History YMMV / EternalSonata

** Captain Dolce, [[TheLeader leader]] of the TerribleTrio GoldfishPoopGang, has gained some popularity over on the Website/GameFAQS forums. [[MsFanservice Guess why...]] She also has her [ArousedByTheirVoice sexy, seductive voice]]. ("Oh, you've been naughty, haven't you?")

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: As might be expected in a game revolving around music. There are many possible choices but some of the stand-out themes are: The mediocrity sought out by everyone, A flicker which divides light and darkness, Leap the precipice, I bet my belief, and The boundary between snow and ice. Sakuraba really outdid himself for this game. And then, of course, there are the Chopin pieces themselves, which were performed by professional pianist Stanislav Bunin. "Heaven's Mirror" also qualifies for many fans. There's also "Rebuilding Ourselves," [[spoiler:the final battle theme for the battle against Chopin that is a battle-theme remix with ominous chanting of his "Revolutionary Etude." That's right - you are fighting Chopin in a battle set to his own music!]]

** Captain Dolce, [[TheLeader leader]] of the TerribleTrio GoldfishPoopGang, has gained some popularity over on the Website/GameFAQS forums. [[HelloNurse Guess why...]] She also has her sexy, seductive voice. ("Oh, you've been naughty, haven't you?")

* TranslationCorrection: In the Japanese version, Chopin mispronounced the "grâce" (GRAHS) in his attack [[CoupDeGrace "Coup de Grâce"]] as the English word ''grace''. The English version had the correct pronunciation.
** In Japanese, Serenade pronounces the "Vent" ("Vahn") in her attack "L'energie du Vent" as the English word "vent". Again, the English version corrects this.

** Right after the FinalBoss of the game, [[spoiler: Frederic Chopin, after ''screaming in agony'' once the battle ends]], you... get a [[NewGamePlus notice about carrying over your cleared game data]]. Not an ending cutscene or the credits after finishing the battle, the notice comes first. [[RefugeInAudacity Yeah.]]

* EnsembleDarkhorse: Captain Dolce, [[TheLeader leader]] of the TerribleTrio GoldfishPoopGang, has gained some popularity over on the Website/GameFAQS forums. [[HelloNurse Guess why...]] She also has her sexy, seductive voice. ("Oh, you've been naughty, haven't you?")

* ItsTheSameNowItSucks: The game is a [[{{Reconstruction}} strictly traditional]] EasternRPG; people who went in with other expectations shouted this.

* {{Padding}}: Why else would you need to get special water from the end of a graveyard to give to a child to feed a plant; defeat a ghost in the basement of a church; have to board a pirate ship to defend a military vessel that has its own guards and guns; or climb a temple/tower as requested to by a priest.

** Beat considering he gets insulted by Allegretto, knocked around by Tuba, and constantly pestered by Salsa. At least Allegretto and Salsa still care about Beat.

* PacingProblems: The game has a lethargic pace that may turn off some players, and plenty of ContemplateOurNavels with long panning shots of SceneryPorn when something exciting could be happening.

** Crescendo and Serenade are also very popular, with interesting character arcs and likable personalities, as well as being RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething. Fans were very pleased when both characters became playable in the PS3 version, and massive powerhouses to boot.

** Beat considering he gets insulted by Allegretto, knocked around by Tuba, and constantly pestered by Salsa. At least Allegretto and Salsa still care about Beat.
* JustForFun/XMeetsY: Frédéric Chopin meets EasternRPG.

** Beat considering he gets insulted by Allegretto, knocked around by Tuba, and constantly pestered by Salsa. At least Allegretto and Salsa still care about Beat.

