If I had made a list of 2007 games that should have been played but weren't, "Eternal Sonata" would have been on it.

"Eternal Sonata" might have scared off some people with its childish-looking graphics and cover. But inside, it's a colorful, well-done role-playing game that takes players on an interesting, and strange, trip.

The main character is the composer Frederic Chopin. It's the last three hours of his life, and he's unconscious in bed while his family gathers around him. Meanwhile, in his dreams, he's in another world, one in which every person and town is named after something in music.

The other main character, for example, is a young girl named Polka. She can perform healing magic, but in this world having magic means you're sick and going to die. Until she meets Chopin, a boy named Allegretto and a few others, nobody will have anything to do with her for fear she's contagious.

Eventually, with a group of a half-dozen or so, you set out to stop the evil ruler of the land, whose goal is to make the villagers into an army of slave warriors.

The world is colorfully cel-shaded, done in an anime style. Also typical of many anime, many of the characters' voices drive me crazy, but they're not unbearable (and at least it's not Marumaro from "Blue Dragon"). Some scenes are incredibly cheesy, and there is one excruciatingly long death scene, but overall the characters are likable and often funny.

http://www.herald-review.com/articles/2008/01/21/columnists/control_freak/1029432.txt