I bought this game months ago, and shortly after that I started playing it. As usual with me, I got distracted by something else and stopped playing it after about an hour or so, not even enough time to come to grips with the combat system. A couple nights ago I got back to it, and I'm very glad I did, currently clocking 10 hours.



The game revolves around the final days of Frederic Chopin, the piano virtuoso who passed away because of tuberculosis. Its storyline follows his final moments, and the things that happen inside his mind, which involve a world ruled by abuse of mineral powder (a substance that seems to heal illnesses, but with toxic and deadly effects in the long run), fueled by evil Count Waltz. Story is fairly cliche, as well as the characters, but the presentation makes them all likeable. All places and people have music-related names (after all, they all live inside Chopin's mind), such as Ritardando Village, Forte City, and characters such as Waltz, Polka, Allegretto and Beat.

Between chapters, the game gives you small pieces of background on Chopin's life, and how things went down in the world during his lifetime, these interludes include some of the finest pieces of his music.

Visual presentation is great, amazing even. Art direction is very well focused, and while there is not much exploration in those places (linear paths, mostly), vistas are breathtaking, with good draw distance, some great water effects, and nice lighting all around.







Combat is more complex than what you would expect, it's turn-based, but very action-oriented; it strikes you as button-mashy at first, but as your party develops, its level increases, gradually introducing you to concepts such as tactical time, reducing your action time, and opening more slots for special attacks and items. Besides, you can (and must) block most enemy attacks, helping you take less damage each turn, while keeping boredom at bay in defending turns. There's no magic gauge, and special moves can be used freely, and later on you can build up regular hits in a counter to increase the power and effectiveness of your specials.

Overall difficulty isn't hard, and so far I haven't had any need for grinding, so you can move at your own pace through the game, picking up your battles (no random encounters here) and building up your party. Like I said, I'm barely scratching the 10 hour mark, and new characters are still showing up as the plot unfolds, so I'll try to keep this thread updated.

Your party and the enemies attack in turns, but once it's your turn, it's up to you where to move and how to attack. You have tactical time, and action time itself. When it's your turn to attack, you have limited time to do so (5 seconds at the beginning, it reduces as you gain levels). In lower party levels (those go up as you gain experience), you have unlimited tactical time before each turn, which means the counter doesn't move until you actually perform some action (move, attack, use items), once the counter gets moving, you have a limited amount of time to move your character and attack the enemies, regular attacks are button-mashy, you need to get in as many hits as possible to raise your hit meter, the highest it is (max 32 hits), the more powerful your special moves will be. Special moves can be attack or support ones.

Once your party level goes up, your tactical time gets reduced, so you have only a couple seconds before your counter starts running, forcing you to plan your attacks in advance. Your active time also goes down as well, making it more difficult to rake in the hits for your meter. Your specials are different depending on whether you are on broad sunlight or indoors/shadows, and your enemies shape and attacks also change depending on this! It's nice to mix things up by moving under a shadow to change your attacks or your enemie's shape, ot towards a light source while indoors. Adds another layer to a combat system that seems shallow on paper.  

Lol. I guess it does sound a bit complex. However, you can basically sum it up like this:

Run towards enemies, hit them hard before time ends.