* CompleteMonster: [[TheCaligula Count Waltz]] is the [[TeensAreMonsters 16-year-old]] ruler of Forte City who is [[BigBad responsible for all of the suffering throughout the game]]. Aspiring to [[TakeOverTheWorld dominate the world]], Waltz oversees the manufacturing of a mutagenic substance he dubs mineral powder. Marketing it as a miraculous cure all for illnesses, Waltz aims to create SuperSoldiers to wage war with Baroque; extensive use of the drug drives its user to madness after which their soul is trapped in a perpetual purgatory [[BarredFromTheAfterlife unable to move on]]. Concluding that beings known as the "glowing agogos" should increase the potency of the concoction, he tasks his henchmen with acquiring the creatures. Waltz becomes displeased upon realizing that his spy--[[TheMole Claves]]-- had fallen in love with the leader of Andantino--a rebel group out to overthrow him--and he sends [[DarkActionGirl Rondo]] to kill her, a fact that he mocks Jazz with later on. Learning that the agogos only glowed in [[IllGirl Polka]]'s presence, Waltz [[WouldHitAGirl slaps her to the ground]], and turns his dragons onto the group despite him saying that he'd spare them. Always a sore loser, he [[BadBoss forces his advisor, Legato, to drink the unfinished mineral powder]], transforming him into a horrid monster called the Ruined Body. [[VillainousBreakdown Refusing to accept defeat]], Waltz orders Legato [[OmnicidalManiac to destroy everything]], saying if he couldn't rule the world, [[TakingYouWithMe it may as well shouldn't exist]]. Power-hungry and alarmingly casual in his atrocities, Waltz saw experimenting on his own subjects as a necessary step towards total domination.

* EnsembleDarkhorse: Captain Dolce, [[TheLeader leader]] of the TerribleTrio GoldfishPoopGang, has gained some popularity over on the GameFAQS forums. [[HelloNurse Guess why...]] She also has her sexy, seductive voice. ("Oh, you've been naughty, haven't you?")

** For Beat, it really seems the game is conspiring against him. There are thing about him that are actually excellent- he's a ranged character so doesn't take as much damage, he does pretty respectable damage, and when we hit the lategame, he gets a HP-draining move that makes him heal himself fully almost always... well, that'd be if he didn't have to suffer from having the overall worst stats in the game. He's the MasterOfNone to Retto's LightningBruiser. On top of this, the game developers decided to have him almost always get his next weapon upgrade later than everyone else, causing his otherwise very respectable attack to become a weakness. In comparison, Retto has attack to spare, but he tends to get his weapons FIRST! To be fair to the developers, at least they somewhat realized this, and buffed Beat's weapons to compensate. Beat is never outright terrible, but he kinda bounces from good to bad to great to mediocre in a way no other character does.

* FanPreferredCouple: In the Xbox version, Chopin and Polka have better chemistry than the OfficialCouple despite the fact that A) she's analogous to his real-life dead little sister, and B) he's twenty-five years older. The UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 UpdatedRerelease goes a long way to improve the chemistry between Allegretto and Polka by adding a number of new interactions between them and completely altering others. One of the most notable is that in the UsefulNotes/XBox360 release, Allegretto does not so much as mention Polka when Beat and Frederic first return to Ritardando. In the [=PS3=] version he most certainly asks after her and then heads off to Tenuto to go after her before grudgingly agreeing to stay and give Frederic a tour of the town. Later, when he ''does'' slip away on his own, in the [=PS3=] version he shows great concern for Polka's health, as well as frustration at the idea that she doesn't want to do things for herself. In the Xbox scene, he doesn't express any concern about her illness and instead of the sequence being about his feelings for Polka, it's just moralizing about the suspicious nature of human beings.

* PuritySue: Deconstructed with Polka. She knows she doesn't have long to live, and so only keeps up her [[ThePollyanna Pollyanna]] act because she doesn't want to drag the party down. When it's just her and her mother [[TearJerker the waterworks come on]].

** Jazz suffers from terrible speed(Salsa will occasionally go THRICE before him), relies on team effort for real damage output(since his own echo-building is average), and is underleveled on rejoining. He never has a reason to be used- he's inferior to Allegretto, Viola and Falsetto when he first appears, and he's inferior to more or less the entire team upon rejoining. He was made worse in the PS3 version.

** Count Waltz, [[spoiler:rather than ordering his men to fire and kill the heroes, instead decides to take them all on himself for 'fun', accompanied only by a dragon that's extremely easy to defeat. He is then killed. Then [[spoiler:Legato]] decides to drink the [[spoiler:super mineral powder]] and turn himself into a giant monster for no apparent reason, even though he knows ''it will eventually kill him'' even if the heroes didn't. [[spoiler:This fiasco is averted in the PS3 version- Waltz survives the fight as every other major villain, orders a reluctant Legato to drink the poison, then orders him to kill the dragons to try his new powers, and finally, they run away because Polka's astra stops their lethal strike against the group. Everything is explained, everything makes sense, and it allows for a harder pre-final boss battle and a kickass [[BreakThemByTalking breaking lecture]] from Waltz explaining his motivations.]]

