Like all games of its kind, Eternal Sonata treads a very narrow margin of error. Its grand finale moved me to tears. It would probably move many others to vomit.

Eternal Sonata is a combination turn-based real-time action JRPG, based on the dying dreams of legendary classical composer Frederic François Chopin. It’s not your average panda. Of course, some extreme liberties are taken with the concept, as I’m fairly certain that Frederic Chopin probably didn’t dream about hanging around for a prolonged length of time with an underage girl, or about battering a variety of sheep, fish and dragons to death with a conductor’s baton. But what do I know, perhaps he was the Freudian type.

In a world where every character and every location is named after a musical term, something suspicious is afoot and it is up to the player to guide a troupe of good natured individuals to the doors of a corrupt governing force and demand justice for their people. The main roles of the game fall between three of a potential ten characters; Polka, a waif-like young girl dying of an illness which makes it possible for her to use magic, Allegretto, a “bastard with a heart of gold” who steals from the rich to feed the poor, and of course Frederic Chopin himself, who spends the entire game obsessed with the concept of his own reality. With a final party that totals 10 in the xbox360 version and 12 in the PS3 version, Eternal Sonata is truly a character driven game.

It’s also a typical good versus evil affair, with the rumblings of both civil and international war underpinning the motives for many of the game’s characters. The entire concept of light and dark plays a massive role not only in terms of the game’s underlying message, but also in its battle system. Turn-taking is combined with real-time action and each character is given a specific amount of time in which to make their move, cast their healing spells or try and tank as much damage as possible, before they must stop and let the next in line have their turn. It’s a precarious balance between brutal speed and carefully measured tactical choices.

The game features not only character levels, which act as expected – an increased level means higher stats in ATK, DEF, MAG and SPD – but also Party Levels, which change the nature of how each turn is played out. Starting at party level one which gives you infinite Tactical Time and five seconds of Action Time in which your character can be in motion, the game slowly balances out the penalties and rewards with each Party Level increase, which occur roughly once per chapter. The player has their Tactical Time reduced and eventually removed altogether, and their Action Time shrunk to four seconds. In exchange the player is awarded more hold-item spaces, secondary Special Attack slots, and Harmony Chains.

Harmony Chains are what make Eternal Sonata’s later battles nothing short of majestic. When the player lands normal attack hits on an enemy, they contribute to a counter which builds up on the right hand side of the screen – the game’s Echo Meter. Once the meter hits 32, the player can unleash a super-charged special attack with the resulting damage critically multiplied. With Harmony Chains enabled, players can string together multiple special attacks in a mini quicktime event, increasing the amount of damage dealt to foes. In later levels, 200,000 damage can be dealt by the more skilled player in a single turn – a handy facet given than the game’s final bosses boast HP in the millions.

Battles are begun with encounters in the field – enemies roam around and if you bump into one you’re taken to the battle screen, which approximates your location and randomises a battle field, making changes to the location of barriers and light sources which force the player to rethink tactics and reposition their team to their strengths. The characters’ special moves change according to whether they stand in light or shadow – healing moves are more prevalent when standing in light, with heavy damage moves emerging when in the dark (although some characters are tank damage dealers no matter how sunny it is). Enemies are affected too, sometimes changing form entirely and sometimes changing the field with their own light/dark status effects, which can be deliberately induced in the player characters with hold items found later in the game. Particularly in the game’s much harder Encore mode, a foe straying into the shadows can be the difference between victory and defeat.

While the game’s premise is absurdly abstract and its plot line so convoluted it could give Tetsura Nomura a run for his money, it makes up for these detractors more than adequately. Eternal Sonata is absolutely exquisite to behold, with gorgeous backgrounds and environments complemented by an equally stunning soundtrack inspired, of course, by Chopin’s original pieces. There’s no gunmetal grey or brown here; instead the game is bursting with colour and variety, each location masterfully crafted and given a sense of scale that evokes wonder without making traveling throughout the game world a tedious trek. In the game’s Encore mode, accessible after completion, the player is given the ability to warp between locations at speed, giving them a second chance to soak in the beauty and appreciate the loving detail with which this world has been designed.

In addition to the main story line, which is almost exclusively progressed through dungeon crawling and battles, there are a few mini-games to explore. One of the characters carries a camera, and can use his special move to take photographs of enemies in the battle field – these photographs can then be sold for cash, with higher quality photos raking in 1000s of Gold, allowing the player to purchase the best weaponry and accumulate huge piles of healing and revival items. There are also trading chains to be discovered, which motivates the player to speak to everyone – you never know who might have something you want, and want something you have in return. In the same vein lie the Score Pieces, tiny snippets of music which can be found across the game world and played in ‘Sessions’ with NPCs. Playing the correct Score Piece for a session will result in a reward from the NPCs, some of whom relinquish rare and exclusive items that cannot be found anywhere else in the game.

There are a few places where Eternal Sonata lets itself down. It boasts cut scene lengths that could compete with many of today’s feature films, with the game only relinquishing control to the player a staggering 45 minutes after the New Game option has been selected. For the more hands on among us, this could prove an instant turn off – in my case, I made the error of starting the game a few minutes after midnight, which did little to endear me to its verbose charms. Were the cutscenes of a finer calibre then perhaps this offence could be overlooked – unfortunately, however, they are not. With enough schmaltz and anvil-dropping moral messages to rot your teeth on, the game’s literary narrative falls short of Eternal Sonata’s overarching grandeur. It catapults between massively clichéd and so detached from any true storytelling technique it’s impossible to discern what’s going on. However, that which can be grasped does touch on some interesting issues – the distance between reality and fantasy, the needs of the one and the many, the corruptive nature of power and humanity’s reliance on instant solutions for the now which cause more problems for the later. Subtle it certainly ain’t, but its heart is in the right place.