I have recently finished playing Eternal Sonata, and I must say, it's not as good as the top Tales games in Tales of the Abyss and Tales of Symphonia. The strong points are the battle system, the musical scores, and the beatiful graphics. the weak points are linearity, length (short), and not much character development or story.

I can't divulge much since most haven't played it, but I will say, development seemed rushed. Abyss and Symphonia took at least 35 hours to beat. Eternal Sonata took me about 17-20. You pretty much have to fight almost every monster you come across. The love stories have no ground. They just come out of nowhere. However, I must say, the character graphics are very good. They're cell shaded and aren't semi-SD characters. The landscapes are beautiful and the music fits very well and sounds very pleasing to the ears.

Overall, I say if you're a fan of RPGs and don't care about a whole lot, get this game, it's really not a bad game, just botched (meaning repetitive and not really deep and intricate, though has some good themes). If you're expecting a Tales of Symphonia or Abyss, you'll be disappointed. I think if Namco makes another RPG for the X-Box, it'll be much better. I think they were trying to see what they could do with the system's power. Oh, and this game doesn't have many load times.

It's a shame the first Tales related game on an X-Box platform wasn't quite as polished.

Though, I haven't even played the other recent Tales games, really.

I think they were more or less testing the power of the system for an RPG. After all, the X-Box is not known for long, epic RPGs. They were probably just seeing what limits they had, which they should know now that they have plenty of room for length, which makes room for more character and story development. But also, Namco took a chance on mixing history with fantasy, and it worked out ok, but it could've been so much better. But, I like the game regardless, mostly because it's kind of addicting and some of the characters look pretty BA.

I'm expecting Tales of the Abyss quality the next time around. That game was brilliant and had so much character development that you thought they could actually exist in this world (save the magical abilities). I think Namco isn't out of the ball gamem they just need to build off what they done with Sonata as far as an guideline and back it up with a Tales of the Abyss way of handling the plot.

Eternal Sonata + Tales of the Abyss + Tales of Symphonia = Epic game

That's quite the solid reputation builder for Tales of the Abyss! I might just have to pick it up.

You should. It's an excellent RPG.