* GetOnWithItAlready: The game has a lethargic pace that may turn off some players, and plenty of ContemplateOurNavels with long panning shots of SceneryPorn when something exciting could be happening.

* FanPreferredCouple: In the Xbox version, Chopin and Polka have better chemistry than the OfficialCouple despite the fact that A) she's analogous to his real-life dead little sister, and B) he's twenty-five years older. The PlayStation3 UpdatedRerelease goes a long way to improve the chemistry between Allegretto and Polka by adding a number of new interactions between them and completely altering others. One of the most notable is that in the XBox360 release, Allegretto does not so much as mention Polka when Beat and Frederic first return to Ritardando. In the [=PS3=] version he most certainly asks after her and then heads off to Tenuto to go after her before grudgingly agreeing to stay and give Frederic a tour of the town. Later, when he ''does'' slip away on his own, in the [=PS3=] version he shows great concern for Polka's health, as well as frustration at the idea that she doesn't want to do things for herself. In the XBox scene, he doesn't express any concern about her illness and instead of the sequence being about his feelings for Polka, it's just moralizing about the suspicious nature of human beings.

** Harmony Chains at Party Level 6 can be exploited to greatly reduce almost all difficulty you may encounter after that point. Level up Polka to 48 (40 in the PlayStation 3 version) so that she learns Blossom Shower and, for her sake, since she is admittedly squishy, keep her as far away from the action as possible and in sunlight. Once you're able to consistently pull off a 5 or 6 Harmony Chain, Polka can use Blossom Shower to heal everyone for a sizable amount at infinite range every turn. It also works with Viola and her Heal Arrow, but the trade off is that while Viola can deal absolutely absurd damage from long-range, Heal Arrow isn't as powerful as Blossom Shower. Serenade's L'energie du Vent is a good choice too if you have the PlayStation3 UpdatedRerelease.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: One of the most original concepts for a game--the dying dream of Fredrick Francois Chopin--given one of the most [[ClicheStorm unoriginal executions]] ever. That Chopin is mostly OutOfFocus for the majority of the game (except for his not-so-subtle monologues that come out of nowhere) does not help either. The PlayStation3 UpdatedRerelease tried to fix this by altering a number of scenes involving Frederic, and adding many new ones, including him speaking in the game's intro sequence, but the problem is still there to a limited degree.

* {{Memetic Sex God}}dess: Captain Dolce has been renamed "Captain Sexy" by the fandom. Viola, also.

* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: Is Prince Crescendo a kind and wise ruler, or is he an idiot who can't even come up with the most basic of competent plans?
* {{Anvilicious}} - The game is not particularly subtle. During the credits, the characters break the fourth wall and impart their beliefs to the player..
* ClicheStorm: A RagTagBunchOfMisfits fighting against an EvilOverlord that wants to TakeOverTheWorld with ill-gotten {{Super Soldier}}s made with phelbotinum; this could describe any number of games and the DyingDream aspect takes a backseat.
* CrowningMusicOfAwesome - As might be expected in a game revolving around music. There are many possible choices but some of the stand-out themes are: The mediocrity sought out by everyone, A flicker which divides light and darkness, Leap the precipice, I bet my belief, and The boundary between snow and ice. Sakuraba really outdid himself for this game. And then, of course, there are the Chopin pieces themselves, which were performed by professional pianist Stanislav Bunin. "Heaven's Mirror" also qualifies for many fans. There's also "Rebuilding Ourselves," [[spoiler:the final battle theme for the battle against Chopin that is a battle-theme remix with ominous chanting of his "Revolutionary Etude." That's right - you are fighting Chopin in a battle set to his own music!]]
* EnsembleDarkhorse - Captain Dolce, {{leader}} of the TerribleTrio GoldfishPoopGang, has gained some popularity over on the GameFAQS forums. [[HelloNurse Guess why...]] She also her sexy, seductive voice. ("Oh, you've been naughty, haven't you?")

