsoft and mine is currently sitting at home and not my dorm, if that means anything to you *cough x360 sucks ;] )