It's hard to explain the premise of Eternal Sonata without making it sound a bit absurd. Take Frederic Chopin, a real historical figure from the 19th century (considered to be one of the greatest pianists of all time), and throw him into an over-the-♊top fantasy world full of magic, monsters, and political intrigue. Regardless of its seemly out-there plot, Eternal Sonata presents an engrossingly imaginative world with awesome gameplay and a story you might actually find yourself caring about.

First off (and most importantly), the battle system is super fun. Battles are turned based, but each character has an action gauge that decreases in real-time as you move, attack, and use items and special attacks. As you progress, your training wheels🧸 are slowly taken off by altering the rules of battle to make things more difficult. At the start, your action gauge pauses whenever you pause, but later, it will deplete in real time to matter what you're doing, g♚iving you less time to think before acting. To balance things out, you're also given extra slots for items and special attacks as you progress, to make up for the increasing difficulty. This dynamic aspect of the system also helps keep things fresh, alleviating some of the boredom that often results from trudging through an RPG's many dungeons.

Above:Eternal Sonata's battles area perfect combination of orderly turn-based RPG goodness and combo-tastic button-mashing satisfaction