* FanPreferredCouple - In the Xbox version, Chopin and Polka have better chemistry than the OfficialCouple despite the fact that A) she's analogous to his real-life dead little sister, and B) he's twenty-five years older. The PlayStation3 UpdatedRerelease goes a long way to improve the chemistry between Allegretto and Polka by adding a number of new interactions between them and compleltely altering others. One of the most notable is that in the XBox360 release, Allegretto does not so much as mention Polka when Beat and Frederic first return to Ritardando. In the [=PS3=] version he most certainly asks after her and then heads off to Tenuto to go after her before grudgingly agreeing to stay and give Frederic a tour of the town. Later, when he ''does'' slip away on his own, in the [=PS3=] version he shows great concern for Polka's health, as well as frustration at the idea that she doesn't want to do things for herself. In the XBox scene, he doesn't express any concern about her illness and instead of the sequence being about his feelings for Polka, it's just moralizing about the suspicious nature of human beings.

** For most of a regular playthrough, Salsa's Shadow Silhouette buff makes her this, as it makes all characters within a certain range do 250% as much damage with their next specials. This essentially makes 4-echo moves be on par with 24 echo ones. For extra brokeness, use a hell mustard on any character, shadow silhouette, then build up a 32 echoes for the special attack. This will allow even a level 17 Polka to deal out damage above 100000k with Nether Wave and a weapon with less than 20 ATK. She won't deal that much damage on her own until she hits levels above ''30'' using far stronger weapons! Even when you hit the harmony chains (shadow silhouette seems to end these chains, so it's risky to use) she stays incredibly good, being one of the best Echo builders both in regular combo AND in the chains themselves.

* MemeticSexGoddess: Captain Dolce has been renamed "Captain Sexy" by the fandom. Viola, also.
* {{Moe}} - Polka for being a sweet IllGirl.
* {{Narm}} -

* NarmCharm - Many agree that the second-to-last cutscene of [[spoiler: Claves' death]] was surprisingly well done and ''incredibly'' effective. Sometimes the game's narmness loops around to oddly awesome, including the scene when Fugue [[spoiler: meets his end. He is eaten by a ''glowing powderpuff'']]. It's surprisingly satisfying.
* OlderThanTheyThink - The game received a lot of praise for the originality of the Chopin storyline, though the basic premise has been done before in works such as ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfThomasCovenant''.

* ScrappyMechanic - The game tends to shuffle your battle party of three around before certain boss fights, which makes a few of them [[ThatOneBoss even more difficult]], especially if it kicks out your healers.

** Tuba, because the first time you fight him, Beat (if he's in the party) gets forced out. The second time, Beat is forced in. Either way, it can seriously screw up your formation from the start, and if you haven't been levelling Beat for that second fight...

** Rondo, due to the fact that she's VERY difficult to guard against, due to her speed and she can inflict [[StandardStatusEffects status]], damn her. Plus [[spoiler: Falsetto]] gets forced into the third slot of your party moments before the fight, which can screw up your formation, and if your healer gets kicked out...

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot - One of the most original concepts for a game--the dying dream of Fredrick Francois Chopin--given one of the most [[ClicheStorm unoriginal executions]] ever. That Chopin is mostly OutOfFocus for the majority of the game (except for his not-so-subtle monologues that come out of nowhere) does not help either. The PlayStation3 UpdatedRerelease tried to fix this by altering a number of scenes involving Frederic, and adding many new ones, including him speaking in the game's intro sequence, but the problem is still there to a limited degree.
* ToyShip - Beat and Salsa; two children with an immature 'push him down in the sandbox' style relationship.

** Jazz suffers from terrible speed(Salsa will occasionally go THRICE before him), relies on team effort for real damage output(since his own echo-building is average), and is underlevelled on rejoining. He never has a reason to be used- he's inferior to Allegretto, Viola and Falsetto when he first appears, and he's inferior to more or less the entire team upon rejoining. He was made worse in the PS3 version.
** For Beat, it really seems the game is conspiring against him. There are thing about him that are actually excellent- he's a ranged character so doesn't take as much damage, he does pretty respectable damage, and when we hit the lategame, he gets a HP-draining move that makes him heal himself fully almost always... well, that'd be if he didn't have to suffer from having the overall worst stats in the game. He's the MasterOfNone to Retto's LightningBruiser. On top of this, the game developers decided to have him almost always get his next weapon upgrade later than everyone else, causing his otherwise very respectable attack to become a weakness. In comparison, Retto has attack to spare, but he tends to get his weapons FIRST! To be fair to the developers, at least they somewhat realized this, and buffed Beat's weapons to compensate. Beat is never outright terrible, but he kinda bounces from good to bad to great to mediocre in a way no ther character does.
* WhatAnIdiot -

** Count Waltz, [[spoiler:rather than ordering his men to fire and kill the heroes, instead decides to take them all on himself for 'fun', accompanied only by a dragon that's extremely easy to defeat. He is then killed. Then [[spoiler:Legato]] decides to drink the [[spoiler:super mineral powder]] and turn himself into a giant monster for no apparent reason, even though he knows ''it will eventually kill him'' even if the heroes didn't. [[spoiler:This fiasco is averted in the PS3 version- Waltz survives the fight as every other major villain, orders a reluctant Legato to drink the poison, then orders him to kill the dragons to try his new powers, and finally, they run away because Polka's astra stops their lethal strike against the group. Everything is explained, everything makes sense, and it allows for a harder pre-final boss battle and a kickass BreakingSpeech from Waltz explaining his motivations.]]
* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic: Though the events of the game are supposed to be representative of Chopin's life experiences, there are some events that just ''do not make sense'' in this context, yet are given the air of being symbolic of ''something''. Most noticeably, the final scene of the game is [[spoiler:a tête-a-tête between a snail and a caterpillar.]]
* TheWoobie -

* DesignatedHero - Allegretto is the onscreen avatar, despite Frederic and/or Polka ostensibly being the main character.
* DesignatedVillain - Legato, who seems to be [[OnlySaneMan a reasonable person]] whose only real crime was [[PunchClockVillain serving Count Waltz]]. [[spoiler: Even after going OneWingedAngel he remains a DesignatedVillain as all he does is run away to a distant tower in a desert on the moon where he can't harm anyone.]] The {{PS3}} version makes it even clearer that Legato is just serving Waltz, who is the real villain.

* {{Narm}} - [[spoiler: Claves' FinalSpeech is so long it becomes comical.]]

* PuritySue: Deconstructed with Polka. She knows she doesn't have long to live, and so only keeps up her [[ThePollyanna Pollyanna]] act because she doesn't want to drag the party down. When it's just her and her mother, though, [[TearJerker the waterworks come on]].

** Count Waltz, [[spoiler:rather than ordering his men to fire and kill the heroes, instead decides to take them all on himself for 'fun', accompanied only by a dragon that's extremely easy to defeat. He is then brutally killed. Then [[spoiler:Legato]] decides to drink the [[spoiler:super mineral powder]] and turn himself into a giant monster for no apparent reason, even though he knows ''it will eventually kill him'' even if the heroes didn't. [[spoiler:This fiasco is averted in the PS3 version- Waltz survives the fight as every other major villain, orders a reluctant Legato to drink the poison, then orders him to kill the dragons to try his new powers, and finally, they run away because Polka's astra stops their lethal strike against the group. Everything is explained, everything makes sense, and it allows for a harder pre-final boss battle and a kickass BreakingSpeech from Waltz explaining his motivations.]]

* OlderThanTheyThink - The game received a lot of praise for the originality of the Chopin storyline, though the basic premise has been done before in works such as ''The ChroniclesOfThomasCovenant''.

* TierInducedScrappy: Polka and Jazz.
** Polka is a healer in a game where healing items are overall superior to healing spells, and relatively cheap to boot. She has bad damage output in a game where killing the opponent before it gets to move is the key to everything. To be fair to her, she's not actually terrible in anyway, just outdone. In fact, she can often compete/beat Beat in damage output+do area damage on top of that. In Encore, she's a metric ton better during the endgame due to picking up one of the two [[InfinityPlusOneSword Infinity+1 weapons]] at the beginning of the chapter if you go fetch it, and that weapon puts her among the top damage dealers, gives her regen that makes her one of your bulkiest characters, and it boosts experience for your entire team! Polka actually hits gamebreaker level for a while, until enemies really toughen up and your other characters get their final weapons much later.

** Polka is a healer in a game where healing items are superior to healing spells, and cheap to boot. She has terrible damage output in a game where killing the opponent before it gets to move is the key to everything.

* TearJerker - [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TearJerker/EternalSonata Has its own page.]]